Need Help Please with Dead Battery/Restoreing HP 2210

[GraphicArmy]

First thanks for taking the time to read my post :)

Question:

I have a HP 2210 with a 250MB SD card. I don't use my PDA a lot, its just lay on my decktop for weeks before a pick it up and play games or look up a phone number. As you may think by now my battery die and I lost all my data. Therefore I would have to restore all my application and personal information.

I like to know is how do you restore all your applications and data without having to install and enter all the serial number for each appleication when your battery die?

I don't want to reinstalling anything just like to hit a restore button.

Thanks again for your help.

GraphicArmy

[Pony99CA]

I have a HP 2210 with a 250MB SD card. I don't use my PDA a lot, its just lay on my decktop for weeks before a pick it up and play games or look up a phone number. As you may think by now my battery die and I lost all my data. Therefore I would have to restore all my application and personal information.

I like to know is how do you restore all your applications and data without having to install and enter all the serial number for each appleication when your battery die?

I don't want to reinstalling anything just like to hit a restore button.
If you made an ActiveSync backup, you can probably use ActiveSync's restore function. If you used the iPAQ Backup program to back your 2210 up to the SD card, you can restore from there. If you don't have a backup, you'll have to reinstall everything.

Remember the two rules of Pocket PCs:

Rule #1: Keep them charged!
Rule #2: Back them up!

Steve

[GraphicArmy]

Man why don't they just have a build-In HardDrive

Grrrrrr!

[dean_shan]

Man why don't they just have a build-In HardDrive

It'd drive up the cost and the size.

[Ink Noise]

If you just leave it on your desk, why not just leave it on the cradle and it'll always be charged. Just an idea to prevent this from happening or just make some backups w/ PocketBackup :)

[Sven Johannsen]

Man why don't they just have a build-In HardDrive

It'd drive up the cost and the size.

It's more a matter of the instant on experience. My 2215 couuld easily have a hard drive in the space the CF slot is now. Actually I could put one in there. Cost wise, hard drives are significantly cheaper than any solid state memory/per Mb.

The reality is that if the design were to shut everything off, requiring really powering up when you turned it on, it would be like doing a soft reset each time you pushed the power button. So like your desktop, the PPC would have to 'boot'. Off of flash ROM it would be about the same experience you get now with a soft reset, 10-40secs. With a mechanical hard drive it would be longer. That's not the experience you are expecting in a PDA.

[GraphicArmy]

I don't mind if I have to wait a 1 or 2 minutes for my PDA to boot-up. What I do mind is have to re-enter all my data and re-install all my application.

Now, if I don't want to run into this problem again. What do I need to do to back up my information if my battery die again? Remember I don't want to re-installl anything or re-enter serial number.

Oh, I use a Mac OS X with PocketMac 3


thanks

[ctmagnus]

The best bet is to use the built-in Ipaq Backup and backup to a SD or CF card. This program is a life-saver!

[Pony99CA]

Man why don't they just have a build-In HardDrive
It'd drive up the cost and the size.
It's more a matter of the instant on experience. My 2215 couuld easily have a hard drive in the space the CF slot is now. Actually I could put one in there. Cost wise, hard drives are significantly cheaper than any solid state memory/per Mb.
Actually, I think it's a combination of all of the above, plus one additional factor -- battery life.

While the cost per megabyte of a disk is cheaper than RAM, you can't get small hard drives that cheaply.

As for space, yes, you could put one where a Compact Flash slot is (assuming your Pocket PC has a Compact Flash slot), but then you wouldn't have the slot for expandability.

As for instant-on, you could still have an instant-on experience if you kept the data in RAM and automatically backed it up to disk when anything changed.

Or you could store your program in user-accessible Flash ROM (like the iPAQ File Store). In fact, Microsoft seems to be moving in that direction, using RAM only for program execution and Flash ROM for storage memory. I think the iPAQ 4700 has 128 ROM and 64 MB RAM precisely for that reason.

Finally, there's battery life. While your data would certainly be preserved on disk if the batteries died, I've heard that hard drives significantly shorten battery life. Imagine using WiFi and a hard disk together.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

I don't mind if I have to wait a 1 or 2 minutes for my PDA to boot-up. What I do mind is have to re-enter all my data and re-install all my application.
A lot of us would mind waiting for a boot up. Part of using a PDA is the spontaneity of it, and a long boot time would ruin that.

As I said, if you mind losing your data, keep your Pocket PC charged.

Now, if I don't want to run into this problem again. What do I need to do to back up my information if my battery die again? Remember I don't want to re-installl anything or re-enter serial number.

Oh, I use a Mac OS X with PocketMac 3
That last is the tricky part, isn't it? You can't do an ActiveSync backup because ActiveSync doesn't work on the Mac. As I mentioned, though, you could use iPAQ Backup to back your system up to a storage card.

Alternatively, the same people that make PocketMac make PocketMac Backup (http://www.pocketmac.net/products/pmbackup/pmbackup.html), so you could try that.

Steve