[ale] backup heart attack - almost

[Michael Trausch]

Filesystem utilities, and many programs under Windows, only guarantee that
the FS is happy. Often restoring the ability to boot comes after fs
restoration. Unless you dd to a similar enough drive for it all to work
(depending on the operating systems on the drive, anyway).

--
Sent from my HTC Vision (G2), running Gingerbread.
That is, a phone-like mobile device. :)
On Jan 17, 2011 10:41 PM, "Ron Frazier" <atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com>
wrote:
> Hi guys. Just wanted to let you know something STUPID that I did, so
> you'll have the benefit of being able to avoid it. As described in
> other posts, I've been testing a backup strategy involving cloning.
> Last night, I had cloned my laptop HDD, so, this morning, I thought I'd
> test it. The backup app, Acronis TrueImage, was on the screen and was
> saying click the button to reboot. The backup hard drive was still
> attached. I did not want to reboot, I wanted to shut down. But I was
> nervous about powering off at this point. I exited the backup program
> and the computer started to reboot. When the bios startup screen
> appeared, I figured I could abort the boot, and held down the power
> button to shut off the computer.
>
> I proceeded to install my backup drive so I could test it and powered
> up. To my horror, an error screen appeared and said the NT boot loader
> was missing. I tried to reboot into Linux, and a similar screen said
> the piece that links to Grub was missing. So, I figured that the backup
> drive was hosed somehow.
>
> I powered down and reinstalled the normal HDD. I booted the machine,
> and, to my EXTREME horror, I got the same error screen, both on Windows
> and Linux! Now is when I almost had a psychological heart attack. BOTH
> drives were hosed. I took a few deep breaths and thought, it's highly
> unlikely that all my data is gone on both drives. It must be the boot
> sector, I thought.
>
> Fortunately, I was able to use a Vista setup disk to repair the NT boot
> loader. I don't know how I would have done this if Grub was the primary
> boot loader. Windows booted up, and I used EasyBCD, discussed in other
> posts, to fix the link back to Grub. Then, I was able to boot into
> Linux as well.
>
> The moral of the story, be VERY careful when you force a power down.
> For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure you can power down or reboot while
> the Windows boot menu is displayed and it's waiting for you to make a
> selection. I think the same is true of the Grub menu when it's waiting
> for a selection.
>
> So, DON'T do what I did!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
>
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT c3energy.com
>
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