I think I have lost most of my sample thanks to my computer fucking up. Also possibly some of my recent tracks.
I had the misfortune of my graphics card on my laptop giving up the ghost last week. The computer is only a few months out of warranty, not even 18 months old and it looks like it will cost a fortune to replace. The most annoying thing about the card is, that HP know that the Nvidea range they used, burns out after about 18 months. They have done a call back on some models, but not mine, so they say I must pay. The way my card gave up is identical to the way the others burnt out. ie. serious over heating, screen blacking out, screen image shifting and crashing... Notice that I said the card burns out after 18 months, they will probably have an influx of complaints, now that the model is coming up to 18 months.
Obviously, the hard drive should be ok, but the cost of repairing the computer means I would be better of buying a new computer.
This isn't the first run in I've had with HP. I had another one of there laptops and I needed the BIOS password. They informed me that it is impossible to obtain the password and that I would need a new mother board. After loads of searching through sites with other people after the same quest, I found someone on the net who happened to work for HP, I gave him the challenge code for my BIOS, he kindly gave me the password! I asked HP why they didn't do this for me, they ignored my email. Wankers.
Anyway, no point crying over spilt milk. so I will leave it there.
Last year I had a Compaq laptop (HP in disguise) were the hard drive was faulty, luckily I was able to salvage some of my files of of it. It had an warranty on it so I got a new Toshiba laptop instead which has a bigger hard drive and hasn't had any problems since I got it last year
I am actually thinking of buying an Apple now. Bit pricey, but I know a few people who have had decent customer care with them, even if the warranty expires.
a great back up program that I'm using is Acronis True Image.
I recently started my music pc from scratch to speed it up and to get rid of all unwanted/unnecessary software.
Once I had installed windows again and got all my music software to how i wanted, (which took ages) I took an image of my system drive.
Now if I ever have a massive system failure or want to start my system from scratch, rather than reload windows and other music stuff I just use this software to use my image I saved and instead of taking hours to do it takes minutes!
Originally posted by Muad'Dib
I have a HP laptop, and didn't encounter any of the troubles you've been having.
What's the matter of fact, it's serving me quite well.
Guess it happens by chance
Hp have built some fantastic machines. My one was fantastic
The problem is, they used a faulty Nvidea graphics card in the DV range of machines about 2 years back. They got complaints about the card failing, but continued to use it. What has been happening, is that the card starts failing after about 18 month, due to heating problem causing the soldering in the graphics cards to sepperate. They tried getting around this by changing the BIOS settings so that the fan is constantly running full speed. This just slowed the process slightly and cained your battery.
In the end, HP admitted they new about the problem, but far to late for a lot of people, because there warranty expired. They even tried getting around fixing peoples computer that were in warranty by claiming that the graphics card is made by Nvidea, so not there hardware, so not there problem. What a joke.
Just found someone on Trademe selling the exact laptop as me with the same problem!
I am thinking of converting to apple now though, partly because I can chuck Reason straight on it and most of the other higher spec machine here are about the same price.
EDIT: Another one with a fucked GPU. Identical to mine. Yet HP inform me that there is no problem with my model. Took me all of five minutes on Trademe to find two! WTF!
I've had 4 hard drive crashes in the past 15 years. I have become very cautious and backup everything all the time. My backup strategy is threefold: I have a second internal drive, an external drive and an online backup service. I've set up all backups so they happen automatically. For me backing up manually doesn't work, I tend to forget about it or postpone it until it is too late.
Every time my computer boots it makes a backup of my entire main drive on the internal drive. Since this only backs up the files that have changes this only takes a few seconds. If my main drive breaks down I can boot from the second drive and be going in seconds.
Every time I finish something that is important, I switch on the external drive (I used to have a USB drive, but got one on eSATA now because USB is so friggin slow) and backup all changes of my home folder. If I get an electrical failure or a virus or rootkit that destroys all my internal drives at least I still have everything on the external drive. Can get back to work in one day after reinstalling.
Once a week I backup just my important documents to an online storage. I don't backup any large files online, only things like my password database, invoices, and the project files I'm currently working on. If my house catches fire at least I still can finish off the projects I'm working on.
On Windows I used a very nice program for it called Syncback SE. You can set it up so it does everything automatically in the background and you never have to think about it. I turn on the computer and it starts backing up to the second drive in the background. Plug in the external drive and it start backing up to it immediately. It costs around 22€ which is nothing really for your piece of mind.
On Mac the obvious choice is Time Machine, which is installed standard. On Linux you can choose between dozens of great free backup tools. I'm currently using Unison for backups between drives and Deja Dup for online backups, both of which are open source.
__ If you find spam on the site, please hit the button and select my name. I'll personally kick it to the murky depths of hell where it belongs!
Not too long ago I backed up loads of stuff onto a external HD I got while I was over in the UK ...
I'd only had it just over 2 month ish and the fucker fried on me.
Thing is I can't bloody exchange it or do fuck all about it due to being over here in Spain.
Also in my experience the stuff you store online can be corrupted too.
I've uploaded compressed stuff in .zip or .rar format and had them be corrupted when I've test downloaded them.
Also I like to back stuff up on cd's and dvd's too and they are in the same boat as they don't last forever (even though they originally claimed cd's were indestructible many years ago (apparently) !!!)
I find the back up shit plain annoying an lately (no idea why) I keep getting I/O device errors randomly maybe while dowloading something or maybe a new folder I created freezes everytime I try to get/open a file from it or maybe it occurs while I'm trying to burn something to disc (happens often)
Hmmm rant thingy over (not sure if I made any sense but I'm nae in the mood to reread what I typed)
button and select my name. I'll personally kick it to the murky depths of hell where it belongs! 
