Groomlakearea51 Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 Well, I can tell you that being retired is worse than working... No more, "Hard day today, Honey, and I'm exhausted"..... The first big project is rip out the old bathroom cabinets, etc. (thank God she did not want new tubs!!!), paint, etc. That's consumed about 8+ hours a day, what with the little "details" and such has lasted for the last week and a half. Oh.... BTW, couple weeks ago finally replaced the old computer (retired it to the spare bedroom, which is where I am right now....). The new one is in the man cave and is supposed to be the "music server". Well, Murphy's Law has struck again.... Last week the new "Man Cave Music Server" computer arrived. It was the brainchild of my daughter who has geek buddies at college who fund their extracurricular activities by assembling high end gaming computers. They had built the beast for another "customer" back in the summer, but the customer wanted a different one, so he traded it in, and my daughter got a good deal ($500). Win7/ 64 bit Ultimate, AMD QuadCore at 3.0Ghz, 12 GB memory, XFX power supply, XFX dual screen DVI video card, Zalman nuclear reactor cooling tower (with the shiny copper "pipes" running all over the place).... and I installed the Creative Labs xFi Titanium HD stereo sound card which is really, really good, I might add... The computer came with about 16,000 songs (mostly iTunes MP4's) that the previous owner had collected and left them on the computer. No problem, I moved my mere 250 songs from this computer to the new computer via a "Belkin Easy Transfer" cable, and all went well. Spent 3 days wading through the songs and eliminating 2-Pak, Tupac, Eminem and other such like attempts by totally unqualified alleged musicians to produce music, ended up with a nice collection. The previous owner was quite eclectic, and a complete library of the Beatles was on there.... He also ripped a massive number of CD "collections from the 60's and 70's. Very nice! I ended up with about 8000 songs, a great audiophile grade sound card and it's nice and shiny and looks new!!! Until Sunday... On Sunday, after a hard day's work with drywall repairs, trips to Home Depot for different fixtures, etc., I went to boot it it up and enjoy a nice quiet moment running a few tunes through a McIntosh MA6500 and the K'horns..... Would not boot... bootrmgr corrupted... Called the geeks and they advised that they did not have the previous owner's Win7 DVD/CD.... Not a problem.... Did some research and it appears that the Seagate 500MB drive in the beast may be defective. Ok... Well being suspicious about the Win7 issue, I ordered a new Win/7 Premium 64bit DVD (OEM installer, one copy) for $99 and a new 2TB hard drive from newegg.com. I figure kill two birds with one pebble. Have a new Win7 install that absolutely belongs to me, and according to newegg customer service, a really good, reliable and quiet hard drive. I was.... going to use my son's computer to "transfer" the songs using the "Belkin" Easy Transfer" method to at least store the music, but over the weekend my son's 2009 Dell laptop crashed & burned.... Vista Basic and Dell does not support Vista anymore. Microsoft is fast dumping support, so I went ahead an got the Win7 Premium upgrade DVD/CD. I have the MS Office 2010 "three pack", and his files were old school stuff, so nothing lost. But still that machine is down. To add to the "electronic misery" around the house, his x-box also died.... Fans stopped working and it fried..... He is getting straight "A"s and we decided it was time to reward him for the last report card, so gotta' find a new Xbox..... What a week..... Meanwhile... back to the "Music Server".... As soon as the Win7 & HD arrive, I'll change the bios to boot the DVD, attempt a one time repair to get the old drive to boot and get ready to transfer the music files to the new HD... But..... Here's the issue for which I need some advice if anyone can help. If I can read the music in the old HD library after a DVD/CD boot (Win-7/64)....... What is the easy way to get those music files "off" the old hard drive and back on the new hard drive in the "My Music" folder. I have looked at the "web" and have seen a number of "solutions", but there are apparently some problems that may be associated with WMP12 and changing the libraries. Transferring by "burn" to CD is not really practical..... I would have to burn about 400 CD's..... It appears I can do one of the following, but not sure about the best method: Buy another external hard drive and "drag and drop" the files. Then after new HD and fresh W7 install, "drag & drop" into "My Music"; Buy another external hard drive and "drag and drop" the files. Then after new HD and fresh W7 install, import the library to "My Music"; After new HD and W7 fresh install, leave the old HD installed and "drag & drop" into "My Music"; After new HD and W7 fresh install, leave the old HD installed and "import" into "My Music"; Anyone? [H] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffRay Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 This is just the way I do it. It is very easy and I have done it many many times. Take your bad drive out of the cabinet and install it in an HD External Drive enclosure. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=external+drive+enclosure+3.5 ... Install new HD in your Computer. Install New OS to Computer. Install Applications and Updates. Reboot. Plug old HD that is now in that nifty External Drive Box into computer. Do not Boot from the old drive, just use Explorer to browse to the User acct your files are in and copy them to the new HD (copy/paste). This works for any drive that will run! Most drives, like yours, have boot problems not mechanical problems. With this method you can now watch for a killer deal on a 1TB Internal HD, install it in your new Enclosure and have a heckuva BackUp/Disc Image Drive. Once done you may also Reformat that old drive and have a perfectly good external HD. ... There are reasons for doing it this way even if you have extra drive bays and are capable of leaving the drives in your main cabinet. Having drives in separate enclosures on separate power supplies eliminates all types of odd Rf noise, power supply, drive controller, heat management, and other Gremlins that can waste hours of diagnostic time. Kind of like swapping components around in your Audio system to find a problem. You may be able to fix the drive when you get your new OS disc by just running the Win7 repair Utilities that will be available on the Win7 disc. You don't have to install the OS to use the Utilities on the Disc. However, considering the origin of your homemade Computer you are wise to do a clean install and only have the applications you need. Good Luck, jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffRay Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 Oh, did you get the software and drivers for all that hardware? High powered Sound and Video cards may not run perfectly on Generic Drivers. Generally I will only use the CDs from the Component Manufacturer if they are brand new, I mean this month. Otherwise I will go to the trouble to just go to the Manufacturers Web Page and download the newest version. I have seen component software cause Boot Errors and crashes that can only be cured by uninstalling and updating. Sometimes this could only be done correctly in SafeMode but the vendor doesn't tell you that....... Grrrrrrrr. You probably know all this stuff but its below Zero and -18 CF so I'm avoiding leaving the house. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 Grrrrrrrr. You probably know all this stuff but its below Zero and -18 CF so I'm avoiding leaving the house. ;-) Maybe...just for kicks....Marshal will describe the nasty weather he's currently being exposed to. We can all then drive/fly down there and tar/feather him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksonbart Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 With everything dying at once, it could have been an electrical spike, which fried the xbox and damaged drive enough to corrupt the new PC HD. Might want to confirm that you have a decent surge protector on everything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest " " Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 ditto on the old drive in an enclosure method. make sure you create and ID and password on the new computer OS drive that is the same as the ID and password you used on the old computer OS drive. this tricks the operating system into thinking you are an authorized user since the ACLs are stored on the drive with the old data. AND, did I say AND, what ever you do.....do not write anything at all to the old drive until you get all your stuff off it. if you decided the enclosure route is not as good as the slave drive route, be advised, as a slave drive, your operating system will allocate part of the paging file to the slave drive....which is a disk write activity...once you get into a disk write senerio...you are at risk of loosing your data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 Marshal, this may be overload for you, but I lost many hours of digitizing a couple of times early in this decade before learning to backup, then backup my backups. Right now I run a RAID Network Attached Storage. It's synchronized to a mirror (2 drive) RAID in my music room by Yadis, a freeware real time software that watches a drive and synchronizes another drive with any and all changes to it. Further, that is backed up by Windows Home Server which also maintains complete system drive backups of the other 6 computers in the house. I just say "No" to data loss... In your case, if you aren't ready to get as extreme as I am, at least get Ghost or True Image and clone your system drive to another once you are up and running. Don't put anything on your system drive except OS and programs. If you have email, put your pst file on another physical drive. That way, when Windows swallows it's *** (which is inevitable) all you do is pop the old drive out and the system backup in...then clone again so your ready for the next disaster. Next, minimally use a RAID 1 for your music files. It isn't enough for a paranoid like me, but almost bullet proof. Drives are dirt cheap. 2TB running 90.00. For the above, you'll need maybe 200.00 worth of drives and software. A bargain compared to the alternative... Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtnfoley Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 Macrium Reflect is a fav for across-the-lan backup, including baremetal and browsable restore. And I definately recommend setting up a local mirror: The OP's described PC will certainly have hardware RAID, and a pair of 2TB drives can be had for well under $200 now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkrop Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 400 cds! Isn't that like only 15 DVDs? (I am most certainly not an expert, so it is only a guess and hopefully some help) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Groomlakearea51 Posted February 4, 2011 Author Share Posted February 4, 2011 First, thanks to Jeff, SF, Mallette, and JT for the guidance. Mallette: Once I get "up and running", I intend to have a second HD that ghosts the music files. All of my other files are less than 10GB, and I have set up three separate flash drives and run an "xcopy" .bat file I wrote from DOS that backs up MS office on one, WP and finance on another, and data files on the other. Been doing that for years. I also write those files back to this computer and to my wife's computer (new....) so if all fails I've got copies everywhere... I may add an external HD at some point, but space in the man cave is at a premium at the moment due to the great kitchen renovation project (Except for one amp, one CD player, this computer and a printer on a folding table...) Everything else is stacked and covered with towels to keep drywall dust off. Removing the pass through window from the kitchen to the man cave, installing a new kitchen counter and tile "splash backing". What a pain.... JB: No spikes. The xBox was on it's last legs so it would seem. Apparently the fan stopped working and it simply died. It was an older one and he got a couple years out of it. His computer.... Well, it seems that the problem with that had been occuring for awhile and was related to other problems with Vista. A tech friend took the hard drive and tested it. It simply failed. Won't spin, and it's way out of warranty.... Oh well.... Nothing ventured, nothing gained. SF: The person from whom I obtained the computer is a nice person and is sending me another HD with the songs library. When it arrives, I fully intend to first put it in an external USB drive case to get the music files back. It will be formatted, but no OS and the directory should be in the root drive area without any "names" associated. But.... Murphy's Law Srikes again!!!! The new HD and OS arrived!!! Drive is installed, cables attached and I'm ready to go, except the OS system they sent is Windows 7 64bit "OEM Systems Builder Pack (1)... I did not open the pack because it says you have to have the "OPK" - OEM Preinstallation kit..... Theoretically, the "kit" is downloadable... with a licensing agreement, but cannot download it to this machine as it has to be a Win7 or Win2003 Server OS..... This machine is XP... I called newegg and they immediately sent me a RMA, but.... before I send it back.... can I use it? Anybody know? Or send it back and get the "normal" one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myhamish Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 Once I get "up and running", I intend to have a second HD that ghosts the music files. All of my other files are less than 10GB, and I have set up three separate flash drives and run an "xcopy" .bat file I wrote from DOS that backs up MS office on one, WP and finance on another, and data files on the other. I mentioned Yadis as a great auto sync software, but it doesn't work unless you have a fixed drive letter...which, of course, you don't with thumb drives. However, look up "MS SyncToy" on the web. It's a freebie from MS developers who use it to BU their work. It allows you to set up copy tasks with echo, synchronizd, contribute, etc and save them for manual triggering. Basically, it's leveraging the Xcopy function with a few others in a very small user friendly footprint. Highly recommended and I've been using it for years. The MC must be very crowded indeed if you have no room for an external HDD... As to your Windows issue, I'm going to steer clear of specific recommendations because if I were wrong and you open it, you are screwed as there is no return on OEM open Windows packages. However, I've never seen a W7 OEM pack yet that didn't contain both versions. They just are trying to move everyone to 64 bit. I've done several installs of W7 and each time the install disk determined whether to install 32 or 64 bit versions. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Groomlakearea51 Posted February 6, 2011 Author Share Posted February 6, 2011 Well.... the 64 bit "normal" pack arrived, and there are only two "devices" that I have to contend with... the video card which is a year old and the new sound card for which I have the driver. First my sons computer.... which is going well.... so far.... Win7 installed, found drivers, found wireless network, etc. Next is the security system (F-Secure/ Century-Link) which takes forever because it has to do a scan when installed...... [H] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 I like the idea of a netwrok aware back-up storage drive, about $100 for 1TB, with automatic back-ups, keep us posted and lets do another weekend some time soon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 So, did you get the family pack? Only decent deal from MS in years, IMHO, at a bit less than 50.00 per computer. Only one downside, which is that you can't remote connect with Home "Premium." Most won't care, but I had to purchase a couple of "pro" licenses since I run WHS and need to be able to remotely access my files. However, for the kitchen, kids, etc computers the Family Pack was just the ticket. My main interest is business use where I need to be able to work at home and not have to carry stuff back and forth by "sneakernet", but it's also nice to be able to access ones music files remotely. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Groomlakearea51 Posted February 6, 2011 Author Share Posted February 6, 2011 Mallette: Yup, got the 3 pack.... One 64 bit install for the beast, one for Michael's computer, and one "spare" on the off chance that I will build another computer for the spare bedroom. Don't really need to remote access the music. When we travel, I'll just take some CD's and be happy. Interestingly, unless I'm listening to music over the Klipsch, it does not really sound good anymore. I also tend to read alot more when we travel.... Colin: As soon as I have the "beast" configured and running, I'll probably buy an external HD with the "backup" system; I really want to "research" that before I plunk down my retirement paycheck which is alot less than the normal paycheck..... LOL!!! Get together? I have a call in to Herb and we'll see what shakes out. It will be at least another month because I have torn out the bathrooms and next on the list is painting the MBR. Now that I knocked a couple blade holes in the wall will cutting the braces for the MBR's bathroom med cabinet, SWMBO saw them, smiled and said," Well.... I gues we need to repaint the bedroom too....". and with that, she walked away.... smiling.... [H] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Well, you might want to consider my suggestion of the duplicate boot drive made immediately after you have the system set up the way you want it. Drives are cheap, and you can't beat simply switching drives when you have a problem. You just make an image you store on another computer, restore the duplicate drive with it, test it, then put it away for a rainy day. In my case, I use SSD's for system drives. They at least double, and sometimes triple or better, the speed of any computer running Windows. In spite of all the hype about RAM, it's really the HDD's that slow down Windows. The machine I am using at the moment with from a minute and a half boot time to 21 seconds replacing the system HDD with an SSD. They are certainly more expensive, but cheaper than a new computer. In any event, use of a duplicate drive is the best BU strategy I've ever found. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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