First the moral of the story: Be diligent about backing up your data. There’s other lessons here too, because I/we all do dumb stuff sometimes. Level of dumb varies I find.

The focus of my post is my MSI laptop.  I was smart enough to purchase the extended warranty; the unit is used daily and I have already worn out two laptops that warranties completely replaced. Good going so far Jim! Just 2 months prior to the end of my warranty (the present time  :sly:) the graphics fan starts to make a horrendous sound! Game play lag mimics the siren-like sound of the afflicted fan. Damn thing sounds like a vacuum cleaner when I play normally anyways because it has a second fan built in to stave off the high levels of heat. But now I am thinking I should turn it off to keep it from dying until I can do backup. First good idea in, well …some good period of time where I neglected to back up data. 

So with the idea that solid performance equals longevity, let’s get this sigh of disappointment out of the way. Ugh! Ok , here comes the RMA email and instructions, which I obediently print out and read with earnest. Firstly (and bigly), only MSI is authorized to repair MSI computers.  MSI is in CA and customer must pay for shipping. This bad boy weighs over 6 pounds and I have to insure it for $1200 because they assume no responsibility for transit damage.  So okay 40 bucks to ship it in the specific packaging setup (per the freaking diagram they sent me?!). Just enough that I have to wait two more weeks to send it out. Turnaround upon receipt is 30 days; kudos to them for being straight up about it. And their tech staff spoke perfect English and couldn’t have been more helpful.

The previous paragraph is probably mostly inconsecquential; just showing my mindset now.

The next problem: THE CURSED BACKUP

Due to moving and any other excuses I can’t think of, I have not backed up 3 computers. Need to strip passwords off the laptop. My lovely, shiny 1TB Clickfree Automatic Backup now does not load. I can pull up the source file and run two application files in the folder. Run backup and Fix Clickfree backup. Both will open up and just hang (running them separately of course). Same results on two laptops and a desktop running Vista. A Google search leads me to many people asking the same question but getting no reply. Seems Clickfree has merged with a company called Kaboodles; they have a forum page wher questions like mine have landed.

I can open the drive and access the data files, but do not have a utility to put stuff where I want or back up before I need to send my laptop out. Any ideas? I know my choices are limited in relation to my time constraints.