The saga of my laptop trouble continues...  (Link to 1)  Here are episodes 2, 3, and 3.5...

-----Original Message-----
From: Ole Eichhorn [mailto:ole@aperio.com]
Sent: Monday, March 07, 20051:53 PM
Subject: Episode 2 - Re: As the laptop turns (seeking sympathy points)

As before feel free to ignore if you’re busy :)

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So I reached a nice service manager at HP (I have a Compaq laptop) and he is going to have a tech meet me tomorrow in Vistawith the new parts.  There is some reason to believe I might have a working laptop by tomorrow night.  If not, at least I’ll have another episode to relate.

Also those of you who have never seen a laptop reduced to a bag of parts can indulge your voyeuristic fantasies by looking at what’s left of  mine :)

Stay tuned for more...

Ole

-----Original Message-----
From: Ole Eichhorn [mailto:ole@aperio.com]
Sent: Monday, March 07, 20057:15 PM
Subject: Episode 3 - Re: As the laptop turns (seeking sympathy points)

Okay, so I went back to Fry’s and invested in a USB 2 1/2” drive housing.  ($25 + 2 hours spent.)  With this, I can connect my laptop drive to my server.  So I do.  And it works, first thing.  Yay, now I can backup my drive.

So I launch Ghost and begin a FULL backup of my laptop drive to another drive.  It’s running!  

Oh Oh.  It’s running, but it’s running at 60MB/minute.  For those of you keeping score at home, that is about 10 times slower than a typical Ghost backup.  My server has a USB 1.0 interface, which is slower than tectonic drift.  My laptop drive is 50GB, so this is going to take about, er, 14 hours!  Oh, no, because I started it at 6:00and I have to leave for Vistaat 5:00, so it won’t be done.  SIGH.

I’m not sure what to try next.  I could go back to Fry’s again and buy a USB 2.0 attachment card, that would take about $20 and about 2 hours, and then I could back up the drive in another 2 hours.  Or maybe...

Stay tuned :)

Ole

-----Original Message-----
From: Ole Eichhorn [mailto:ole@aperio.com]
Sent: Monday, March 07, 20058:42 PM
Subject: Episode 3.5 - Re: As the laptop turns (seeking sympathy points)

Okay, I had a brainwave.  My daughter Alex has a computer, and IT has USB 2.0 ports.  In fact, in an embarrassment of riches, it has four in the back and four in the front.  Thank you Sony.  So now my laptop drive is happily plugged in and being TruImaged at about 500MB/minute.  So it will take about two hours.  Whew.

The best part about this backup is that once I have it, I probably won’t need it.  But I know that if I didn’t have it, I’ll wish I did.

Stay tuned...

Ole

Continue to episode 4...