Data Storage - Problem With A Backup

Author

Problem With A Backup

~~~AllisonWonderland~~~

2006-11-30, 1:13 pm

James C. Allison:
I don't know what kind of information that I need to supply, so I'm going to
just describe the problem, and if more info is needed, I'll supply it when I
know what it is.

I'm running a 1.8 GB Pentium, Tyan Trinity Motherboard, 1.5 GB RAM, and
Windows 2000 Pro OS.

Recently I experienced a UPS failure, the computer just went dead. The
failure also took out the power transformer for the 56K modem. I unplugged
everything from the UPS and went straight into the surge protectors until I
can get another UPS, and replaced the transformer to the modem, and
everything seemed normal.

Right after that, the Mitsubish Diamond Pro 21TX monitor got streaky. It
wasn't plugged into the UPS, and it had done this some years ago, but had
straighten up. It has mitigated some, and is now just slightly streaked. I
updated the driver which didn't solve the problem.

Then a couple of times, upon turning on the computer, the fans came on, but
it did not boot. I held down the "On" switch and it turned off, and then I
pressed the "On" switch again and it booted. It hasn't done this again after
having done it twice.

One other quirk showed up: In Outlook Express when composing E-Mails, the
"delete" key had to be pressed to delete each character to the right of it.
It used to just "eat" the line of type character by character if the
"delete" key was held down. Now it can be held down, and when it is released
it will have deleted multiple numbers of characters, but I can't see it
happening.

So I decided that it was probably prudent to do a back up, which I had not
done before, though I had a 200 GB External HDD on which to do it.

The USB HDD was partitioned with E: being 97 GB, and G: being 95 GB.

Then I tried to format the E: partition, and when it got to 99%, a notice
appeared that "The volume is too big". I clicked on "OK" on the notice, and
it disappeared and continued with the format. I assumed that it finished.

I then tried to do a back up using the System Backup facility on W2K and it
seemed to be doing fine. I had almost 10GB of backup to do, and after 1
hour, 10 minutes, and 8 seconds, it had gotten to a bit more then 4 GB, when
I got a notice that it had run out of space. I don't know how 4 GB would
fill up 97 GB of disk.

Then it has done another strange thing a couple of times recently... I'd try
to turn it on, and it wouldn't respond. So I would flip the main switch on
the back of the computer off, and then back on, and THEN the computer would
respond to turning it on;

And then this morning, I noticed that the clock had lost a half hour of time
in the past two days;

Obviously SOMETHING is going on. I need to get the backup done before it
fritzes.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

Hope you all are well, and taking excellent care.

With abated breath...

JCA

Bill Todd

2006-12-01, 7:15 pm

~~~AllisonWonderland~~~ wrote:

....

> One other quirk showed up: In Outlook Express when composing E-Mails, the
> "delete" key had to be pressed to delete each character to the right of it.
> It used to just "eat" the line of type character by character if the
> "delete" key was held down. Now it can be held down, and when it is released
> it will have deleted multiple numbers of characters, but I can't see it
> happening.

No matter how long you hold it down? There may be something making the
display update sluggishly (conceivably related to the streaky problem,
though that wouldn't be my first guess), but doing so consistently would
be unusual (and doing so *only* in OE would be unusual as well).

There is a control for the rate at which a key will repeat when held
down - you might want to see what it's set at (just in case it's set so
high that the display can't keep up and hence just waits until you
release the key).

>
> So I decided that it was probably prudent to do a back up, which I had not
> done before, though I had a 200 GB External HDD on which to do it.
>
> The USB HDD was partitioned with E: being 97 GB, and G: being 95 GB.
>
> Then I tried to format the E: partition, and when it got to 99%, a notice
> appeared that "The volume is too big". I clicked on "OK" on the notice, and
> it disappeared and continued with the format. I assumed that it finished.

Bad assumption.

>
> I then tried to do a back up using the System Backup facility on W2K and it
> seemed to be doing fine. I had almost 10GB of backup to do, and after 1
> hour, 10 minutes, and 8 seconds, it had gotten to a bit more then 4 GB, when
> I got a notice that it had run out of space. I don't know how 4 GB would
> fill up 97 GB of disk.

Since you did not format it successfully, it's hard to say how big it
thought the space was.

>
> Then it has done another strange thing a couple of times recently... I'd try
> to turn it on, and it wouldn't respond. So I would flip the main switch on
> the back of the computer off, and then back on, and THEN the computer would
> respond to turning it on;
>
> And then this morning, I noticed that the clock had lost a half hour of time
> in the past two days;

Replace the CMOS battery on the motherboard: it sounds as if your
system may well be old enough for that to be appropriate, and it
certainly could explain the clock problem (possibly also the occasional
failure to boot).

Diagnosis via newsgroup is dicey at best, and it sounds as if you may be
in well over your head here. Hope this helps, for what it may be worth.

- bill