Help and miracles please.

The place to discuss anything to do with computers, software, hardware, no matter how basic or technical. We all use this stuff, but we don't always understand it!
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Bellywobble
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Help and miracles please.

Post by Bellywobble »

I don't really know where to post this but my computer has just died a terrible death, taking with it all my email contacts.

I have two main problems, one that someone could probably help with. I can't get onto the members forum for the Your Holiday Matters site.
The other is a more urgent problem, that no one will be able to help with, unfortunately. I'm unable to contact the people who should be coming to house sit for us on Friday, when we go on holiday. I'm unable to confirm the arrangements so won't sleep until they either turn up or don't!
Any help with the YHM site would be apreciated as would any miracles re the other.
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Ciapolin
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Post by Ciapolin »

Can't help with miracles, but I have pm'd you about the YMH forum.
Carole-Anne
Cascina Ciapolin
www.piedmont-holidays.com
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vrooje
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Location: Burgundy, France

Post by vrooje »

What exactly was it that died on your computer?

If it wasn't your hard drive that died, you should be able to hook up the drive to another computer, and then you'll have access to your e-mail contacts (and you can export them into a file and e-mail that to yourself).

If it was your drive, it may still be recoverable, if you're willing to give a potentially considerable sum of money to a data recovery specialist.

A few months ago, one of my tutoring students took her laptop to an incompetent IT person at her school, who erased her hard drive instead of updating the anti-virus software. I told them to call a data recovery person, and he managed to recover some of her ongoing school project papers and such. So it is possible.
Brooke
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Bellywobble
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Post by Bellywobble »

I know very little about the workings of computers but I believe it is recoverable. However as my husband managed to move most files onto the new computer while the old one was on it's way out, he's not keen on spending a lot of money for the few things remaining. He could probably do it himself if he can ever find the time.
The good news is that our house sitters have made contact and everything is fine. We are now all set to go off on holiday on Saturday with no worries about the dog and rat. Can't wait!
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Sue Dyer
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Post by Sue Dyer »

Kayleigh, hope it all works out with your computer.

The email problem is why I like a web based email such as yahoo, lycos or google. With your emails/addresses on these you can never lose the info as long as you have the passwords and you can access from any computer anywhere.

I know some folk don't like using or seeing web based mail but you can use Outlook/Outlook Express and copy to a web based one too. I have changed computers so much the last 5-6 years and it has saved so much grief. Have a look at the help/info files on yahoo mail on how to back up your contacts when you are up and running.

I also found an invaluable investment was a 160gb external hard drive, just plugs into a USB port. Cost me about £100 but I back our 3 computers up onto it. I have about 10 years of digital photos I would hate to lose and get fed up keep burning CD's. I know I'm belt and braces but I have things backed up several times! Really easy software with the drive to do this or just drag and drop. It saved hub's bacon the other week when he accidentally deleted the cottage spreadsheets from his laptop. He didn't know that if you are on a network and delete a shared file it goes - kaput! Doesn't go into the recycle bin like on your C drive. Anyway, essential to me - external hard drive!!
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Bellywobble
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Post by Bellywobble »

The belt and braces approach sounds good to me. I'm going to give all that info to my husband and get something sorted out so we don't have this problem again. Thanks.
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enid
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Post by enid »

Agree totally with Sue we have gmail forwarding to our computer's inboxes. Easy peasy. Glad you can have your holiday with peace of mind - enjoy yourselves!
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Sue Dyer
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Post by Sue Dyer »

To meander more into backup land... something we all mean to do one day and then think "arg, wish I'd backed up...." when it all goes horribly wrong.

Both Lycos and Yahoo have free online drive space and quite generous. It is very simple to transfer files to this from your own computer and they are stored there regardless of which computer you use. I have things on there like CV's, household inventories and other info I can access from anywhere and don't want to lose. As I've previously mentioned you can also use your own webspace for storage, just don't link the the main navigation and I'm sure another thread gave a code to stop that page being indexed by webbots! Oh, I'm soooo full of tips!
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debk
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Post by debk »

An external drive is nice but in case of fire/flood/theft, you'd lose it along with everything else in your house. :cry:

After 7 years and several hard drive crashes, I'm still very happy with www.backup.com. With this type of "off-site" storage, your data survives even when your home doesn't.

It's very simple to use. I set it to run automatically, so that every morning my PC greets me with the message "Your data was successfully backed up!" Whew.

Just fyi.
debk
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Mountain Goat
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Post by Mountain Goat »

There’s a massive difference in cost and features with these web-based back-up outfits. We researched this a couple of years ago, and ended up with www.datadepositbox.com in Canada(?), who charge us around US$10/month for 5GB (backup.com is around 5x that, but I don't know about their special features) on 3 PCs and 3 laptops. DDB don’t have a minimum, so you can do 50Mb for around 25p (UK)/month.

All the features differ with these services, and the way they operate, but datadeposit are very flexible – they charge by the total amount backed up, not no. of machines or users.

In other words we can select all the vital folders** (mainly Sage, Word, Excel and database) that we want to backup on each machine (i.e. about 750Mb on each PC) and forget about it*. If you are on broadband (not sure about dial-up) it works continuously in the background, even while working on a document. They also archive backups so you can go back chronologically.

It doesn’t matter where we are: home, office, UK, Switzerland, internet café in Dar es Salaam – every file on any of the machines is available for immediate download.

It’s saved our life several times. I wouldn’t recommend it for images (just use CDs).

End of commercial.

Goat

*on second thoughts, don't forget about it - check it weekly, monthly etc.

**and you can list your USB memory sticks as well
Last edited by Mountain Goat on Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
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debk
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Post by debk »

It’s saved our life several times. I wouldn’t recommend it for images (just use CDs).
Well said. No matter which outfit you go with, you only have to recover something "irreplaceable" once to know it was well worth the price.
debk
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mpprh
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Post by mpprh »

Hi

makes gmail look interesting ?

Peter
The Languedoc Page
www.the-languedoc-page.com
Image
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debk
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Post by debk »

gmail is great. if anyone needs an invite, just let me know.
debk
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Alan Knighting
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Post by Alan Knighting »

I'd opt for Joanna's external hard drive any day. The thought of backing up vast numbers of gigabytes over the Internet makes the mind boggle – the time involved, even over broadband, would bring tears to your eyes. Full or partial back up to an internal or external hard drive is the obvious route.

Alan
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debk
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Post by debk »

Good point, Alan. Backup.com does incremental backups (i.e., only the files that have changed that day). I would assume DDB does, too.

As such, my daily backup usually runs less than 3 minutes.
debk
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