(PC crash) lost all my Kubota L35 parts manual data

[irwin]

I feel like an idiot. My laptop was acting up for a few days and I didn't take it seriously. I knew better..I was lazy.

I had downloaded all the parts manuals for my L35tlb off the web and did not save it on a removable medium, it's no longer available free (at least I can't find it).

I'm posting this (in the hope) that maybe someone else on TBN doesn't make the same mistake. If you have something on your pc that you don't want to lose.. please back it up on a DVD or a thumbdrive.

 

[ccsial]

Sorry for your loss. The USB hard drive is also a good choice. I have one on every computer.

 

[Reg]

I feel like an idiot. My laptop was acting up for a few days and I didn't take it seriously. I knew better..I was lazy.

I had downloaded all the parts manuals for my L35tlb off the web and did not save it on a removable medium, it's no longer available free (at least I can't find it).

I'm posting this (in the hope) that maybe someone else on TBN doesn't make the same mistake. If you have something on your pc that you don't want to lose.. please back it up on a DVD or a thumbdrive.

What sort of "crash" ?
If it is only a few years old and XP, Vista ot Win7 based you MIGHT be able to go through the restore/recovery steps to get it back.

Don't re-install everything, recover to an earlier point in time.
It SHOULD present you with the option to do this when it fails to boot properly, if you take it to geek squad (or equivalent) that will almost certainly be their first shot anyway, so you might as well DIY.

BTW, terabyte drives are around $100 these days and will probably drop in price again once USB 3.0 becomes the new norm.
Look up "EASEUS Todo" for a free image back-up tool.
B'leeve it or not this will make an image back-up of a drive while you are using it.
Then you can roll it back onto a new drive and it will restore ALL the partitions and their contents, yes even the D partition and Linux (except swap partition, no point in that anyway).
PS: do remember to create a bootable CD for the restore.
The limitations on this software are a) you cannot make a back-up from the booted CD, you can only restore b) there is no incremental back-up, so you do WHOLE IMAGES, which can be large.
but it is FREE ! and runs while your system is up.

EDIT:
ONE of the "problems" with laptops is that most of them aren't really designed to be used on one's "Lap".
With wireless connections it is no longer necessary to be near the modem, so we use laptops on our laps, on couches.
Putting a laptop down on a soft couch or rug can seriously block the airflow - this is the DESIGN problem, they seem to have been designed to rest on hard smooth surfaces. I first noticed this when putting one down on the soft passenger seat of my truck, it would sink down and the fan would speed up.
If I didn't prop the edge of the laptop up the thing would shut down within a minute.
Anyway, just a thought, they NEED cooling air (-:

 

[Goodluck w/ That]

Yes, the sites like Messick's, Kubota made them take it down.

 

[Tig]

Google Ubuntu. Download and create an Ubuntu DVD. Boot your laptop from this DVD but do not install Ubuntu. You will be able to access any files on the hard drive that are not destroyed. They can easily be copied to USB or even another machine on your network.
Most fatal crashes do not involve total destruction of the hard drive, just corruption of the operating system. Everything else is probably intact.
Good luck.

 

[Reg]

Google Ubuntu. Download and create an Ubuntu DVD. Boot your laptop from this DVD but do not install Ubuntu. You will be able to access any files on the hard drive that are not destroyed. They can easily be copied to USB or even another machine on your network.
Most fatal crashes do not involve total destruction of the hard drive, just corruption of the operating system. Everything else is probably intact.
Good luck.

Right,
...and if he gets carried away with the ease of use and robustness he might even "convert" (-:

ONE OF the things that surprised me about EASEUS ToDo back-up was that it restored all my Linux (some UBUNTU) partitions as well as the two NTFS ones C: and D:
As you would expect with a disk image it copied the master boot record, so at boot time GRUB came up and offered me any of my Linux (UBUNTU) installs, Vista, or the Windoze recovery partition.
The other GREAT thing was that it made the back-up while I was using the Vista partition, i.e. it didn't need to put an exclusive lock on C: so I didn't have to park the system for several hours while it did a stand-alone back-up.
This has always been something I have HATED about back-ups, that to do an image you generally need to take the whole thing down and re-boot afterward.
For physical disk HEAD crashes you do NEED an image to roll back onto the new disk.

YEAH I LIKE IT !

 

[EE_Bota]

I use Acronis True Image. I like it a lot. My version is a bit old, and Debian Linux Lenny made some slight change to the EXT3 file system that ATI does not understand in my version, so I also use Clonezilla. I like the idea of having diverse backup methods since it is not known if you are successful until you have to actually use it to restore. ATI can back up while you use the system.

Either one of these too programs are OS agnostic, so I can and have used them on DOS, QNX4, Linux, and XP. Life used to be so much harder without them.

One really handy thing with Acronis True Image is the ability to read the archive with your computer as if it were a live file system. That has come in handy a time or two, but only works on an Windows image.
I prefer imaging rather than actual backups. It preserves the disk serial number, which some programs rely on for copy protection.

Between backups, I use a 32 gig USB thumb drive, and do binary comparisons before the copy because I usually know what I have changed, and what I have not changed, and I can tell if there is a problem developing with either device. Beyond Compare, Ultra Edit, and Quicken are my most used programs outside of PLC programming software.

 

[irwin]

By the time I remembered the manuals were on that laptop (I have a few pc's) I had reloaded the operating system with the repair disc. Tough luck on my part.

All in all losing a hundred dollars worth of manuals isn't the worst thing that coulda happened, I still have the laptop (and the L35 )

 

[crbr]

I feel like an idiot. My laptop was acting up for a few days and I didn't take it seriously. I knew better..I was lazy.

I had downloaded all the parts manuals for my L35tlb off the web and did not save it on a removable medium, it's no longer available free (at least I can't find it).

I'm posting this (in the hope) that maybe someone else on TBN doesn't make the same mistake. If you have something on your pc that you don't want to lose.. please back it up on a DVD or a thumbdrive.

Files can be recovered with the proper circumstances and software, unless you have reloaded (over written) the drive.

I have 5 externals for backup and DVDs for secondary.

 

[Reg]

By the time I remembered the manuals were on that laptop (I have a few pc's) I had reloaded the operating system with the repair disc. Tough luck on my part.

All in all losing a hundred dollars worth of manuals isn't the worst thing that coulda happened, I still have the laptop (and the L35 )

If your day turns REALLY BAD call me, I'll swap you a new hard drive for the L35 (-:
(Delivery included, I'll bring a trailer for the back haul)