Recovering from Hard DIsk Failure

[Richard Wilson]

First a thanks to all who recommended I use Bacula to backup my home
systems.  My wife's laptop hard drive failed after less than 2 years and
had to be replaced.  Even though I haven't convinced her (yet) to use
Linux, I came out like a Knight in Shining Armor because I had complete
backups of her system -- with a little encouragement, the Bacula Windows
client (with a Linux Server) worked like a champ.

It doesn't have a native bare-metal restore for Windows, but will
happily restore EVERYTHING to C:\tmp\bacula-restore\whatever from the
last full backup.

I had to reinstall XP from scratch using an SP1 XP Home Edition OEM CD
followed by the XP Pro upgrade, followed by 70 odd updates including SP2
from Microsoft, then more updates... I think the total number of updates
was close to 86... I lost track.  I did have to go through some fun with
Bacula to get it to restore -- I actually had to read the manual, but it
worked great.  BTW -- Bacula won't let you restore Windows files to
Linux...  I tried that before I let it run the "restore everything" job
(I had a much shorter list of files to restore, but my Bacula catalog
for the last full backup of my wife's system had been purged, so I ended
with the restore everything).

My wife is now happily working with the latest version of Open Office
and all her recovered documents, and asked me if I could restore the
contents of her Outlook Express folders.  I have so far been unable to
figure out WHERE OE keeps its folders.  I did recover her address book
-- it imported nicely, but finally sent a note to MicroSlough explaining
what happened and asking them, "what are the names of the files in which
OE keeps its folders?"  They've sent me back a nice note, asking me to
supply them with my Windows Processor ID and other information and
hinting that I "might" need to go to their second level support (and pay
for that, of course).  The processor ID will not only tell them that my
copy of XP is legit (it is) but if I should be getting my support from
HP (the OEM) or them.  I don't yet know how this will fall out -- HP
supplied the XP Home Edition, and I bought the upgrade to XP Pro...

If any of you know where OE keeps it's folders, I'd be grateful if you'd 
pass it along...

I thought I'd pass along the fun I've had dealing with the "dark side"... 
it's SO much nicer to deal exclusively with Open Source...  I haven't as 
yet been able to convince my wife (or kids) to convert entirely to Linux --
there are too many games they have that only work under Windows.  I have 
managed to get a few of them working under Wine, but most don't.  If anyone 
would like a Wine challenge, try to get "Barbie's Undersea Adventure" working.
It won't work under XP -- only Win 98 or 95 (it uses Direct X version 3).
Try explaining obsolescence to a 6 year old ("but Daddy, it's one of my 
favorite games!")

Sorry for the rant, if there's anyone out there skilled in getting Windows 
Kids games working in Wine, let me know.  I have a few "Freddi Fish" and 
"Pajama Sam" games working, but not much else.  There are plenty of games 
that won't work with XP's backwards "compatibility" mode...

Thanks again to those on this list who steered me to Bacula -- it came through
when I needed it.

Rich Wilson