My laptop computer overheats (or gets hot to the touch). What are some preparation steps I can take in the event of a harddrive crash. Is there an external/internal drive that you can suggest I get along with the appropriate software to backup the entire contents of the drive? Preferably something that gives the option of backing up the entire drive every 1 or 2 weeks and a drive that I can use to boot up from in case the hard drive fails. My laptop has a firewire port and usb ports.

I do have a few external hard drives (7).

I only go with brand names ( WD - HP - Maxtor )

My favorite is the small 320 GB WD

I also have another small WD 250 GB ( I bought it at Costco for less than $100)

'...I can only advise regarding a Macintosh computer.

The latest Operating System 10.5.4 and several earlier editions have a utility called 'Time Machine'. If you connect an external hard drive, it will back up the total content of your internal hard drive automatically. Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups until your backup disk is full.

I have just purchased a 500 GB external hard drive which is the largest I have, although I have several 300 GB. I was going to purchase the 1 terabyte version as it is only a few dollars more expensive but, although not logical, I would be very unhappy to lose that amount of saved information, images, movies etc., if it ever failed.

I am sure there will be a similar system available for Windows users and if so, there will be someone here who can advise you'.

I also came across a new 'gadget' which resembles an electric shaver charger. It sits on your desk and is connected to your computer by USB and you can slot any hard drive into it either 2.0 or 3.5 to use the contents. It will only work with SATA hard drives but now you can easily connect and disconnect multiple hard drives on the fly without having to have them installed in hard drive cases.

themagician

Get an external hard drive and then find a good backup program on sourceforge for free.

WD is the best!

Get a copy of Acronis True Image and backup everything to DVD(s). In case it crashes, just pop in the Acronis Emergency Boot CD/DVD and it will let you restore everything back to the last saved point -- even on a new hard drive (after you format it). It's a lot like Norton Ghost, but you don't have to boot into DOS to use it.

Yah Acronis is tits.


By the way. I run my dell laptop all friggen day and I had problems with overheating in the past (with a different laptop). I highly suggest you get a laptop fan that goes under your computer.

This is the one I use...


That fan has been going strong for about a year now with no problems. My computer is very cool and the fan is pretty quiet. This might not work in all cases but I hook an external keyboard, mouse and monitor up to my laptop so it just kinda kicks it in the corner.

I highly suggest you get that fan if you are dealing with heat issues, it really works wonders. Also get urself another hard drive to back up your stuff every couple weeks.

I run my laptop 24/7 in the office, on the train and then at home. I have a fan to sit it on because it was getting really hot and I had already lost one hard drive. Since I got the fan, not a problem to be seen. I run diagnostics on the drive every now and again and get no warning's about heat.

I also do a complete back up to an external drive once and week and have and automated backup that runs at 3am every night to just back up those directories I KNOW I would be lost without the latest data - thos econtaining spreadsheets and whatever project I am working on.

DVDs (4.3GB) are old skool storage method... I am planning to backup my Data using Blu-Ray Discs (25GB)... I suggest you to do this too..

but can get expensive if you are backing up every week on blue-ray disks, dvds are just a cheap backup method.

If it crashes and the sector 0 is not damaged, then all you would need to do is get yourself a laptop hard drive reader that plugs through a USB port on a regular computer. The OS of the regular computer would read the data located on your laptop hd. That's a solution if it crashes.

lol, last time mine laptop hard drive died it was when I fell of the motorbike when it was in the saddle bags - no chance of ever saving that baby!

Another preventitive measure if your machine is overheating is to get a can of compressed air and blow all the crap out of the ventilation slots - where I live, there's lots of dust in the air and I need to do this at least once a week.