Total System Loss

[Pure]

Alex,

That is my question for the techies.

Is what % of cases of "fried" harddrive, total breakdown, would having stuff in the same computer, second harddrive, save your bacon? Iow how often does the problem kill or fuck up BOTH harddrives?

 

[Guest]

Congrats Doc. Welcome to an ever growing membership in the Fuck Me Why Didn't I Back Everything Up Club.

The main drive on my laptop crashed a week ago under much the same conditions. None of my stories were lost but I used the laptop for e-mail and IMs. Stories I back up weekly a half dozen ways.

All gone. Address Book. Saved e-mails, some very important pictures, all my IM archives. Gone no way to replace them. And bloody pissed about it.

As for your stories, this is just a theory, haven't tried it yet but you could try copy/paste in word the change the margin settings and see what happens. Try changing from alignleft to align right to justify margins. Might correct itself. Won't guarantee it but worth a try.

And remember. Floppy disks do still have a use.

 

[Guest]

Congrats Doc. Welcome to an ever growing membership in the Fuck Me Why Didn't I Back Everything Up Club.

The main drive on my laptop crashed a week ago under much the same conditions. None of my stories were lost but I used the laptop for e-mail and IMs. Stories I back up weekly a half dozen ways.

All gone. Address Book. Saved e-mails, some very important pictures, all my IM archives. Gone no way to replace them. And bloody pissed about it.

As for your stories, this is just a theory, haven't tried it yet but you could try copy/paste in word the change the margin settings and see what happens. Try changing from alignleft to align right to justify margins. Might correct itself. Won't guarantee it but worth a try.

And remember. Floppy disks do still have a use.

Ummm... Yeah. That goes for me too.



BTW: As long as it wasn't a head crash that damaged the platters themselves, the data can be recovered. It isn't cheap. Services run from $6-1200 depending on what you want recovered, the condition and size of the drive and so on.

 

[Alex De Kok]

Alex,

That is my question for the techies.

Is what % of cases of "fried" harddrive, total breakdown, would having stuff in the same computer, second harddrive, save your bacon? Iow how often does the problem kill or fuck up BOTH harddrives?

No idea. So far, that hasn't happened to me. I do have anti-surge on the power supply wall socket, too, which might help.

Alex

 

[MagicFingers]

I'm sorry for your loss

Enough has been mentioned to answer your formatting question for copying your stories, so I won't address that.

However, I know you can't get your HD back because it has already been sent back to Dell and lost in their shuffle.

However, next time, you can request that they leave your hard drive if you agree to post a credit card number or something similar, to show that you will pay for it if it is not returned. Then you can keep the old one and install it as a slave drive on the same cable as the 1st HD drive. Then if your disk will still spin up, you can recover all your files. If it is a hardware malfunction, this won't do you any good, but if it is simply Windows wiped out, then you can recover your files this way, then send in the old drive later for credit.

Good luck!

 

[snooper]

Alex,

That is my question for the techies.

Is what % of cases of "fried" harddrive, total breakdown, would having stuff in the same computer, second harddrive, save your bacon? Iow how often does the problem kill or fuck up BOTH harddrives?

Since most hard drive crashes are actually caused by the RW head hitting the spinning disc, it depends what caused the hitting. If it was a really bad bump to the box, then both will probably go; if it was simple mechanical failure, then only one will be lost.

I don't know the %ages, nor how many are viruses, as opposed to hardware.

 

[Weird Harold]

Since most hard drive crashes are actually caused by the RW head hitting the spinning disc, it depends what caused the hitting.

Actually, a "hard crash" -- i.e. physical contact betwen head and disk -- is the LEAST common cause fo drive failure.

The most common cause in my experience is a corrupted allocation or partition table, followed closely by head alignement problems -- the second is probably a leading cause of the first but not the sole cause.

Dr.M's problem sounds like a malware erasing his directory structure and file allocations. The data is still on his drive, but it's scrambled without any indicators which piece belongs to which file or program.

 

[nushu2]

Dr. M, you got my empathy.
Somethings cannot be replaced. Others can just be a pain in the ass, but stories can be rewritten, The first time it happened to me, I lost 5 complete stories that hadn't been posted yet. It took me a year to try again but I rewrote the stories and they ended up much better the second time around. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, a very ugly disguise.

If we can buy car insurance and fire insurance, why can't we buy computer crash insurance.

==========
Tip of the day: (For advanced use only)

After surfing the web for new and untrusted sites, do a search for all files of the same day. If you come across suspicious EXE or DLL files (usually in System32 folder), you MIGHT have picked up a virus. If the system doesn't allow you to rename (simple trick is to rename extension from EXE to EXx) or delete it, try rebooting in 'safe mode'. Remember to empty the recycle bin and that the system can make 'restorable files' in the System Volume Information folder under a different name but keeping the EXE extension.

Not recommended if you are using automatic upgrades for antivirus or other programs. There are many files, including LOG files and caches that are updated regularly. In some cases, the virus will hide in a common Windows file, such as Notepad.exe. but the modified date still gets changed.

Anti-virus programs can only defend against viruses and processes they are aware of.

 

[Black Tulip]

Ummm... Yeah. That goes for me too.



BTW: As long as it wasn't a head crash that damaged the platters themselves, the data can be recovered. It isn't cheap. Services run from $6-1200 depending on what you want recovered, the condition and size of the drive and so on.

Well, darlink, I can do that a lot cheaper for you. I lost all my stories a while back and bought myself a recovery program.

I could not recover everything because there was already written too much stuff over it again, but the bulk of my stories was retrieved.

The program cost me about $40, Canadian Dollars. I'd be happy to share it with you guys.

 

[Black Tulip]

Dr. M, you got my empathy.
Somethings cannot be replaced. Others can just be a pain in the ass, but stories can be rewritten, The first time it happened to me, I lost 5 complete stories that hadn't been posted yet. It took me a year to try again but I rewrote the stories and they ended up much better the second time around. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, a very ugly disguise.

If we can buy car insurance and fire insurance, why can't we buy computer crash insurance.

==========
Tip of the day: (For advanced use only)

After surfing the web for new and untrusted sites, do a search for all files of the same day. If you come across suspicious EXE or DLL files (usually in System32 folder), you MIGHT have picked up a virus. If the system doesn't allow you to rename (simple trick is to rename extension from EXE to EXx) or delete it, try rebooting in 'safe mode'. Remember to empty the recycle bin and that the system can make 'restorable files' in the System Volume Information folder under a different name but keeping the EXE extension.

Not recommended if you are using automatic upgrades for antivirus or other programs. There are many files, including LOG files and caches that are updated regularly. In some cases, the virus will hide in a common Windows file, such as Notepad.exe. but the modified date still gets changed.

Anti-virus programs can only defend against viruses and processes they are aware of.

Lavasoft Ad-aware is a terrific program to get rid of most spyware. Just configure it to run everytime you start up and you are mostly as clean as a whistle. You can download it from Tucows.

 

[MagicFingers]

Check out this thread too!

A good thread about data recovery over at the How To:
https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=273858

 

[cheerful_deviant]

I thought CD's were supposed to last forever.

---dr.M.

Diving into this thread late, but I thought I would pass on this tidbit of info:

Even if you never scrach your CD's, they may only last about 15 to 25 years. Everyone thinks that the clear face where the CD is read is the fragile side, it's really not. The label side is much more vulnerable, but the results of damage take longer to show up. Once you scrach the coating on the back, the very thin aluminum surface where the data is stored is exposed and will begin to oxidize. After a while it will be eaten away until it has holes in it, then, no more data.

DVD's are more durable in that they are actually two layers of plastic with the aluminum sandwiched between, but if you flex your dvd's to get them out of the case, all bets are off on how long the glue will last.

 

[doormouse]

Thanks in a way dr. Mabeuse.

Thanks to your thread I backed up everything on my PC. It just had total shut down. *sigh*

I'm on a borrowed PC at the moment, but thankfully I saved all my stuff.