[TrashMan]

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.

[jdjtcagle]

ouch... sorry dude.

[Bob-san]

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.

[JGZinv]

Raid and/or an external backup you run once a week.

Comodo has a free backup utility.

[Ghostavo]

And if RAID1 isn't enough for you, you always have RAID5 and/or RAID3.

[Colonol Dekker]

DVD r/w for all your project source needs. Cheap and compatible, easy to use and survive emp. . . I think.

[iamzack]

If you fill your computer case with starberry jelly, it will never have so much as a momentary lag again.

[redsniper]

That'll teach you to make backups. All hardware eventually fails and you need to plan accordingly. Still sucks to lose stuff though.

[Colonol Dekker]

Starberrrz jelly lol

[S-99]

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.

[Dark RevenantX]

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.

[Nuke]

**** 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.

[S-99]

Unless it automated backup, then i don't understand backup utilities. What's easier than dragging and dropping onto your external hard drive?

[castor]

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

[Liberator]

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.

[TrashMan]

YES!! YEEEEEES! I managed to retrieve all the critical stuff!

[Rapsodius]

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.

[IronBeer]

YES!! YEEEEEES! I managed to retrieve all the critical stuff!

Excellent. Glad to hear it! 

[Nuke]

raid still doesn't protect you from accidental or malicious deletion

[Rodo]

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