I guess this should go here.
I don't really know how to start so I guess I'll just spit it out.
In my everlasting luck with PCs, my hard drive blew up as well as the backup hard drive. HOW I do NOT know but both of them are totally fried, you tell me how...
That means everything I've ever done has gone down the crapper. Everything.
I have about 5 files on this mac that I made on this not Windows, so yeah, everything is gone.
So yeah. No more mod, not that it really matters as it seems it would never get completed due to my real life situations, but still, I was happy with how things were going and YES I am *rather* pissed that I've lost everything I've ever done.
So yeah, fan-f***ing-dabby-dozey...
*goes and makes more backups on DVD*
Keep your friends close and your beta testers closer, you never know how many backups you may need.
You may still be able to access one of the harddrives using GetDataBack and setting the kaput drives to slave, unless that is, that BOTH harddrives' motors and/or readers have been damaged/destroyed, which is unlikely.
GetDataBack (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=VnY&q=getdataback&btnG=Search)
They make a very strange noise when you try to use them, like a high-pitched buzzing. I *really* doubt that they are accessible but its worth a try in the morning.
My CD backups have mysteriously disappeared *look at brother* more than likely...
So yeah I'm left with one hard drive with Ubuntu on it.
NOOOOOOOO (Ox10000000000 to save space) ! (x 10000000, same reason)
May the Jenovian R.I.P :cry:
hmm, you sure your brother didnt stick anything in the drives? :P
Anyway, crack open your case and pull out the damaged harddrives, then inspect for any foreign objects lodged in between the platters (try not to get fingerprints on them).
If there's nothing, and you're truely worried about losing the drives before you retrieve the data, take them to a pro and see if they can get anything from them.
Anyway, the getdataback is definitely worth a shot, and I'm pretty sure it works for Ubuntu. I've used it to get back an important document or two (family photo's, irreplaceable homework, etc), I'm nearly 90% sure it will work.
Pros cost big bucks... and try a few other things before you even think about cracking the case on a drive.
First and easiest is leave them in the freezer overnight. This shrinks bearings and connections.
Hook the drive up to another computer, preferably with a USB connector. There are numerous adapters or drive housings available, or grab an external USB CD drive from a friend and crack that case, hooking the drive up in place of the CD. This is to minimize the time it's running, using every second to retrieve valuable data.
If you can't access the drive normally try one of the data retrieval utilities, but do so with the drive hooked directly up to the computer. Many of the best utilities can't work through anything but a straight IDE or SATA connection.
If the above doesn't work, strangely enough a sharp smack on a very hard surface (concrete) can realign platters or free welded parts. Smack the drive straight down on the flattest part and then try the above again. Do this ONLY if all else fails as it's sure to the end of the drive doing this.
Either way, if you retrieve your data toss the old drive. Smash it with a sledge hammer if you're not sure if it contains things like account numbers, SSN numbers, phone numbers, or just to relieve your frustrations.
Believe it or not the freezer trick works quite often and is painless...
-Av-
External USB backup drives are dirt cheap these days. You can get a 500GB external drive for just over $100. I back up to that monthly -- the external drive is connected and powered on for maybe 30 minutes a month while it's pulling down updates. Plus, I burn DVDs monthly of the important files.
That's worked out really pretty well in practice. When I had the HD in my main box die ~2-3 years ago, I think the only thing I might have lost was three or four 1.3 private builds. Considering I've got over 1000 archived private builds, that gives me pretty good coverage.
-- GSH
Network storage is getting cheap and fast, too. I'm seriously thinking that my future systems will be minimal on the main drive, storing all data files in shared and private folders over the network.
Lol, I just love saying 'network' when talking about my cheap router and a few old PC's. Sounds very impressive, though...
-Av-
SHHHIIIIIITTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :x :x
i was going to be a beta tester :cry:
PLEASE TRY TO GET THE STUFF BACK RAVEN!!1
Hard drive cooler fans also help as drive overheating is also one way they die. This happened to one of my drives several years ago and fortunately I didn't totally lose all data (some sectors weren't recoverable and it wasn't too important to retrieve everything). Not sure about your situation, but hopefully you'll find a way to get your stuff back. Just another painful lesson of preventive pursuits of archival happiness.
:mrgreen:
Wow, that sucks. I really hope you're able to recover some data from your HD.
Come to think of it, this makes how many mods discontinued/setback by HD crashes?
200000000000 and counting :cry:
I have multiple Seagate FreeAgent 500GB drives (by multiple, I mean I have a lot, about to get another). Had them since they first started making them, a couple are used *all* the time and they still live, so I trust them. But yea, can never have too many backups. :)
The clock is ticking on my drives I gues. I need to burn some stuff... I need more DVDs.
*looks up at 500 or so 1 layer DVDs already burned over the years that happen to NOT contain any mod work*
Shudder.
idea:: is there some kind of program that autobackups your work??
say that you had a folder full of mod stuff that you work on daily and you get the program to make copies of everything in it that would be automatically updated every time you save something - and the copy folder(s) would be on a backup drives.
Quote from: bigbadbogie on January 26, 2008, 07:01:28 AM
idea:: is there some kind of program that autobackups your work??
say that you had a folder full of mod stuff that you work on daily and you get the program to make copies of everything in it that would be automatically updated every time you save something - and the copy folder(s) would be on a backup drives.
Yes (http://www.google.com)
Could just make a cron job (scheduled task in windows terminology) do it for you. I set up mirrors (anything I save to one drive is automatically mirrored to others), if set up as a raid then I get that nice mirror functionality, and a speed boost since it can read from both simultaneously. :)
Are the platters(disks) fine? Apparently you can take them and put them in a working harddrive(same kind)if they are. Look it up before you do anything this risky though.
Freezer huh? Worth a shot.
My brother is 25, he used the discs for other reasons, knowing him it was porn.
No foreign shiz in the disks.
I'm trying that getdata thing now.
Thanks for the support, hopefully I will be able to get *something* back as this thing has been going on for so long it would be horrible to loose it all...
Quote from: Raven on January 26, 2008, 07:50:31 PM
Freezer huh? Worth a shot.
My brother is 25, he used the discs for other reasons, knowing him it was porn.
No foreign shiz in the disks.
I'm trying that getdata thing now.
Thanks for the support, hopefully I will be able to get *something* back as this thing has been going on for so long it would be horrible to loose it all...
The Jenovans may live again!
They are currently in the freezer, been in for about 2 hours now, its 23:12 so we will see in the morning...
Hopefully everything works out.
VSMIT.
Be sure it isn't veru humid. Last thing you want is freezer burn.
.ni meht tup uoy erofeb sgab citsalp ni s'DH eht tup ot desoppus er'uoy kniht I ,aY
Leonardo, is that you?
um................. why regular plastic bags........... you want specialty bags meant to prevent freezer burn........
Oh come on...
If placing your HD in a plastic bag helps there's more wrong with the HD than freezing it can fix... they're supposed sealed in a vacuum, or at least dry nitrogen or something. Unless the case is cracked you won't get any ice inside the housing, only possibly on the connectors or exposed part of the circuit board. Either way it won't cause any problems.
I've done this several times, never had anything but a bit of light frost form when I took the drive out of the freezer. Less, actually, than when you bring a system in from the garage this time of year in Michigan. :)
-Av-
Ah, ok.
BTW sorry for posting in reverse, fire fox was being all buggy and the font would be created to the right of the cursor instead of the left :P.
rtl (right to left) must have gotten turned on.
Huh... didn't notice that it was backwards... :roll:
Yoda he is, knowing it not. Now, matters are worse...
-Av-
If you do decide to open the case on the drive try relubricating the bearing again with one of those silicone syringe type needle applicators; most automotive outlets carry them I believe.
Then try go to like CompUSA and purchasing a removable IDE drive case; there made up up 2 separate components; the case and the removable tray where the drive is installed. I have one that I bought for like 20 bucks and installed easily as drive F on my system. After reassembling the case move the jumper connector to SLAVE and install the thing. You may need to to buy another IDE cable with an extra connector for the installation of the removable drive to get recognized by the OS.
Then try powering it up a few times to disperse the lubricant before trying to actually using it to transfer any data. If the abnormal sounds you reported earlier stop then try rebooting the system again and copy whatever you want to recover to another drive and then put the old drive away in case you need to do anything with it in the future...good luck we all have our fingers crossed that something good results from your sad dilemma. BNG
i dont believe that 2 seperate drives can go bung at the same time --
i reckon foul play is somehow involved -- what was that ,, cough.""..ravens brother..""...cough -- oh excuse me :wink:
Actually, most peeps have multiple drives on the same IDE cables; 1 configured as Master and sequent drive(s) jumpered as Slaves. You've never heard of that BBB? The idea is to get the drive operational long enough to salvage the data; it can be done if the bearing are still intact. Although, there are other electronic components inside too. I've heard that a big source of failures (with electronics) are related to leaking capacitors which hold a tiny current that's critical to the normal operation of the device itself. Might be worth a try considering how much time the guy put into the work he did on his mod.
yeh ive heard of that - only every time the computer starts up coz it says it on the loading screen thingy
and raven, just take it to wherever you bought it and get the tech jeeks to fix it
Well, solid state drives are hitting the market. May cost about $25 a gigabyte (as opposed to 25¢ / gig to HDD's), but the performance is similar, some things run faster, more reliable (most SSD's can be read infinitely many times, and support 300,000 - 1,000,000 write cycles to each memory block).
You could also buy a ton of thumb drives, remove all the chips, and wire them all into a custom RAID array. Finaly write your own dirvers and install it like a hard drive (since it is so small it should fit in the HD slot).
Anyone want to do that, I would love too but I don't know how.
You would get RAID style redundancy and your stuff would be relativly safe. If 1 thumbdrive failes, you pop it open, switch out the cell, recoppy from one of the redundants and your done.
Back to the data recovery topic though popping off the cover to look at the platter surfaces might not be a bad idea. I remember doing this with an HD that came out of a TIVO unit and boy was it a mess; one of the reader devices actually craved out a circular track on one of the several platters making up the drive. The data on that section was toasted, but the other platters were still intact. You may want to research the web before doing anything to the drive to see what other options are available. I was thinking that if you can access another PC via LAN network cable, etc; then you should be able to transfer your data files to recover what you can from one PC to the other as well...BNG
any word raven???
Right tried that data recovery, won't even recognize the HDs, Frozen=nope, tried pretty much everything that has been said that I can actually do with no result. Opened up and masses of scratches all over both of them, not in circles either, actual zig-zagging lines, aaand obviously due to the previous, smacking them didn't work...
How, I don't know, thinking about it, surely the only thing that could do that is a huge impact whilst the arms are moving? Or could a power surge do that? So me thinking I'm screwed?
Well, to look on the bright side of things, you will have a whole new outlook on backing things up. :)
I've backed up all FE13, plus the DLL stuff to one DVD now instead of a few CD's. Takes about 13 minutes at 4x.
Thumbdrives! They're cheap these days.
Also, Windows Briefcase was a feature that I found useful back when I used Windows 98/2000 a lot. I often used it to synch local files to a floppy disk for transfer to/from work -- if I modified the files on the floppy while I was at home, my version at my work PC would be updated -- with Briefcase, the file with the later timestamp would be copied to both mediums.
I havent really used briefcase in XP, and not sure if it would be useful for synching entire folders to thumbdrive, but I did find some documentation here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307885)
Good point. :-)
I nearly lost Fleshstorm to a similar thing, there were a few files I never did recover so I can understand your pain I now back things up religiously in triplicate, it's really really important these days as harddrives appear to be becoming less and less reliable .
a cheapo Liteon DVD burner is only about £20 it's a small price to pay for peace of mind.
I think the reason they are a little more sensitive is due to the increased densities allowed by using magnetic media that allows a lower magnetic signature that allows more info to be packed into a smaller area.
Therefore, they're more sensitive to power fluctuations and spikes. Seems like we may need power conditioners now.
As I said before, and I say it again for EVERYBODY, enlist as many backup sources as possible and THEN some!
Find at least 3 different online storage sites (without download inactivity meters) and at least 3 friends to send backups to.
Doing that will make your mods basically impervious to any kind of data loss except, perhaps, a global EMP strike! :roll:
@Raven: Take the drive to a tech geek and see if he/she cant get anything from it.
Quote from: Steeveeo on January 31, 2008, 11:16:37 PM
Doing that will make your mods basically impervious to any kind of data loss except, perhaps, a global EMP strike! :roll:
That's what laser media is for. DVDs.
I have multiple Seagate FreeAgent 500GB drives (they are $129 at the local OfficeMax, the closest thing we have to a computer store here, so the same price as average on the net, unless you find it for sell there, so buy a couple of those), I have a terabyte of storage on my webserver, I have a DVD drive (which I have used once, and that was for someone else), I have other computers on my network that I store stuff on, etc... etc...
Thumbdrives are expensive, and are more volatile then a good external hard drive or ten. :)
those freeagent drives from seagate are really nice I bought one after my latest HDD disaster, they've got a 5 year guarantee with them too.
Networking 2 PC's together via Ethernet cables would be one relatively inexpensive way of regularly backing up data; considering most peeps have multiple PC's nowadays with Ethernet cards being pretty much common nowadays; which reminds me to follow my own advise and backup up my BZII related stuff as well as other data files too. I mean if you think about it a bit; a drive can go belly up at anytime and backing things up makes quite a bit of just plain common sense. Another viable option would be a USB external drive; they seem fairly inexpensive nowadays.
If nothing else Raven's misfortune should be a wake up call for other modders to take action before it's too late. I like the DVD backup idea as well as I have 2 recorders on my system that I rarely use for much of anything; additionally I have another one installed on my other PC via home LAN network. I guess in a way we should think of networking as a basically freely available backup system and look at networked PC's as one system rather then just two PC's connected by a cable. As I recall someone said that Raven lost 2 drives simultaneously? That is odd if not down right suspicious to say the least?
It's even mroe annoying because I *could* have backed up on DVDs or CDs but I was too much of a tard to think about it ¬¬
"Ah! But have you not gained something even more precious than gold because of this misfortune, Grasshoppa?"
"What is that, Master Po?"
"Wisdom, Grasshoppa! Wisdom!"
*Grasshoppa kicks Master Po in the knee*
Oh and I forgot to add that I actually DID its just that they mysteriously got used for other reasons...
Life goes on, I'm not going anywhere as I love the game and community, but I guess mods over. Well on the bright side I guess I don't have to worry about spare time anymore.
I haven't backed up any of the ARC Clan's Mod's preliminary work either. If I lose my HDD that will sink pretty far.
Then you probably should. :)
I kept toasting DVDs, I finaly found if I burn at 8x instead of 16x I don't get a bunch of errors during verification. The disks apear to work, but I don't trust them when they have errors like that.
Anytime I record DVD's or CD's I always record at the slowest selectable speed (12x for cd's and 4x for dvd's on my current burner), never had issues then. I originally had 1 1x cd recorder, then I had a couple 2x cd recorder's, then a 4x, then an 8x, then a 12x, then a 48x, then a dvd recorder, which is what I still have now. The older recorders (my 8x and earlier) did not have buffer underrun protection, meaning that if the computer barely glitched (like even moving the mouse), or you walked around the computer, it kinda killed the burn. Ever since, I've been a big proponent of recording very slow. :)
Backup, NOW... lol
too bad u couldn't recover anything... I was looking forward to play that one... :( ...had a similar problem recently, but now I've deal with it... the storm will continue... nvm. if u will decide to make some other mod or maybe start over, and redo rise of Jenova from scratch I'll be glad to help
Verifying my last Battlezone disk as I type.
I have an Idea raven
It is a long shot and a shot in the dark, but if you had the drives for a long time and they where running fine until they both blow at the same time, I can only guess that there was some kind of power serge from your power supply that took out your hard drives.
My Idea is for you to inspect the Hard drives PCB Board and check for any circuit components that might have blown off or missing. EG, Missing capacitors, Resisters, Diodes and so on. You can normally see the shiny soldered parts are missing something when the shine has disappeared or it looks like something should have been there. (My guess is that what you are looking for is near the power section of the board.)
If you find some, try bridging it and that might give you some time to recover your data before the drive fails again. A friend at work used to do this to drives that failed and it was successful.
Good luck.
Never thought of that, it makes sense.
That is, considering that Raven hasnt already tossed them out...lets hope not.
There's commercial data recover sites that will pull the platters and recover pretty much anything, even from ones that have been in fires.
Ye$, there are tho$e type$ of companie$...
$eem$ like there wa$ a drawback to u$ing them, though, but I can't quite remember what it wa$...
-Av-
($nake$ go "hi$$$$$$$") :lol:
Quote from: Avatar on May 01, 2008, 11:34:06 AM
Ye$, there are tho$e type$ of companie$...
$eem$ like there wa$ a drawback to u$ing them, though, but I can't quite remember what it wa$...
-Av-
($nake$ go "hi$$$$$$$") :lol:
Cant $ay he would $pend any le$$, paying for the cla$$e$ and whatnot to learn how to do it him$elf.
lol.... you might get the odd :) from time to time.
Another part to look at on the drive board is a fusible link similar to a circuit breaker that auto blows under certain conditions. You'd need a simple circuit tester and a 12 volt power supply. If Raven still has the drives that is and an old PC to test them in as I would not do the operation in my primary system for obvious reasons.
Not long ago my PC refused to boot no matter what I tried. It would go through the process, but after initially reading the drives; it just stopped and all that happened was my system speaker would beep rhythmically and do nothing else. My first thoughts were that my drive too had bit the dust, but after some tinkering with the CMOS and BIOS reset jumpers on the motherboard my system miraculously came back to life again.
Seriously folks I was already planning on having to buy a new PC altogether. For what it's worth...I'd give some serious thought to retrying a few things as suggested considering how much work Raven put into his work...BNG
This is truly weird...my PC failed to boot again, but this time I read on another forum (using another PC at the time) that this problem can happen if stuff like a system speaker wire or other connector wigges loose, and sure enough after I opened the case and reseated any obvious connectors the PC booted just fine. Anyways, backing up your BZII stuff is absolutely essential.