This morning I tried to load my trusty Virtual PC on my G5 to do a little Quickbooks work. The usual tedium of paying bills creating invoices, etc.
I started Virtual PC, selected my Windows XP instance and clicked start.
Oh, oh!
No problem, I say. I run nightly backups so I’ll just restore my backed up image and be on my merry way.
One major problem: my backup system mirrors my drives. The last time I ran VirtualPC: last week.
1 + 1 = my backup is corrupt too.
Thankfully, I also backup my Quickbooks database outside the Windows image. Hopefully, when i finally get a new instance up and running I can restore the last backup and be off and running. This should only eat up about four or five hours of my day.
Tasks for Today:
- Create a new Windows XP instance
- Restore Quickbooks backup
- Pay Bills, Send Invoices
- Find new backup system
Comments
2 responses to “Virtual PC Corruption and an Argument Against Mirrored Backups”
Ah man, I feel for you, I’ve had countless corruptions with VirtualPC. I got to the point where I’d have one or more “good” copies of the file hanging around just in case.
But now I’m using Parallels I’ve had no problems what so ever, you’ll have to save your pennies for an Intel Mac and then switch to Parallels (or BootCamp).
It was bad. I spend all day reinstalling, updating Windows through all the updates including SP1 and 2. Then countless Quickbooks updates. I think I finished around 4pm in the afternoon after starting about 9am.
I’m now keeping several copies of the working image going forward.
Funny thing is I do have an intel Mac, a mini. But it’s not my main machine it’s hooked up to my home theater getting ready to replace my old Tivo.
I was so fed up though, I almost ran to the local Apple store to pick up a new Mac Book Pro… but cooler heads prevailed and I reinstalled Virtual PC … must resist and wait for WWDC to see what new Macs will be introduced before making the plunge.