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In my case, I looked at the my documents folder and checked for recent versions. There were 6 recent versions, including today (16 JUN 2011), OF THE ENTIRE FOLDER…

The Seagate FreeAgent backup drives handle this issue in a very civilized way — they push down the older versions of changed files into as many as 10 levels of “history” folders. The files are stored uncompressed and so, immediately accessible and the backup runs as fast as any disk transfer and is light on resources except on the first run-through. Well worth the price, which is under $150 for a 2 TB drive.

I think that the “previous versions” feature may be related to a problem I have been experiencing. Versions of Windows up through Vista would recognize any device at any drive letter. I could remove one drive and later use another at the same drive letter. But if I remove an external drive, and then plug in another, Windows 7 informs me that there is a problem, offers to scan the drive — then tells me that I must format the drive before I can use it. I declined this very disheartening, misleading and potentially destructive request, thank you, and found that the drive worked perfectly on another computer or on the same dual-boot computer in Ubuntu Linux.

The computer also now no longer recognizes memory chips plugged into its card slots.

I may have helped bring on the problem by reassigning drive letters for the card slots.

This is only happening on one of the two computers on which I have Windows 7 installed. This one has Windows 7 Home Premium and has a multiplicity of USB ports. The other is a netbook with Windows 7 Starter and 3 USB ports.

Any comments or ways to resolve this issue would be most appreciated.

Have you tried uninstalling all USB devices and doing a cold (completely shut down, wait a couple of minutes, then restart) reboot? Your card reader is also a USB device with an internal connector.

I have done a cold reboot, and powered down all the external devices. By “uninstall” do you mean in addition, or instead, to uninstall them in Device Manager? Will Windows then automatically find them and reinstall them? The computer did come with a driver disk.

jsallen,

Hello…Sounds like the “Problem PC” is not recognizing your “external” …Plug it in (External Hard Drive) and go to Administrative tools>Computer Management>Disk Management…and see if your external is “showing up”

Been there. It doesn’t show up there — even as an unformatted drive — and neither do the card slots. There is one USB connection that is identified as “unknown device” but I can’t pair it with any specific device. The enclosure of one of the drives that isn’t recognized also can connect with ESATA and I will try that.

“There are no suitable alternatives — others write to zip files and take forever.”

Yes, backing up a few hundred gigabytes to zip files can take days, while hogging your computer. But there are some very suitable alternatives.

Seagate FreeAgent drives, available in sizes up to 2 TB and probably soon even larger, back up your data files without doing compression, essential for very large files such as video capture files. Files transfer at the full speed of the hard drives, and you can use the computer (except for very data-intensive tasks) while running the backup. There’s no sense in compressing video files in any case — they’re already compressed. You can select what to back up, down to the level of individual folders. Another advantage: the backup files are stored individually in their original form and can be read directly from the backup drive without using the backup software and without delay.

FreeAgent Drives will push older versions of files down into as many as 10 “history” folders, deleting the oldest files if the drive fills. My solution for archiving is to buy another drive to make a copy of the contents of my backup drive every now and then, which I store at a separate location. As noted in the article, disk drives are inexpensive.

The FreeAgent drives do not back up files with the system and hidden attributes, but backing up the system can be accomplished with a separate, ghost backup.

There may be other brands of drives now that back up uncompressed in Windows, but avoid the Western Digital Smartware drives. These do compress, and they give you some very limited and dumb options as to what you can back up.

Another good option is to install Linux as a dual-boot with Windows, and to run a backup in Linux using BackInTime. This does not compress, and it can back up everything in your Windows installation. If Windows goes belly-up, except in the case of a massive disk failure, you can still use your computer, read and work on the files in your Windows partition(s) in Linux! That option saved my hide once.

My experience is with OpenOffice, not yet LibreOffice, so YMMV but I find that it is compatible with Microsoft Office if you don’t ask too much of it. Examples:

* OpenOffice Writer is fine for simple documents, but the outlining function is way inferior — in a separate, small window rather than expanding and cotracting sections. Also, many of the familiar search wildcards are different — a real headache if you’re used to Word.

* OpenOffice Calc works fine with workbooks up to a certain level of complication, but beyond that it doesn’t display table cells correctly and I have had it corrupt a very complicated, multi-sheet workbook. I also couldn’t find a “merge cells” command. Beware.

LibreOffice may have rectified some of these problems, I don’t know. I will be installing and using it, and will find out, as I have one machine running Linux.

Bingo — thanks. Both JAlbum and WS/FTP Pro were in the list of programs in the Exceptions tab, but neither was checked.

So far, I have had no other problems with these programs. There is a 64-bit version of JAlbum but it requires 64-bit Java. I am using 32-bit Mozilla Firefox, which requires 32-bit plug-ins (many not available as 64-bit). I’m not sure that I can have both 32-bit and 64-bit Java resident under Vista, and I don’t want to try this until I have confirmation that it will work.

OK, got it, I had password-protected the workbook and when I did that, it opened non-maximized. When I unprotected it, it maximized itself. Strange way to handle that function…

OK, I found it — I had to select landscape inside Word.

Switch to Classic View in control panel.
Click “View 32-bit Control Panels”.
The QuickTime control panel should be in there.

Yes, it’s there. And also, someone else suggested clicking on the file at C:Program FilesQuickTimeQTSystemQuickTime cpl . That opened the QuickTime Control Panel and I was able to enter the key. The editing commands now display in QuickTime. I also got a message from Windows about running a “legacy elevated control panel. ” I’m not sure what that amounts to, but in any case I now know how to access the QuickTime Control Panel 2 different ways.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I just went to the ZipBackup page and the first thing I noticed was that the files created by this program can be opened/restored by other zip programs and also by XP & Vista’s native zip features.

I have WinZip 8.0 installed on my computer, and the Windows XP native Zip features don’t come up when I select “Open With.” Ony Winzip, or “use another program.”

WinZip opens the key Zip file, and then informs me “The diskette in drive J: is labeled HD-CEIU2, WinZip expected PKBACK#003. Do you want to use it anyway?”

Drive J: is not a diskette drive, it is an external hard drive onto which I copied all of the series of spanned CD-ROMs in a subfolder.
Furthermore, the spanned file I am trying to recover is not named “PKBACK#003”, it has the name of the backup I did with the .z03 extension. This is ZipBackup’s naming convention.

So, WinZip is going up to the root of that drive, looking at the volume label, not finding the one it wants, and requiring me to change the volume label and the filename, maybe also to move the file.

ZipBackup finds the files but doesn’t read them correctly, as I described earlier. I haven’t tried 7-Zip. It’s on the computer with Vista. I’ll see what it does.

Under Vista on another computer, I am being told that the files are corrupt, without even inserting the CD-ROMs (which are not corrupt, they all read fine.)

I wonder whether a newer version of WinZip or other archiving program would allow me more flexibility, that is, would allow me to specify the locations and names of the spanned files. I haven’t tried

The real reason I post is to comment on your statement about the “advertising” of ZipBackup. Just because a newsletter like Windows Secrets advertises a product, it doesn’t mean that they “own” the product or can provide technical support for same.

Hang in there and I’m sure if there’s a Lounger with experience in your problem, you’ll get the volunteer help you need.

Sure, I know that Woody’s can’t provide technical support on this product. I’ve also sent a message to the software provider. But it is important for Woody’s and its subscribers to know the ins and outs of an advertised product. I do expect someone here to be able to help — Woody’s Lounge has been helpful many times in the past.

One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier message: ZipBackup’s restore report indicated other files as having been restored than the ones I had selected. The files it claimed to have restored were in the root folder. But actually, ZipBackup did write files with the same names and folder locations as the ones I had selected — except that the files it wote were corrupted.

And an update: I reinstalled ZipBackup 3.0 to see whether it would work with my older archive. It had the same problems.

I also read that it is possible to restore files created with ZipBackup using other software, for example WinZip — but it may be necessary to change filenames. Can anyone fill me in on this?

I have 49 important JPEGs that got corrupted in a file copy operation at one time or another, and I want them back. I’m conscientious, I run backups just in case of problems like this, but a backup that can’t be restored is a serious exercise in futility!

I have in the past been able to restore from Zipbackup archives (on the hard drive)…what is the difference here?

Follow-up: the problem apparently wasn’t what any of us thought, because Word did open a different .WPD file sent to me by the same person, with no problem and no special effort needed.

The .WPD file that would not open was generated by the legal reference service Westlaw. The file only contained a citation from Florida state law — which is in the public domain, duh, otherwise how would it be enforceable But Westlaw’s file apparently was locked so as to be accessible only to paid subscribers. The file opened a dialog box saying that an Access Realtek converter (something I’d never encountered before) was converting it. That converter hung. Bad functionality — should have instead posted a message indicating that the file was locked.

I read the same section of Florida law on the Florida state Web site.

But also note the other lesson of this exercise: the Microsoft Web Search for software solutions can turn up pages that contain links to Trojans which claim to be useful and functional software. Microsoft evidently doesn’t do a virus check.

Yes, that works (actually I am using a laptop computer with a Synaptics touchpad, so I run my finger up and down the strip at the right). But I should be able to make the setting stick through hibernation somehow, shouldn’t I?

FYI I found one answer to my problem that worked for me — and was very convenient. I also have been told of a couple of other possibilities.

What worked for me was simply to back up the folder to a Maxtor One-Touch drive. The One-Touch software removes the lock on the files. Makes sense, doesn’t it — otherwise, they would not be usable when the original hard drive fails, and Maxtor would be inundated in support calls.

Another suggestion was that the sharing and security tab for the folder lets you change the ownership of the files. But I also found that option unavailable in Windows Home Edition or Media edition. Later, I was told that it might be available in Safe Mode. But then I don’t know whether USB drives are accessible in Safe Mode.

A third suggestion was to try Linux, or an earlier version of Windows. the only earlier version of Windows I have on another computer here is Windows 98 SE, which doesn’t support NTFS.

I didn’t try either of these options, having solved my problem.

BTW be careful of the ins and outs of the Maxtor drive (avoid switching drives with the same drive letters, One-touch can’t tell them apart; and it only keeps five copies so you need a separate long-term archive). Given these limitations, it is very convenient.