Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Geek Culture / Never Give Up

Author
Message
Jeku
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 04:58 Edited at: 7th Jan 2007 04:59
Link
Some of you may remember my thread from almost two years back where my hard drive crashed. To put a long story short I lost tons of source code (WordTrix 2, all my DBP games, schoolwork) and even my current degree project. This was my final semester and I went a bit crazy. I had to restart the project from scratch.

Word to the wise: make MANY backups.

Anyways, I abandoned the hard drive and every once in a while I tried to get Windows to recognize it to no avail. I kept it around anyways, because I had some hope that I would be able to pay a recovery company $$$ to recover WordTrix from it in the future. (costs around $800-1500).

Yesterday I borrowed a simple little adapter from a friend at work that lets you read a desktop IDE harddrive from a USB port, so I hooked it up to my laptop, and I could see my drive! I quickly had to stay calm and search for my missing source code. The clock was ticking as the hard drive made many popping and loud noises.

Truth be told, I managed to recuperate 80% of my source from all my missing projects, including 100% of WordTrix. There's two lessons to be learned here: ALWAYS make incremental backups, and NEVER throw away a bad hard drive if there's something important on there. You never know when you'll run into good luck.

By the way the hard drive died about 5 minutes after pulling all my important data off, and I can't get it working again. Saved in the nick of time, and now the hard drive can be junked

Ben Stein's Christmas Thoughts
Back to top
Profile PM Website
Xander
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Mar 2003
Location: In college...yeah!
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 05:08
Link
Congratulations! I bet that makes you feel good. Thanks for the tip

Xander Moser - Bolt Software - Firewall
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 05:20
Link
viva la DVD -RW for backups.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
5Louiz
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 15th Nov 2006
Location: Brasil
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 05:24
Link
Greater than the pain of losing important info, only the pleasure of recovering it. Well done

My old hard drive crashed too. But I was being advised for more than two months. I can't believe I neglected care to my precious info. I managed to recover my stuff and learnt the lesson: even bookmarks may be a painful loss.

I am a prudent guy today. Also spent some coins on a 1gb pen drive, which I update almost every day


Back to top
Profile PM Email
Antidote
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 18th Mar 2005
Location: San Francisco, CA
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 05:35
Link
viva la old hard drive setup as external backup drive


Back to top
Profile PM
Zotoaster
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Dec 2004
Location: Scotland
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 05:47
Link
viva las vegas.



...

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Jeku
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 09:18
Link
The funny thing was, I had a sneaking suspicion about a few days before the crash, that if the hard drive were to go, I would lose everything. So I started backing up things--- my songs, games, etc. Just for some idiotic reason didn't do my source code or degree project. Worst mistake ever. You always hear people losing everything in a hard drive but never think it will happen to you.

Ben Stein's Christmas Thoughts
Back to top
Profile PM Website
Steve J
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Apr 2006
Location: Vancouver, Washington
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 09:36
Link
augh, it happened to me once. I had rewritten the source of a forum I was making (What can I say, I enjoy making forums...), I mean, made it commented, reduced redundancy, made it load around 5% faster, fixed a few minor css issues, made the design better, made it bot proof, made it almost exactly how I wanted, and then before I fixed the control panel system, I decided to not upload until after that. Next day, the hdd just would do crap. I put it in the freezer and everything...

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Silvester
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Dec 2005
Location: Netherlands
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 11:20
Link
i just threw my crashed C:\ drive away.it contained 2 gig of 3D models for FPSC.(i should have read this earlyer...)

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Antidote
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 18th Mar 2005
Location: San Francisco, CA
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 15:09
Link
Recently my PSU died and fried both my motherboard and GPU in the process. Luckily the HDDs hadn't fried as well and I was able to get external USB adapters for them and recover all my data onto my new computer.


Back to top
Profile PM
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 15:09
Link
Good stuff mate! That must be great to get back.

I, on the other hand, have the opposite problem .. a bunch of old games including my hover racer (technically my most accomplished game) lost to the void of backups. It would've been put on a CD at some point, but there are so many, in so many different places, full of so much junk, I have no idea where it is. I don't even have proof I made it anymore ... no screenshots, no videos, no nothing.


Back to top
Profile PM
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 15:28
Link
fallout. get a disc library program. it will take a full day to insert them all but afterwards you can just search via your computer and it will tell you what disc it is on. provided you also name your discs the same as what you print with texta on the front.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Silvester
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Dec 2005
Location: Netherlands
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 15:31
Link
or write a paper you place on the CD box where the CD's lay in wich is wich.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
David R
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 9th Sep 2003
Location: 3.14
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 15:35
Link
Well I suppose it'd be a good idea to put my external mini-HD to good use now then

*backs up code*


"History shall be kind to me, for I intend to write it" - Winston Churchill
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 16:42
Link
My excuse is, I've been to and from uni for years. Never been in one place for long, so constantly shipping disks around, changing use for my compos, etc etc. Gonna finally settle down a bit now, so hopefully I'll have more order to these things. Actually, I found the WiP for hover racing and it got me into the idea again, so some point in the future I'll give it another bash, but with 3DWS for the levels and DarkPhysics for the physics.


Back to top
Profile PM
NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 10th Apr 2005
Location: The Fifth Plane of Oblivion
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 16:45
Link
A good HDD will last for ever. Mine is eight years old now, and still doesn't lose a file.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
Back to top
Profile PM Website
Grandma
18
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Dec 2005
Location: Norway, Guiding the New World Order
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 16:54
Link
My seagate harddrive died on me some 5 years back and after that i back up everything every other week.....and stopped bying seagate

Comp : 1024mb Ram, 3.0ghz, GeforceFX 5800, 1,1TB storage
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Seppuku Arts
Moderator
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 18th Aug 2004
Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 17:22
Link
Yes, that's good advice, I've lost things myself because of problems, remembering that, I actually back up all important files to CD yesterday, I'll probably carry on backing up smaller stuff to my gmail drive or the archaic floppy disk that some of you may remember still exists

Click Me!
Back to top
Profile PM Website
soapyfish
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 24th Oct 2003
Location: Yorkshire, England
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 17:37
Link
That's the thing I don't get about setting up a home file server. If I was to set up a 1TB (not that I need 1TB of storage) server I'd end up having a load of files on there that I didn't have room to store anywhere else and so making that my only copy.

Then if the server HD died I'd lose my only copy. To get around this I'd have to make regular backups of the file server, but backing up something that big to disc would take an age. One answer would be to have 2 500gb servers I suppose and just back one up to the other.

It would appear I've been bitten by the coding bug yet again...
<º))))><.·´¯`·.Here's to the crazy ones¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º>
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
CattleRustler
Retired Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 8th Aug 2003
Location: case modding at overclock.net
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 17:57
Link
Glad you recovered your stuff! I remember when you first posted about the drive dying

I always build my systems with 2 HDD and use the second drive to also back stuff up, but I should get a dvd writer just in case.


Its 9/11 - but its FAKE 9/11 Ts=SQRT(Df/16)
Back to top
Profile PM
Agent Dink
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th Mar 2004
Location:
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 19:39
Link
Almost wish I had read this a month ago, before I gave my bro's friend a 40 gig hard drive to install in my xbox that was accidentally partially formatted... Can you recover something that has been partially formatted? It only was at like 3% when I realized something switched the drive letters on me with the bootdisk I used. Then it was too late. Lost a bunch of code, bums me out too cause one of the games was almost done

Sometimes the only way over a wall is to pile up enough bodies to climb over - Dave W.
Back to top
Profile PM
Jeff Miller
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Mar 2005
Location: New Jersey, USA
Posted: 7th Jan 2007 22:21
Link
I'm really glad you got your code back. I know how frustrating it can be. My first personal computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer, and you backed up to an audio cassette recorder connected to it, but if the cassette tape was defective on the next pass you were screwed. I've been planning on getting a new computer in about 45-60 days, and I'm thinking exactly along the lines of Cattlerustler - a "mirror" drive.

And good job on keeping the faith for new technology to salvage what at the time of the disk failure the current technology couldn't! You wouldn't believe the big names cryogenically frozen here in the states that just might come back to haunt us.
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Peter H
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Feb 2004
Location: Witness Protection Program
Posted: 8th Jan 2007 00:41
Link
i lost my first ever DB game to a HD failure in it's infancy (it was an ambitious pacman type game).. I'm actually kind of glad that i lost it though... because it would have been an embarrassment to me

One man, one lawnmower, plenty of angry groundhogs.
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Seppuku Arts
Moderator
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 18th Aug 2004
Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 8th Jan 2007 01:05 Edited at: 8th Jan 2007 01:07
Link
Well, as people are talking about what they've lost.

I had a game I almost completed in TGF that I was really proud of, then my computer stopped working, took it to the shop and the motherboard had fried and I don't have the hard drive any more as the computer became spare parts, although I should have made sure I kept the HD, oh well. I've also lost a Sephiroth model that I made that at the time was really good for me, then my computer had a major error that meant reinstalling windows and he went away, I couldn't even make it for the competition I was entering him in for, so I used one of my original test renders as an entering, which just showed his head and shoulders.

Click Me! Dolphins aren't Mammals, they're lizards.
Back to top
Profile PM Website
jasonhtml
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Mar 2004
Location: OC, California, USA
Posted: 8th Jan 2007 01:28
Link
ya, ive been meaning to do this for about 2 or 3 months now... good thing this post scared me into doing it *gets a cd and starts backing up*


forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=78971&b=8&p=0
forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=91115&b=32
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Hobgoblin Lord
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 29th Oct 2005
Location: Fall River, MA USA
Posted: 8th Jan 2007 21:57
Link
Quote: "A good HDD will last for ever. Mine is eight years old now, and still doesn't lose a file."


These ring of soon to be famous last words.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=73324&b=8
My RPG WIP, check it out
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 10th Apr 2005
Location: The Fifth Plane of Oblivion
Posted: 8th Jan 2007 22:22
Link
..not to mention that it's auto backed up onto the other.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
Back to top
Profile PM Website
Peter H
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Feb 2004
Location: Witness Protection Program
Posted: 9th Jan 2007 00:42
Link
yeah, all these hard drives failing caused me to backup my precious project files onto my two flash drives... so both my flash drives and my HD would have to mess up for me to lose my project/s

One man, one lawnmower, plenty of angry groundhogs.
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Raven
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 23rd Mar 2005
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 9th Jan 2007 04:01
Link
I've got in the habit of backing up everything I can given my luck with hardware over the years... but I can guarentee you unless I do a HDD Shadow, I will ALWAYS miss something.

Generally don't do Shadows, cause sifting through several hundred gig for a few gig of useful data is a pain. On the plus side it's usually just porn that get's totally lost, atleast source i can generally remember roughly how it goes.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Back to top

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2024-11-18 03:43:15
Your offset time is: 2024-11-18 03:43:15