Yesterday, everything was good.

Today, I turn on my computer. And half of my harddisk is missing. Like 13 GB of data. My 3 GB of MP3s, which are both on my external hard-drive and iPod, thus would have been perfectly recoverable - are still there. My tons of useless programms which I was going to uninstall today, anyway - they're still there and running.

But my entire "My documents" folder and the whole "Steam" folder - all my personal data and map-files... They're GONE.

I ran chckdisk. I used a diagnostic and repair tool. I restarted and rebooted. I recovered several files which are all useless junk or damaged. But it's all gone, really.

And all this happened just a day before I was going to move it all to my brand new harddisk (because I expected this to happen and waited way to long to do something about it).

Sorry for opening a thread for this. I don't think there's anything I could do really.

Just a message to all the kids out there who think something like this only happens to the guy next door: It'll happen to you, too!

Do backups! Do them on a weekly basis. Just save your personal files on an external HD now and then. There are programs for automating this, also, so it's just a click. And it's worth it... sigh

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Why snark works.

I know how this feels. I bought a new computer a year and a half ago and I had to send it back to get fixed three times and it still plays up sometimes. Piece of junk.

It came with a 300gb hard drive, which I can't even use anymore because it started making it restart all the time. I heard somewhere big hard drives are prone to problems. That's why I just stick to the 80gb one now..

Ouch that sucks. I've never had any major problems with my HDDs, 2x 200gb and one 250gb, all three of them SATA. Although, lately, one of them occasionally doesn't appear when booting my computer, but a reboot usually fixes this. I'm afraid it's about to die though.

I heard there's some way you can link three SATA disks together, for example 3x 500gb, so that two of them store files etc as a single HDD, which would make it 1tb. Then the third HDD acts as backup, so if one of the other HDDs give in, using the third you can somehow recover the data. No idea how one 500gb HDD can function as backup for 1tb of data, but technology has surprised me before. Perhaps someone knows more about this, I think it was called RAID something...

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What the Snarkpitters listen to!

Man, that's brutal Reaper. I think I might pull out a sizable chunk of hair if I lost my maps folder... or at least scream until I passed out in a fetal position.

I replaced my old 80GB PATA HDD just two weeks ago, in retrospect there were signs it was going to fail weeks in advance, but I didn't connect the dots at the time. It makes me very very glad that I moved the "My Documents" folder to my 200GB storage drive and had identical copies of my maps folder on both drives. I think the worst thing I lost was my solo level 37 Sorceress on Diablo 2: LoD, that save had some godly equipment for that part of the game, and many hours devoted to it... That plus a few CDs I had ripped that are now either lost or too scratched to get quality tracks from anymore.

Anyway, now I have a 500GB SATA drive in it's place and after finally getting Windows reinstalled it's running like a dream again. I debated whether or not to use XP, Ubuntu, or SuSE, and finally went with the former since I'm not too keen on fiddling with getting photoshop running under emulation on Linux, and I've not had a whole lot of luck with installing the Linux versions of the 3D apps I now need for my classes. Now it seems like my trusty 6800 Ultra that has been my workhorse for so long is on it's last legs, so it may be time to upgrade to PCI Express.

I also have a few CDs with snapshots of my maps folder at different points along the two or three years I've been mapping. I've only had to recover something from them a couple times, but they're well worth the half-hour or so each took to make. Another idea is to zip up some VMFs and email them to yourself, that way you can't physically lose them either.

When stuff like this happens it really underlines just how fragile digital data can be, and how important backups are.

Edit:
I think I'm gonna make a CD of all the drawings and models I have now... just in case.

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o

Yeah ... having a "backup" HDD is really the only way to backup digital data. A HDD that isn't regularly used, that is.

CD-R and DVD-R media have relatively short life spans (5 to 25 years) until they degrade past the point of being readable.

The only time I had my HDD die on me, I was able to get it spinning again to get some data off.

Anyway, the key to backing stuff up is to back it up redundantly. Second HDD, CD's, on a Server, etc.

I think I might make a computer-farm sometime next year. I've been wanting to do that for awhile, so I can make large tasks smaller. It would be an enormous asset when doing tedious things, like rendering an image or building an AI database.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Everynow and than, about every month I just burn a whole lot sf stuff like maps, code, downloads, backup stuff whatever onto a dvd. That way I will have all my stuff incase of a harddrive crash and it keeps my hardrive clean.

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Aaron's Stuff

Yeah ... having a "backup" HDD is really the only way to backup digital data. A HDD that isn't regularly used, that is.

CD-R and DVD-R media have relatively short life spans (5 to 25 years) until they degrade past the point of being readable.

The only time I had my HDD die on me, I was able to get it spinning again to get some data off.

Anyway, the key to backing stuff up is to back it up redundantly. Second HDD, CD's, on a Server, etc.

I think I might make a computer-farm sometime next year. I've been wanting to do that for awhile, so I can make large tasks smaller. It would be an enormous asset when doing tedious things, like rendering an image or building an AI database.

I had my backup die, haha. But I manually pulled the cover off, re-set the heads and was able to pick the few items off it that I had only on there. It's back together and placed in use as untrustworthy, but still working.

I'm surprised any of it worked after you disassembled it outside of a clean room environment.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well, it seems I did a few drag-and-drop "backups" on my external a few weeks ago, so at least I got most of my old stuff back. My external HD, of course, stopped working the very same day (coincidence??!1111) but it turned out to be a broken power cable (phew).

I don't even think it was my HD but a broken RAM. I changed my RAM sometimes ago because I had problems with it but it turned out the new chip is broken as well and probably caused problems while writing data on the HD. sigh Well, seems like I have to live with 512MB of RAM for a few weeks. I still have warranty and I'll send it to Corsair (that's right - a brand name!).

It turned out to not be as bad as I feared. Mostly annoying. But still...

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Why snark works.

I'm surprised any of it worked after you disassembled it outside of a clean room environment.

I did it as a sort of learning experience/test. But hey, it works now and it didn't before. :biggrin:

know how u feel mate, had that twice now, got a new hdd in my closet now, and my old one is ticking again >.> good reminder here to get cracking and plug in the new hdd and save some valuable files.

Good luck with what ever you're going to do next with the pc, try and use some DOS recovery tools to maybe get some bsps back or something dude.

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

Thanks for all the sympathetic words, you sure helped me to calm down a bit, by letting me share my anger with you. I appreciate.

It's a bit brutal but I saw it as a good motivation to start fresh. I considered my current PC to be a piece of junk, not worth any care anymore. All my files from work are on my laptop and triple-backed-up, so this, at least, is a private inconvenience only.

Now I got rid of an old partition I didn't need and have more overall space. I'm running Diskeeper regularly now and the loading times are much improved. Windows starts like 5 times as fast. No crashes, no sound-hitching in HL2 anymore (!). Actually, my PC works much better than I remember.

Even the VMF that was lost (only one) motivates me to start from scratch and fix a few layout issues that I would have probably ignored otherwise.

Think positive Think positive :biggrin:

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Why snark works.

Hehe good luck with that man, i hate starting over, never do :biggrin:

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

Ouch, unlucky.

I got an icybox a couple of weeks ago and moved an spare 80gb IDE HD into it. Pretty good for keeping a spare boot of windows and my documents on there.

You can take a lot of extra steps to prevent HDDs crashing. Personally I find this guide helpful

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

It tells you how to improve load times, what 'weekly' maintenance and which 3rd party programs help prevent HDD crashes. Give it a read over if you've never seen it before.

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Posting And You