Big Scare reminds me that best strategy is useless if you let things slide. Almost lost complete system and emails , etc.

When I set up my latest computer , an I3 a few years ago I bought all Seagate drives so I could clone the main drive and unplug it , thus always having an instant bomb proof crash prevention/data loss strategy. Computer was fine and I used the usual restore/Recovery stuff and auto backups but still did the cloning ...just in case.

Well this weekend I was doodling with things and suddenly the computer would not boot do to a loss of the formatting of the boot drive partitions. GULP.

I figure no problem since I have the clone. Well to my "not so surprise as I do tend to let things slip"...The clone is over a year old. First panic is thought of losing all the emails. Then all the other personal files and the added programs , etc.

Tried usingRestore , tried using backups then Windows 7 Install disc to repair but no go.

Luckily , using the outdated but perfectly functioning bootable clone I was able to somehow restore the original main drive (not the clone) back to a state (using a USB3 connection) where I could repair the NTLDFS using the Windows install disc. It reformatted the NTFS without losing all the other files! Didn't think that was possible but hey , it worked. Minor miracle to be honest. Net cost= $0 plus a whole days aggravation

Of course first thing I did when I got it all going again was export copies of all my emails and then update my clone.

Moral of the story...... the best laid plans are useless if you don't keep things up to date.