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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: TrashMan on July 10, 2009, 12:48:05 pm

Title: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on July 10, 2009, 12:48:05 pm
I got 2 hard disks in my PC.

1 is split into 2 partitions: Nexus (for windows) and Galaxy (for games, 3D programs, photoshop, mod folders and stuff like that).
The 2nd HD stores music, videos, images, downloads and stuff.

Disk 1 got totally corrupted. I taken it to a computer repair shop, but most of the data is gone. Roughly 40% is still on the disk. What does that mean? Everything I did lately and probably a lot of what I did in the last year - gone.
Models, textures, missions and various files and things for Infinity, Freespace 2, SOTS, BOTF2, UFO:AI, Battle for Wesnoth and other projects - gone.

I just finished installing windows on my new disk and haven't gotten around to checking what survived on the old disk yet. I'm not keeping my hopes up tough.

This is the 2nd time this s*** happenes to me. And this time it looks worse than before. :(
Cross your fingers for me guys.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: jdjtcagle on July 10, 2009, 12:51:12 pm
ouch... sorry dude.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Bob-san on July 10, 2009, 12:54:23 pm
I got 2 hard disks in my PC.

1 is split into 2 partitions: Nexus (for windows) and Galaxy (for games, 3D programs, photoshop, mod folders and stuff like that).
The 2nd HD stores music, videos, images, downloads and stuff.

Disk 1 got totally corrupted. I taken it to a computer repair shop, but most of the data is gone. Roughly 40% is still on the disk. What does that mean? Everything I did lately and probably a lot of what I did in the last year - gone.
Models, textures, missions and various files and things for Infinity, Freespace 2, SOTS, BOTF2, UFO:AI, Battle for Wesnoth and other projects - gone.

I just finished installing windows on my new disk and haven't gotten around to checking what survived on the old disk yet. I'm not keeping my hopes up tough.

This is the 2nd time this s*** happenes to me. And this time it looks worse than before. :(
Cross your fingers for me guys.
Here's your survival method: RAID1.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: JGZinv on July 10, 2009, 12:58:10 pm
Raid and/or an external backup you run once a week.

Comodo has a free backup utility.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Ghostavo on July 10, 2009, 01:42:54 pm
And if RAID1 isn't enough for you, you always have RAID5 and/or RAID3.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 10, 2009, 02:01:05 pm
DVD r/w for all your project source needs. Cheap and compatible, easy to use and survive emp. . . I think.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: iamzack on July 10, 2009, 02:09:54 pm
If you fill your computer case with starberry jelly, it will never have so much as a momentary lag again.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: redsniper on July 10, 2009, 04:51:02 pm
That'll teach you to make backups. All hardware eventually fails and you need to plan accordingly. Still sucks to lose stuff though.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 10, 2009, 05:23:54 pm
Starberrrz jelly lol
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: S-99 on July 10, 2009, 07:47:00 pm
Disk 1 got totally corrupted. I taken it to a computer repair shop, but most of the data is gone. Roughly 40% is still on the disk. What does that mean? Everything I did lately and probably a lot of what I did in the last year - gone.
Don't take your **** to them to be fixed anymore.

This is like that time my grandparents took their computer to a repair shop one time. The techs just formatted the hard drive, installed win98se (this was a while a go), and charged for the work as well as the sale of a copy of windows. Lets just say my gparents had no idea why all of their documents were gone when they got their computer back. The only reason i picked up on it was because a big win98 loading screen replaced the former win95 loading screen....and the fact that their documents weren't there.

Holy ****, serious care for people's data needs to be taken. Of course back up your own stuff trashman, but they should've have been competent enough to back it up themselves temporarily with their own resources until they're done ****ing with your disks. Not all situations require this, but there was definitely an incompetent bastard at the helm of the fixing of your computer.

Have you tried yelling at the people who work there really hard? You know what, just disguise yourself in any costume that you like, get an old POS computer something like a pentium 2 or 3 for some comedy, leave a big turd/dead rat/both inside and have them "fix" it. Don't leave your real number or address.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Dark RevenantX on July 10, 2009, 09:10:51 pm
Stuff that you absolutely can't recover/redo in a decent amount of time, back it up on a server, flash drive, CD, whatever.  Sorry dude.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Nuke on July 11, 2009, 02:01:59 am
**** backup utilities, xcopy, all the way. i guess im oldskool. but yea hard drives do fail, especially when computers are moved around alor or exposed to excess vibration. you could try getting a solid state drive, or some form of raid. manually synchronizing hard drives has been my key means of data protection for a long time. the more hard drives you have and the more your data is propagated amongst them, the better. i keep at least two copies of sub-critical data, and usually 3 or 4 of what i consider critical data. i also dont put data on hard drive partitions that contain operating systems. so if the os completely self destructs, which it frequently does, then no data is lost and one just needs to do a format of that partition and reinstall the os to it.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: S-99 on July 11, 2009, 02:30:55 am
Unless it automated backup, then i don't understand backup utilities. What's easier than dragging and dropping onto your external hard drive?
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: castor on July 11, 2009, 05:54:15 am
Have you tried yelling at the people who work there really hard?
I think the data was lost already before they touched it. Unless you mean yelling to them would make him feel better in any case :lol:
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Liberator on July 11, 2009, 06:38:12 am
Unless it automated backup, then i don't understand backup utilities. What's easier than dragging and dropping onto your external hard drive?

A RAID1, 3 or 5 where you don't have to drag and drop, hell RAID3 and RAID5 have built in data recovery assuming that only one drive has failed.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on July 11, 2009, 08:12:12 am
YES!! YEEEEEES! I managed to retrieve all the critical stuff! :D :D :D :D :D :D
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Rapsodius on July 11, 2009, 08:40:34 am
To recover the rest of the data you can always try chkdsk:

start -> run (search on vista) -> cmd -> enter

Then when a console appears type in the following then press enter:
Code: [Select]
chkdsk <drive letter>: /f /rNotice the semicolon after drive letter!!

say you want to scan on next boot when it asks you. repeat for each drive, then reboot your computer and leave it for a while. then you should check found.xxx (xxx is a number) folder on each drive root and open the files there with some text editor. Usually they contain partial or total recovered data from corrupted files.

Perhaps you already tried it, but if you didn't, give it a shoot.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: IronBeer on July 11, 2009, 09:46:17 am
YES!! YEEEEEES! I managed to retrieve all the critical stuff! :D :D :D :D :D :D
Excellent. Glad to hear it!  :)
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Nuke on July 11, 2009, 01:04:36 pm
raid still doesn't protect you from accidental or malicious deletion
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Rodo on July 11, 2009, 01:39:46 pm
but a lot of re-writeable cd's/dvd's or maybe get a bunch of flash drives and start saving your work onto that.

luckily I don't have that much things to save anyway so this method works just fine for me so far.

anyways, good luck... hope you just loose the windows directory XD
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: S-99 on July 11, 2009, 04:07:57 pm
Yell at your hd really hard? Actually, yelling at a hard drive when it's in operation causes load times to go way up because of the extra vibrations.

I finally have a backup method. I ended up with a laptop hard drive out, so i bought an enclosure, and i take up 25gb's of storage out of 320. I really don't have that much stuff. Flash storage is a very good option to go with too that i also use. If you really want to have good backup. Get bootable linux on your flash drive. That way you don't have to depend on the OS on whatever computer to be working good enough to pull off some copying from the hard drive.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Mongoose on July 11, 2009, 10:11:34 pm
This is all reminding me of why I really want an external HD of some sort.  Only plug it in when I'm putting files on it, periodically shove anything new I want to preserve onto it, and never give things a second thought.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on July 12, 2009, 05:25:54 am
Heh ... I'm still stuck to DVDs and thumbdrives.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Nuke on July 12, 2009, 03:13:54 pm
i have about 200 gigs of data to backup. but i have over a terabyte of storage across 4 hard drives. i just tend to copy over to one or more hard drives on occasion. considering the relatively low cost of hard drives its really a good idea.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Titan on July 13, 2009, 06:55:02 am
I don't bother backing up my stuff. Any save games can just be replayed, and any projects worth saving are on deviantart + a freewebs site, which, come to think of it, is what I use for backup.

Trashman, so is all that pretty new stuff for UFO:AI back?
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Mikes on July 15, 2009, 04:00:41 am
This is all reminding me of why I really want an external HD of some sort.  Only plug it in when I'm putting files on it, periodically shove anything new I want to preserve onto it, and never give things a second thought.

Until your external Disc fails. ;)
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Mongoose on July 15, 2009, 04:32:39 am
True, but I'm going under the (possibly completely wrong) assumption that a drive which is only operational once a week/month will generally have a much lower rate of failure than the one which is constantly working its ass off to make up for my lack of RAM. :p
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: S-99 on July 22, 2009, 10:04:28 am
Listen, we all have to deal with data medium failure. It's just a part of life because we don't have the nice 8000 year old ancient storage device technology which managed to hold the information about destroying the lucy without degrading or failing after all that time.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on July 22, 2009, 10:56:26 am
Well, we DO have the 100-years-long storage device technology known as the thumbdrive... :nervous:
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Mongoose on July 22, 2009, 11:54:32 am
Listen, we all have to deal with data medium failure. It's just a part of life because we don't have the nice 8000 year old ancient storage device technology which managed to hold the information about destroying the lucy without degrading or failing after all that time.
Stone tablets are cool like that.  Kind of a problem with finding enough room to store them, though.
Title: Re: Disaster Strikes (again)!!!!
Post by: Bob-san on July 22, 2009, 12:07:30 pm
Well, we DO have the 100-years-long storage device technology known as the thumbdrive... :nervous:
Except in 20 years when people will scratch their heads and ask, "what's USB?"