December 3, 2013 at 10:05Backup: success stories or how I survived OCZ Vertex 2
After moving to a new rented apartment, the very first reboot of the computer to stick in another piece of iron led to the fact that my two-year-old SSD ordered me to live long. BIOS / EFI spent a minute to find out that the patient is not responding to any requests. Another computer confirmed the diagnosis. Since the disc was purchased in a distant country, there was no hope of a warranty replacement / repair, so I immediately ordered a new one.
Fortunately, I regularly backed up all data from the disk, knowing the stories about the unreliability of this model. Therefore, he could soon have access to documents and the most recent commits that have not yet been run. Moreover, I continue to work on my system with a non-working SSD until a new one arrives. About how it happened and what else happened
In fact, this article is about built-in backup tools in Windows and how to use them correctly to survive the collapse of the system drive without long interruptions.
At work, we use a rather strange system for assembly, which, when completely reassembled, not only cleans the output folder and folders of intermediate results, but also removes without warning from the working copy folder all files that have not yet been added to the version control system. The version control system is also terrible, so I often use GIT in parallel in the subprojects I'm working on. One fine day of my newness, having created such a subproject and having worked on it for some time, I decided it was time to try to integrate it into the product. I started rebuilding.
I think you have already guessed what happened next. A couple of days of work, along with the GIT repository, were destroyed, the assembly completed with errors, and, of course, the new feature in the product did not work. Yes, there was still a clone of this repository on another disk, but the last time I pushed it last night, i.e. 7 business hours ago. Of course, I didn’t want to lose one day of work.
Fortunately, I am one of those who notice when the developer wants to convince us of something good, which we usually do laziness. Therefore, after installing the system, I click in the tray on the very first notification from the Action Center (which, inexperience, many ignore for years) and configure all possible methods of data backup.
So it was this time, and in this situation, the new Windows 8 File History helped the most. She can backup your data at least every hour, while consuming a space approximately equal to the current data size + the size of all diffs up to a certain date. Actually, I set it up for an hourly interval, not forgetting to include working copy folders.
Well, then it only remained to open a working copy in File History and press the button to move back through the history at the bottom of the window, observing the creation, deletion and renaming of folders until the moment when my subproject appeared from nonexistence. After that, the recovery took a couple of clicks.
Picture - File History interface:
So, the situation with OCZ Vertex and the use of the Necronomicon in Windows. Given: once a working Vertex, 2TB disk storage, a spare system on the storage (maybe not needed, but I had a special case) that regularly performed its duty as Windows Image Backup and a Vertex backup to the storage. Objective: to continue work as if nothing had happened before the arrival of the new SSD in a week.
I will not describe here how to configure WIB so that the image is created. The interface is trivial, if not, the search engine will help you. We solve the problem described above.
Windows, starting with 7, can boot from VHD files that were invented as a disk image format for Hyper-V. And, here it is, a magical coincidence, Windows Image Backup just creates backups in the form of such files! Further, the solution seems already obvious, and with some efforts it can be found in the search engine in parts, but I will give here a complete sequence of actions for the lazy and those who will have to remember this article involuntarily in the future.
1. You need to boot into the backup system. (In principle, this may not be necessary, a bootable USB flash drive may be enough, but then it will need to be done from the command line + I can’t confirm that this will work, because in my case there were problems, maybe True, due to the fact that the flash drive was broken in the EFI style, while the storage was still in MBR)
2. Find the backup image created by WIB. In my case, it was in D: \ WindowsImageBackup \ PC_NAME \ Backup DATETIME \, it was the size of the SSD system partition and had a VHDX extension.
3. Connect this image to the system (I connected with the letter C :). You can do this in diskmgmt.msc, the Action menu.
From the console, diskpart can do this. For teams - in a search engine.
4. Open the admin console and run bcdboot C: \ Windows (replacing C with your drive letter)
5. Optionally, go to msconfig and make this system bootable by default. (console - bcdedit)
That's it. If everything went fine, after rebooting you will see your deceased system in the selection list and you can boot into it and work as usual (except with the HDD it seemed to me extremely slow).
Actually, after doing such frauds, I have no problems. The only question remains is whether Image Backup will be able to restore the system image that has been downloaded and changed, but we will only find out about this in a week.
Thanks for attention! Take care of your data!
Fortunately, I regularly backed up all data from the disk, knowing the stories about the unreliability of this model. Therefore, he could soon have access to documents and the most recent commits that have not yet been run. Moreover, I continue to work on my system with a non-working SSD until a new one arrives. About how it happened and what else happened
In fact, this article is about built-in backup tools in Windows and how to use them correctly to survive the collapse of the system drive without long interruptions.
About How I Loved File History (Windows 8+)
At work, we use a rather strange system for assembly, which, when completely reassembled, not only cleans the output folder and folders of intermediate results, but also removes without warning from the working copy folder all files that have not yet been added to the version control system. The version control system is also terrible, so I often use GIT in parallel in the subprojects I'm working on. One fine day of my newness, having created such a subproject and having worked on it for some time, I decided it was time to try to integrate it into the product. I started rebuilding.
I think you have already guessed what happened next. A couple of days of work, along with the GIT repository, were destroyed, the assembly completed with errors, and, of course, the new feature in the product did not work. Yes, there was still a clone of this repository on another disk, but the last time I pushed it last night, i.e. 7 business hours ago. Of course, I didn’t want to lose one day of work.
Fortunately, I am one of those who notice when the developer wants to convince us of something good, which we usually do laziness. Therefore, after installing the system, I click in the tray on the very first notification from the Action Center (which, inexperience, many ignore for years) and configure all possible methods of data backup.
So it was this time, and in this situation, the new Windows 8 File History helped the most. She can backup your data at least every hour, while consuming a space approximately equal to the current data size + the size of all diffs up to a certain date. Actually, I set it up for an hourly interval, not forgetting to include working copy folders.
Well, then it only remained to open a working copy in File History and press the button to move back through the history at the bottom of the window, observing the creation, deletion and renaming of folders until the moment when my subproject appeared from nonexistence. After that, the recovery took a couple of clicks.
Picture - File History interface:
About Windows Image Backup and how to continue working from a dead disk
So, the situation with OCZ Vertex and the use of the Necronomicon in Windows. Given: once a working Vertex, 2TB disk storage, a spare system on the storage (maybe not needed, but I had a special case) that regularly performed its duty as Windows Image Backup and a Vertex backup to the storage. Objective: to continue work as if nothing had happened before the arrival of the new SSD in a week.
I will not describe here how to configure WIB so that the image is created. The interface is trivial, if not, the search engine will help you. We solve the problem described above.
Windows, starting with 7, can boot from VHD files that were invented as a disk image format for Hyper-V. And, here it is, a magical coincidence, Windows Image Backup just creates backups in the form of such files! Further, the solution seems already obvious, and with some efforts it can be found in the search engine in parts, but I will give here a complete sequence of actions for the lazy and those who will have to remember this article involuntarily in the future.
1. You need to boot into the backup system. (In principle, this may not be necessary, a bootable USB flash drive may be enough, but then it will need to be done from the command line + I can’t confirm that this will work, because in my case there were problems, maybe True, due to the fact that the flash drive was broken in the EFI style, while the storage was still in MBR)
2. Find the backup image created by WIB. In my case, it was in D: \ WindowsImageBackup \ PC_NAME \ Backup DATETIME \, it was the size of the SSD system partition and had a VHDX extension.
3. Connect this image to the system (I connected with the letter C :). You can do this in diskmgmt.msc, the Action menu.
From the console, diskpart can do this. For teams - in a search engine.
4. Open the admin console and run bcdboot C: \ Windows (replacing C with your drive letter)
5. Optionally, go to msconfig and make this system bootable by default. (console - bcdedit)
That's it. If everything went fine, after rebooting you will see your deceased system in the selection list and you can boot into it and work as usual (except with the HDD it seemed to me extremely slow).
Actually, after doing such frauds, I have no problems. The only question remains is whether Image Backup will be able to restore the system image that has been downloaded and changed, but we will only find out about this in a week.
Thanks for attention! Take care of your data!