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EdFiles, Letters from the Ed, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows 10, Windows OS Musings

Audible Clues When 8TB Backup Drive Goes South

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Audible Clues When 8TB Backup Drive Goes South when I don't hear the backup drive run.
Except for November 10, all backups start just after 9 AM.
[Click image for full-sized view.]
This morning, I noticed something different just after 9 AM. That’s when the usual scheduled backup job on my production desktop fires off, and about 2 minutes later the drive starts clunking away. Check the timestamps for the Macrium Image (mrimg) files in the lead-in graphic in File Explorer. Except for today — November 10 — all the other jobs show a stamp in a range from 9:02 – 9:21 AM. What was different this morning? No drive clunking provided audible clues when 8TB backup drive goes south. And sure enough, when I checked Explorer at first, the drive was MIA. In fact, Disk Management showed a drive with neither GPT nor MBR disk layout.

After Audible Clues When 8TB Backup Drive Goes South, Time for Repairs

Luckily, I’ve got a commercial license for MiniTool Partition Wizard (MTPW). It includes both Data Recovery and Partition Recovery capabilities. So first, I let MTPW define the drive layout as GPT (as it must for a drive bigger than 2TB). Next, I ran the program’s Partition Recovery capability. About 30 seconds later, the drive’s contents were visible in the MTPW Partition Explorer. But I still had to assign a drive letter before repairs were complete. Immediately thereafter, I ran a manual image backup using Macrium Reflect to make up for the backup I’d missed along with the 8TB drive. As you can see from the most recent timestamp for the top file in the lead-in graphic, today’s belated backup is stored with all its predecessors.

A Bit of Insurance Against Recurrence

I also finally switched in my brand-new Wavlink USB 3.0 docking station (Model: ML-ST3334U) for the old Intatek unit I’d been using. Turns out the Inatek couldn’t handle even a 4 TB and and 8TB drive. Given that I’ve had problems with this dock before, I’d been waiting for the “next fault” to force the swap. I think that’s what happened this morning. I also think the Inatek can’t really handle ONE 8TB drive without power issues. The Wavlink, OTOH, is rated to handle 2 8TB drives. That’s why I bought it, and why I hope this means I won’t see my big backup drive go bye-bye again soon.

But weirder things have happened on my production PC, and may happen again. As we all know, that’s just the way things sometimes go (or go south) in Windows World. Count on me to keep you posted as and when such weirdness happens.

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EdFiles, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows OS Musings

Impatience Prompts Production PC Forced 20H2 Upgrade

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Because Impatience Prompts Production PC Forced 20H2 Upgrade, that PC is now up-to-date.
Because Impatience Prompts Production PC Forced 20H2 Upgrade, that PC is now up-to-date.

OK then, I admit it: I just flat-out got tired of waiting. It’s been 20 days since 20H2 went GA, and my production PC still hadn’t gotten “the offer” from Windows Update. Having long ago downloaded the ISO for 20H2 using the Media Creation Tool, I used it. The process took almost 40 minutes from start to finish. That’s much longer than it took my PCs that did get “the offer” to finish the task. At least 4 times as long. Right now, I’m pausing for this blog post. Next, I’ll do my usual post-upgrade cleanup, now that impatience prompts production PC forced 20H2 upgrade is done.

After Because Impatience Prompts Production PC Forced 20H2 Upgrade, Then What?

My usual post-upgrade cleanup routine of course. This consists of:

  1. Running TheBookIsClosed/Albacore’s Managed Disk Clean (mdiskclean.exe) utility to get rid of Windows.old and other stuff
  2. Using Josh Cell’s nifty (but increasingly dated) UnCleaner tool to get rid of about 310 MB of junk files.
  3. Running Macrium Reflect to capture an image of this pristine OS update
  4. Getting on with business as usual

Just for grins, I ran DriverStore Explorer to see if it would find any outmoded drivers. As you’d expect, everything was ship-shape. Ditto for DISM ... /analyzecomponentstore, which tells me no updates since the GA date of October 22 have left old, orphaned packages behind. And because this kind of upgrade really is like starting over, Reliability Monitor gets a clean slate (in fact, it’s “dead empty” right now):

Right after a feature upgrade (which is what happens when you install from setup.exe), Reliability Monitor is devoid of data, and runs only forward from there.
[Click image for full-sized view.]

Status: 2004 to 20H2 Upgrades at Chez Tittel

This is the last and final machine to transition from 2004 to 20H2. My upgrades are done. One profound impetus for this change came from the three new Dell PCs — two review units, and one new purchase — that showed up over the past two weeks. All of those new 11th-gen PCs got “the offer” as soon as they booted up for the first time. I know that my production PC is solid and reliable and I’ve long since worked out any driver kinks on this machine. Seeing the Dell units transition painlessly (and incredibly quickly), I bet that the production PC would also get over the hump. But while it worked, I can’t say it was fast. But all too often that’s how things go here in Windows World. Stay tuned!

 

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