[ale] backup heart attack - almost

[Ron Frazier]

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