One more piece of software to recommend, TeraCopy. Handy for copying large files or large sets of files around. Especially nice is the ability to pause and resume the copy plus it has the ability to test after the copy is complete. I tried this once and fell in love immediately. Also, if a copy fails it won’t kill the entire copy, it just notes it so you can check it out afterward.
On to the tragedy… I came home tonight and everything on my desktop machine looked hunky-dorey. Vista wanted an update (no surprise) so I let it go at it. About 20 minutes later, the missus comes in and mentions “the computer is beeping”. I put down the GH2 controller (I have almost 3 sets complete in Expert! woot!) and come to investigate. Yup, beeping. Checking to see what is beeping I learn that it is the main hard drive (C: drive). DOH! It has, indeed, crashed. The drive is a 3.5 year old Maxtor, 2.5 years out of warranty – now the system doesn’t recognize the drive, it just makes odd beeping and other noises. Oh well. Moved a drive from a machine I wasn’t using and reinstalled Vista (Yes, Matt, I know I can install Linux – blah blah – it still would have crashed, most likely). I have the absolute worst luck with hard drives, probably because I leave my machines on 24×7? Anyway, all my running drives are now Seagates with 5 year warranties and the drives are about 1 year old, so hopefully I’ll get a few more years on those. Luckily all the “critical” data was backed up. I don’t recall if I mentioned before, but I started using JungleDisk and am pretty fond of it – worth checking out if you are looking at online backup solutions.
For what it’s worth, I did consider (for a few minutes, while trying to hunt down my Vista install disc) just going out and getting a Mac and being done with Windows. I don’t blame Vista for the drive crash, but…