Author Topic: Old hard drives  (Read 4944 times)

Offline GrahamH

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Re: Old hard drives
« Reply #27 on: Thursday 10 May 18 14:15 BST (UK) »
"Used Office 2007 from eBay...".    I'm sure you'll be fine with this. But, as a warning to others, I got burned a few months ago.  The Office download went fine (it was MS Office 2010 actually), and the eBay seller sent me a licence key - and it all worked fine.

EXCEPT, after one month, the licence key expired.......   It was some kind of trial, or demo version. I never heard from the seller again, and never got my money back (only £10 - but a good lesson).

BTW - I think Office 2007 is out of support- which is why I went for 2010...
Off the topic of backups but why use MS Office when Open Office is freely available and enjoys continuing support? I've used Open Office for years and had no problems reading files created (by others) using MS Office.

Offline GrahamH

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Re: Old hard drives
« Reply #28 on: Thursday 10 May 18 14:19 BST (UK) »
My old computer was set to backup weekly........................
If files are being updated daily then weekly backup could result in a significant loss if a problem occurred well into the week.
I back up to external drives manually each week but also have FreeFileSync/RealTimeSync running constantly to back up changes to important files to two NAS drives more or less as they occur.

Offline bikermickau

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Re: Old hard drives
« Reply #29 on: Friday 11 May 18 11:45 BST (UK) »
I think you can still get a copy of PAF online, failing that I can email a copy as I have it backed up several places.

Mick

Haha, thank you Martin :) Apparently a capacitor was blowing on the motherboard. I have purchased a new system, getting to grips with Windows 10 and resolving software compatibility issues as I go along. I am a bit of a dinosaur/cheapskate and had stuck with 2007 or 2010 Word & Excel, most of my business data is rescued but my FH word documents have info in text boxes and pedigrees created with hierarchy inserts which now don't show. I also lost my ancient PAF programme, I have downloaded the basic Ancestral Quest as an alternative to that. Many of the programs we had were installed free when our children were students, no whistles and bells but more than adequate for my purposes. All data was backed up to external drives so most is retrievable I hope. My old computer is here until I know for sure it is not going to be required!
Christine
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Offline 3sillydogs

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Re: Old hard drives
« Reply #30 on: Friday 11 May 18 12:00 BST (UK) »

If it was just your motherboard that was failing then the info on the hard drive is still retrievable, my techie son does it often for customers whose motherboards have failed, transfering the data from the old machine's hard drive to the new one.

Paylet, Pallatt, Morris (Russia, UK) Burke, Hillery, Page, Rumsey, Stevens, Tyne/Thynne(UK)  Landman, van Rooyen, Tyne, Stevens, Rumsey, Visagie, Nell (South Africa)


Offline Greensleeves

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Re: Old hard drives
« Reply #31 on: Tuesday 15 May 18 09:36 BST (UK) »
When one of my laptops died some years ago, a friend of mine took out the hard-drive, put it into an external hard-drive box,  so I could access all the data on it on my new laptop.  In future, if possible, I will always do this as it's amazing the stuff that accumulates on h/ds that you might not realise you want until years later.  I do back up but like most people, not often or comprehensively enough!

Regards
GS
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Offline 3sillydogs

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Re: Old hard drives
« Reply #32 on: Tuesday 15 May 18 09:42 BST (UK) »
 

My techie son has a box of old hard drives, as clients upgrade to bigger capacity ones he put those into the anti-static envelopes and stores them after transferring the data. I have two that he put into my pc when my old harddrive started to fail.

One we use for a media storage device for our movies etc and the other as normal for me to use.
Paylet, Pallatt, Morris (Russia, UK) Burke, Hillery, Page, Rumsey, Stevens, Tyne/Thynne(UK)  Landman, van Rooyen, Tyne, Stevens, Rumsey, Visagie, Nell (South Africa)