Hi everyone, I have not been active in the forum for a while. There is a good reason - my laptop of 5 years have decided to 'die' and that caused some grief. I suspect the erratic weather caused the motherboard to short circuit. I have less idea if the data on the laptop survived but hope that they did. So far I have been managing without a computer while saving up to get a decent computer. It has been inconvenient but I guess you can always get around. On the topic of data, there has been a lot of numismatic related files that was on my computer. Last I remembered from a few years ago, I had more than 30gb of data in it which put me off backing up on dvd. That included a fair amount of photos, articles, coin album designs, etc. Bad call! Thankfully, the majority of important personal files, photos etc are on an external drive. I know it isn't really numismatic related but when you have taken time and effort to record your personal collection - make sure you spare some time to back them up!!!!!!! Just a friendly reminder.
So that's what happened. We missed you dear fellow. Hope you're back up and running smooth soon. Sound advice......
Don't toss that laptop. You might be able to recover the data on the hard drive. I'm wishing you good luck with it.
Get an external hard drive mount for your 2.5"/3.5" drive. Connect via USB mass storage. Hopefully the file table and important sectors are still there. I had to do this about 5 or 6 years ago and was able to run a linux file system from a boot cd (Ultimate Boot CD) and recovered about 75% of my data (music, photos, research papers, etc). If your computer is still bootable, goes to BIOS, try using the Boot CD to read the data and copy to your external hard drive. There are a couple of options either way, assuming the platters on the HD aren't fried. Good luck!
I copy everything over to a book drive every few weeks. I learned the hard way many years ago. You can't have enough backup.
My coin inventory (spreadsheets) is saved to cloud. I can access them from any computer with an internet connection. I know some folks feel like their privacy could be invaded but it's not like I'm not putting any information that is too sensitive or personal anyway. You can also use code (your own made up code or language) to add another level of protection if it makes you feel better. I know dealers already do this for their pricing. I then use an external hard drive to back up those sheets (since even the cloud is capable of crashing) and to backup the photos which are primarily saved on the computer's hard drive.
Had a mother board go out on my desktop years ago. Had to buy a new PC, but was able to transfer the data off the old hard drive via USB device.
