Question for the computer gurus in the room

Did you laptop crash or did Windows crash.
Pretty big difference

become a man and ditch windows and apple

Windows: if you want it cheap and don’t mind it crashing
Linux: if you want it free and don’t mind to spend lots of time tinkering because things don’t work
Mac: if you want things to work rocksolid out of the box and don’t mind to pay for it

Use some cloning app like clonezilla.

linux is for people who want to spend all their time fucking with the os itself.

the rest of us want to actually DO stuff.

Maybe because you're a sheep, you're fine being a chump?

Always back up your data to a external hard drive .. never lose your data that way

RAID 1

-external hard drive/NAS for data mirroring and/or backup

-cloud based service for file backup. I use Sugarsync which can copy files to other devices and sync them across all devices when changes are made.

This.

Save NOTHING to the laptop as far as data goes. The only thing you should have on the laptop HD are the actual programs, which are easy enough to reinstall.

I like the idea of having data stored externally, but not really an option for me. And as much as I love Apple, many of the machine interface programs I run (Cummins, John Deere, Marathon Electric, Basler...and many others) are windows based.

Some field work is out in the sticks with no connectivity, or power is out, so I need data locally.

But when I get back, I want everything to sync up.

What about a desktop that would sync with the laptop? Would that work? And if the laptop craps out, how difficult is it to clone a new one?

Oh, and for the person who asked, I believe it is a hardware crash. The bios isn’t seeing a bootable device, I think. It never gets to windows or even safe mode.

Thanks!!

Do you still have the box the computer game in OP. Send it back, you are not smart enough to own a computer. Buy an iPad.

There are many different ways to approach this and with various solutions.

Instead of spending money on a second laptop, you could spend the money on a server/desktop. My preference would be a server with some redundancy and backup system. Then you could use it for other various things, such as a movie or music collection for instance, along with storing all your data.

Use a docking station for the laptop. Keep a local copy on the laptop and when you put the laptop on the docking station it will sync with the server.

Imaging the drive can save some time and hassle. Install everything you want on it, then create the image. Again, there are various ways to go about this as well, but I am not going to go into detail about it in this post.

In your current system it does sound as if the drive is bad. If you are still otherwise happy with the laptop, replacing the drive would save you the expense of a new computer.

Last Edited by BrokenTech on 06/13/2018 08:16 AM

Remove battery , them remove cmos battery , resets bios back to factory,cmos battery might be dead , just somthing to try.

It should not be keeping the time if it was the battery, but good thought.

Keep your data on a small Jump drive that is always in your laptop. Make a system restore Image on an external hard drive and make a system recovery cd to restore the image. You need to reload your pc at least once per year, since they get funked up with spy crap. If you are lazy, just pay the local comp store to make the backup for you,,,,it may work off of a USB jump drive.

Who the Fxck uses Apple ???? I worked in the comp field for 30 years as a Unix tech and only saw Apples at a libtard art school. The world is windows / linux. Who in their right mind pays 2000$ for a laptop that could break in half if dropped ?

I have the same laptop I bought in '07. It has been to the brink many many times. When that happens I unload a spray can of contact cleaner into all of it's gaps front and back and then go at it with compressed air. Takes a bit of encouragement to start but when it's warmed up it runs... well not gonna lie, like shit! but still working.

If you want to stick with Windows be sure to get the "Pro" version. Make whole disk images over the network to either a NAS or a networked drive on another PC or an external removable hard drive (best option). Re-do the whole image once a month (seconds to engage, no big deal). A re-built is boot from USB or system recovery DVD/CD and replace

My wife has a windows laptop and a Linux desktop, she has no os system experience. The windows system is hardly ever used, the Linux box has had zero issues. The current Linux systems are very user friendly. Spec your own box using reliable components, make it three times more capable than you think you need. Have a vendor make it for you or do it yourself.

Set the new Linux box up to mirror everything.

I just took the drive out and plugged it into a hard drive duplicator and it can’t see the drive. So....bad SSD. Crap! I though that was going to be better than a spinning disk.

I’m still replacing it. And do some sort of duplication. Mirroring another drive seems easiest at the moment. It’s a toshiba and too bad I can’t get another like it.

The new versions of Linux can be installed programs and all in an hour. Then just move your home folder and any special settings

Windows takes several hours cause of all the updates then install the av and programs and having to relicense everything. Then update more.

I thought he said gurus, not users..

If you want a SSD that will last you forever without costing a fortune, given you are writing a lot of data, then try this one

[link to www.newegg.com (secure)]

this unit allows you to write about 1200 TB of data before it goes boom.

At almost half the price, you could get a crucial mx500 which however will last only 1/3 of the time, allow for 360 TB of data on average before it starts displaying issues.

[link to www.newegg.com (secure)]


To give you a perspective. Last time i checked my ancient 80gb intel SSD i bought in 2010, 8 years ago, i have written 19 TB on it.
This is my windows boot disk and it has been in use daily, swapped from an older system.

However, i do have 32GB of RAM in this system and i have completely disabled the page file.
Paging on a SSD if you on top of that have little RAM can kill the SSD much earlier.
Even if you have a lot of RAM and have the pagefile enabled, applications/the OS are behaving like hogs and keep using up more RAM than necessary if they think there is enough of it, starting to write on your pagefile like there is no tomorrow.


Another killer is hibernation. Imagine you 64GB of RAM and have multiple apps open before you go into hibernation.
The System now stores the complex state of multiple apps from your RAM onto the SSD... imagine doing this multiple times a day.

Verdict. If you use a SSD, opt for a lot of RAM in your system so you can disable the pagefile completely and then move on to disable hibernation. The normal sleep mode is good enough.


Now if you opt for that 960 samsung pro, even if you ignore my advise with the pagefile and hibernation, you should be good still. 1200 TB of data is a lot of data to write.

Still, you should for the first few months have a tool that is capable of checking how many TB you have written, so you can estimate how long the drive will last you with your usage profile.

your next laptop needs to have Raid 1 capabilities.

if/when a drive crashes a complete backup will still be there.

Pretty easy.

I have two Lenovo Legion Y720 laptops.

I bought the first one, installed Samsung Evo 1TB m2Sata SSD.
Installed Win 10 and software.

With Samsung Magician software I cloned the SSD on another Samsung Evo with 1TB which I installed on the other laptop.

One for work .. and one as backup, works even though Win10 wanted a Pro 10 license, you can buy for 5 bucks on the internet.

All you need is an m2-card reader.

Done,

Re-partition your hard drive so that you keep your data separate from the OS partition. Better yet, get another hard drive and store all your 'data' on it. So you have a separate drive letter in Windows and everything goes there.

Then get Norton Ghost or a similar hard drive or partition imaging software and take an image of your OS partition every so often. If Windows crashes or it gets hosed, you can re-image the OS parition from your last backup or even simply re-install a fresh copy but all your data is untouched in the other partition or hard drive.

I don't get this solution. Good if it works for you, but it seems awkward.

Every time you want to clone it, you will have to physically connect your second SSD to your main laptop or how exactly do you proceed?


The newest Y720 lenovo's with a 8th generation intel CPU come with a fast nvme 256gb Samsung PM961 256GB drive if i am not mistaken(don't take my word for it but look it up yourself if you go that route).
Those do well over 2000mb/s read in sequential read tests.

The Y720 also has a thunderbolt 3 interface.

So the most sensical solution i see, would be to get a thunderbolt 3 capable fast nvme external SSD for quick backups.

Something like this

[link to www.newegg.com (secure)]

That's a 1TB external thunderbolt 3 drive with a nvme SSD inside, capable of over 1000mb/s write.

Meaning, that you could clone your laptop's 256GB drive 4 times onto it and do so in about 4 minutes(a lot less than 4 minutes if it is not full) with the proper cloning software.

Unfortunately i am not in the business of backing up my data much so i would not know which cloning software would be the right one to use with this thunderbolt 3 drive, so i cannot recommend anything.
Maybe windows 10 pro even has its own free tool but i have not looked into it.


In case of a failure as OP experienced, all you would have to do, would be to buy a new SSD for the laptop and use your cloning software to restore one of the 4 cloned backups you have, which would completely restore your window 10 install and everything else back to the point you cloned it.


This solution i proposed is quite expensive, but it is also the fastest.

There are also 512GB and 256GB external thunderbolt 3 drives. The 256GB one is too small, as you want to at least have the ability to store 2 cloned copies of your drives. You do not want to have to overwrite your old cloned backup while getting a new one for extra security.

Possibly the most secure solution would be two or more 256GB drives.
This way, you would have one drive always detached physically while using the other to do your backup. This would protect the detached cloned windows partition from possible malware/a virus you just got and which is out to destroy all your data or encrypt it for ransom.
Or, some 1 in a million chance of some electrical spike caused by faulty hardware or thunder srike or whatever else, killing your external drive.