SSD crash and recovery

[Arismac]

As regular readers will know, Maurice King has repeatedly warned about hard drive crashes. It was my turn with a six month old SSD. Fortunately I had taken the following steps and recovery was fairly straight forward.

I changed my boot drive on in the BIOS and loaded a second copy of Win7 on the back up drive (not an SSD).

I downloaded and installed Norton Ghost 15 on the back up drive.

I ghosted the primary SSD on to the backup drive.

Re-entered BIOS and reverted to original boot configuration

Primary SSD crashed. Changed boot disk to backup drive in  the BIOS. Recovered SSD. (This could have been replaced SSD). Restored from ghost to primary drive.

Returned boot to normal in the BIOS.

Flying again. Total downtime less than two hours. No programs or data lost.

[tennyson]

I cannot understand how you crash a SSD?

It has no moving parts, unlike it's predecessor, the hard drive, with it's moving platters.

OCZ drives are made from quality components and I've never heard of any problems with SSD's in general except for the "Trim" issue.

The reason I say this, is that many simmers are looking to this technology (which in my opinion, even though expensive, is the ultimate answer, especially for FSX) and are put off by problem reports such as this.

If you mean you corrupted your operating system, that is a different matter. That can happen due to a multitude of circumstances and has no bearing on the operability of an SSD.

If that is the case, however, re-installing the corrupt operating system via ghost would only perpetuate the problem.

I'd like to know more?

Frank

[Arismac]

G'day Frank. Do you write with the fervor of a vested interest I wonder.

I have repeatedly said that the best new technology I have used in FS is the SSD. I Use "Tim's Flying Profile" from FSX Go and rarely drop below 18fps.

You also want to argue about my use of the word "crash". It stopped, did not work, would not boot, quit operating, was not responding to bad language even.

My OpSys as you know, if you have looked at my signature file is Win 7 64 bit. I will leave you to define the problem as you see it. I simply detailed the insurance policy against such happenings.

Just for the record, I first started working with solid state ferric core technology while serving in the RAAF in 1965 so I do have a few clues on how it works.

[Gurdy]

Probably a random bit flip due to increased cosmic radiation from Solar flare activity!

[Arismac]

Nah, didn't you watch Foreign Correspondent last night? It was that flamin' witch in Iceland.

[Kevin V]

Mac,

Next time your machine crashes just put it in a box and mail it to me in AZ. 

[Arismac]

Air freight or surface mail Kevin?

[Kevin V]

No sense in delaying things.  Air freight (next day thank you).  Mac, that machine is a beast!!!!  I have a Phenom 9950 Quad with 8Gb RAM and ATI 3870.  I thought that was pretty good with 1.5Tb combined Seagates...  Air freight for sure.

[tennyson]

I queeried your "Crash" report as a service to the general community here that rely on good, clear information on what is right and wrong for the better of our much loved FSX/FTX simulation.

I myself have put a lot of stock and indeed bought a lot of FSX software and hardware products, purely on the good words from this forum.

If you had been around these forums for a while, you'd know that I am retired due to ill health and have no vested interest in any company or any products and spend a great deal of my time helping out others at my expense.

I won't even take any offense at your inference of such, just hope that you bear this in mind when next you consider offering advice about a malfunctioning product.

Frank

[Guest AS355F]

As regular readers will know, Maurice King has repeatedly warned about hard drive crashes. It was my turn with a six month old SSD. Fortunately I had taken the following steps and recovery was fairly straight forward.

I changed my boot drive on in the BIOS and loaded a second copy of Win7 on the back up drive (not an SSD).

I downloaded and installed Norton Ghost 15 on the back up drive.

I ghosted the primary SSD on to the backup drive.

Re-entered BIOS and reverted to original boot configuration

Primary SSD crashed. Changed boot disk to backup drive in  the BIOS. Recovered SSD. (This could have been replaced SSD). Restored from ghost to primary drive.

Returned boot to normal in the BIOS.

Flying again. Total downtime less than two hours. No programs or data lost.

Ghost sounds like it has the goods.

I tried Acronis but it let me down when I needed it.

I had to do a reinstall a few days ago and used the backup util in Windows7 Ultimate X64 and that did a decent system image but I've been thinking about Ghost for a while and this post reinforces that.

Thanks.

[Arismac]

G'day Pete,

I too tried Acronis before discovering that it may present problems with Win 7. Ghost certainly costs more but is pretty straight forward to use and that is something I never thought I would say about a Norton/Symantec product.

The point is that it costs very little more to support a primary drive whether it be SSD or Mechanical with a secondary drive and ghost the complete c: (primary) drive to the second drive. It can cost a damn sight more if you don't.