Best backup practices and recovering lost data.
Backup and Recovery
How can I replace the hard drive in a Macbook?
Episode 936
Most laptops make it easy to remove and replace the drive. Definitely make sure to backup all data first. Luka is also wondering whether to go SSD when replacing this drive. Leo says that SSD is faster, but also more expensive. The drives aren't as big as spinning drives, but Luka's mom may not need that much storage anyway. Check out MacSales.com for a good deal on a Mac hard drive.
What's the best cloud backup option for music?
Episode 936
Leslie has a very large iTunes music library, and she'd like to back it up. She wants to be sure not to lose it. Leo says that Leslie's best bet is iTunes Match. For $25 a year, her collection gets matched with copies that Apple has, and the ones that aren't matched are uploaded to Apple's servers. She can then stream them and download them again from there. Google has a similar service for free called Google Music.
How do I replace the hard drive in my laptop?
Episode 936
Taylor from
Leo says that replacing the drive is an easy thing to do. Drives are getting cheaper and cheaper and Western Digital and Seagate are good alternatives. They have software which allows for a bit by bit copy of the old hard drive. Taylor will need a $30 USB adapter so he can access his internal drive after he puts the new one in.
Why won't the image that I made from my hard drive restore properly?
Episode 934
Ron put an image of his hard drive on a thumb drive, and when he tried to restore that image, there was a corrupt file that wouldn't let him proceed. He had to restore from a backup he made 3 months prior to that one. Leo says this is why having a secondary backup for data is such a good idea.
Is there a way to recover a TrueCrypt password?
Episode 934
There's no way to get the data or reset the password for TrueCrypt, which is one reason why it's so good and secure. If he can give up the data, then he should be able to format the hard drive. A low level, quick format won't wipe the drive. He'll have to do a full, deep format and partition it. Leo advises Derik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) to wipe it clean. If that doesn't work, then Leo says the password may be a hard drive or BIOS password, and that's another hassle altogether.
Why won't my Toshiba laptop set a restore point properly?
Episode 933
According to Leo, this is often the sign of a virus. Audie thought so too, and decided to format his hard drive and start over, but it won't format. Leo says that there must be flaws on the drive causing this, and they could be in the master boot record or another non destructible sector. He may be able to switch it out with a replacement drive - they're not that expensive. If it's not replaceable, then a recovery utility like SpinRite may be his only solution.
Is there a way to recover data from a water damaged Android phone?
Episode 932
Phil's wife dropped her HTC Android phone into the water. They recovered the phone, but there are images on it that they'd like to get back.
Backup
Episode 859
Paul wants to get a RAID 5 NAS backup solution and wants to know what happens when a drive fails. Leo says the nice thing about RAID 5 is you can pop out a drive, put a replacement in and there’s no downtime or rebuild. What about Carbonite, will it work via RAID? Leo doesn’t think so. But JungleDisk can do it via their plugin. Crashplan also supports NAS’s. QNap. But make sure your NAS doesn’t have a utility for that.
(Disclaimer: Carbonite is a sponsor)
Hard drive trouble
Episode 860
Vac is having trouble installing an OS on his hard drive. Leo says that the drive may have some bad sectors that are preventing the OS from installing. There is a utility that can map out bad sectors so the installer will skip over them, it’s called SpinRite. But it costs more than a new hard drive! So while the cure is out there, it’s really cheaper to just replace the drive and start over.
APS power supply failure
Episode 862
Don has an HP computer with an APS backup power supply. They had a power outage and now the computer is frozen. He tries to restart and nothing happens. Leo says that most APC surge protectors have insurance attached to them, and the computer is obviously damaged. Good news that the power supply still works, but there’s likely damage to the hard drive and the motherboard. So Leo recommends getting in touch with the manufacturer and letting them know the APS didn’t do it’s job.
