Double HD crash! Could be the end of SF2 for me :-(

[+dtmdragon 2,703]

I keep all my SF2 mods folders on an external HD that is permanently connected to my PC. Yesterday when I was backing up that external HD to my back up external HD they both crashed and have been corrupted! 5 years of collecting mods and making my own gone! And worse so have 8 years of family photos! They are both with a work mate who has his own IT business on the side. Unfortunately the news so far is the first 4 pieces of recovery software he has tried have failed :-(

Edited January 25, 2015 by dtmdragon

[Caesar 305]

That ROYALLY sucks!  Sorry to hear that.  One of the things I've come to do is back up my most important stuff onto Blu-Ray discs every few months.  While this prevents any further modification of the files, in the event of a catastrophic loss of one or both of my HDD's, I have most of the stuff I had in some form prior to the loss.  Just a thought.  Hopefully your work mate will be able to recover some of your data!  I know I had to fish for files using Xubuntu once when one of my HDD's became corrupted (probably about 5 or 6 years ago now); apparently, though Windows was screwed, Xubuntu was able to read some of my files still, and I ran the OS from one optical drive and burned as much data as I could on the other.

[+Nyghtfall 2,154]

Hey there,

 

sorry to hear that! I hope your workmate can restore at least something :(

 

I can sent you all the mods you sent me earlier if needed. Thats probably just a tiny bit of your whole work, but would be sad so see you quit modding.

 

Hope all goes well!

[+Menrva 4,200]

I'm sorry to hear that. I keep my all-inclusive mod folder on an external hard drive too. I hope it never crashes.  Anyway IIRC Wrench once advised someone to buy some kind of device to restore files which works according to him, atm I have failed to find that thread, you may want to ask him.

Edited January 25, 2015 by blaze95

[+dtmdragon 2,703]

Cheers guys, fingers crossed my mate can restore at least one of them. I thought I was doing the right thing back up wise but I never imagined both external hard drives going corrupted simultaneously. In the future the DVD back up on top of the two external hard drives will be the way to go! My wife is seriously unhappy with me, computers and backing up all our photos are ment to be my department

Edited January 25, 2015 by dtmdragon

[+Dave 2,322]

Keeping my fingers crossed. 

[+yakarov79 11,082]

Yeah. Holly Backup always.

Yesterday (sunday) after years of service my PC crashed    died and it is not responding to my actions anymore.  Can be used as target now.

Miracle - drive is still much ok. And after quick recon, files seems to be ok.

[FastCargo 412]

We have a server that mirrors onto 2 external hard drives, but we also have a subscription to an offsite backup service... So even if the house burns down, our files are safe. It might be overkill, but for things like family photos, it's piece of mind.

 

Good luck!

 

FC

[+dtmdragon 2,703]

I used to burn a data dvd at the end of every month and store them at work but I got lazy and stopped a few years ago- kicking myself now! Luckily my wife is very active on face book and has uploaded a lot of our family photos there so not all is lost.

 

On the Strike fighters front those two hard drives were my only copy. The thought of having to re-downloading EVERYTHING is demoralising. I don’t know about you guys but I usually make my own little tweaks to most add on downloads, especially with modern aircraft as I have my own standardised method for calculating reduced radar cross sections.

Also in the works was a overhauled RNZAF A-4K Kahu pack with skins for their new owner Drakon International.

A ‘what if’ RNZAF F-4E Pack using the new F-4E models.

A historic WWII pacific war campaign for RNZAF P-40 Tomahawks.

A separate specific install with campaigns that follow the ‘Tomorrow when the war began’ book series/ movie which has China invading Australia with just Australian and New Zealand fighting in defence. That had a ton of new and modified Australian and Kiwi air ground and sea units from 1945 till today. Plus a heap of ‘land lease’ F-16 skins and squadrons for the RNZAF (as per the book series) .

 

On the data recovery front my colleague has tried all of his commercial software and is downloading a few of the better freeware ones to try. He doubts that will work so the next step is to remove the drive itself and put it into his computer. He thinks that is also a long shot so the last ditch effort will be to initialise the hard drive and create a partition. This will make it accessible again but will erase all the data on it so he will then run his best data recovery software to recover as much as possible. However he has warned me this still might not work and some of the data will still probably be lost.

Edited January 27, 2015 by dtmdragon

[Spinners 15,986]

Fingers crossed mate.

 

I've got a bit lazy with backing up and need to take action.... today!

[+RAVEN 414]

I just went through a HD crash and now I Back up every time I mod or model, and once a week for everything. The program I used to recover the crashed drive was "recuva" ran it in windows XP and got everything except a few ,bmp's and a .mov file. The program is free and it's very good. It Works best if you only recover a few files at a time,

[+dtmdragon 2,703]

I defiantly recommend taking action now! Lol. I think recuva was one he was looking at although there is about two thirds of a terabyte of data on the back up hard drive I want to try and recover.  

[+RAVEN 414]

recuva will let you recover entire folders at once, but I had to check for zero length files and recover those to a separate folder then paste them back in. Took me one day to recover 100 GB, but it was worth it.

[+RAVEN 414]

Can't edit from this iPad Mini. I ment to say that I had to re-recover any zero length files one at a time into a temporary folder then paste them back after checking their kb or mb size.

[+dtmdragon 2,703]

Well after a valiant last ditch counter attack my friend has been pushed back into the sea and all is sadly lost. The disk from the hard drive will be going up in a cupboard for the next few years to give the software recovery technology out there some time to (hopefully) advance to the point where we can recover our lost photos etc. As I said before luckily most of our photos are on my wife’s facebook so we just have to save a copy of each one back to the computer etc. Tough lesson in how no matter how careful you think you are being with backing things up the most unexpected thing can happen and ruin it all. I’ve been through my messenger here at combatace and been surprised at how much of my WIP projects I had sent someone a copy of for input etc so I have been able to get a few thinks back I thought were gone for good. For now I’m sticking to just one ‘all in one’ campaign mod to play until I get my mojo back lol KAW here I come!

Edited February 11, 2015 by dtmdragon

[+Dave 2,322]

Sucks man. I feel your pain. 

[+Piecemeal 450]

That sucks DMT; I know EXACTLY how you feel, having lost my desktop as well as a household appliance in a power surge. F**king water meter installers working in the street not only ruptured the water mains pipe, but also the power mains cables which were (stupidly) placed next to it. Also (stupidly  ) it just so happened that my backup drive was plugged in at the time. After an examination by my brother I was given the news that it's a total wipeout of everything. Years worth of mods, photos, videos and MP3s. The only recyclable part being the drive unit frame which I might use to rebuild a new one.

Currently borrowing by nephew in-law's laptop (when he's not using it ). The rest of the time it's my android mobile

[+Stary 2,427]

that sucks big time!

[+dtmdragon 2,703]

cheers for the sympathy guys I'm pretty gutted but from the ashes I shall rise! lol

[+russouk2004 6,958]

another good thing is an anti surge \ trip switch adapter....ive got one and it can save ur pc...I know its late,but well worth it for a new pc

Edited February 13, 2015 by russouk2004

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

That's why you never store a backup plugged into your computer.

 

I always say, keep MULTIPLE independent backups stored away from computer. I use old hard drives, slowly cycling through them, bringing each closer to up to date  If used only for cold storage, they last forever.

 

You do know of course, that if you have only one backup, and your main drive goes down, you don't have any *backup* anymore. Think about it. That's what happened to you dragon.

 

ie... one backup is no backup, unless you are very lucky. Like me last year. I got a bit sloppy and made only one backup of my super map. My main drive went down and I had forgotten I made the backup. Went for months thinking I lost it. I found it. I got lucky, this time. I immediately made extra backups on top of backups when I stumbled across my map I thought I lost.