I had a sad day last week... My entire hard drive got wiped.

[Timstuff]

All of my arcade machine art is gone now, except for the vector file I made of Solid Snake that I made a long time ago which I uploaded to the Arcade Art Achive ages ago. I am very dissapointed about all this, but there's not really anything I can do to recover the files (which includes the Ryu vs. Sub-Zero CPO that I labored for over a month to make). I guess my only choice now is to start over, but it still sucks to have all my work go up in smoke.

[dema]

Aw man. That totally sucks. I'm sorry to hear that. Is there a way you could retrieve the sub-zero/ryu file from your upload here and then try to vectorize it?

[subcriminal]

How'd you mean it got wiped? Like accidentally formatted  or just not booting? If it has some really bad blocks that stop it from booting run spinrite 6 on it overnight and see if it'll recover any lost data. Then you can back it up and bin it! Post a bit more info on what happened, maybe theres a way to reverse it. There are a lot of people who know how to get stuff back off dead or wiped drives  (Not me tho, I've just had good results from SpinRite!)

[dennis808]

Hang in there buddy, unless the drive got nuked, there is still hope...

check out: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139

I've been there, twice, and recovered a lot using a Knoppix bootcd.

[Timstuff]

How'd you mean it got wiped? Like accidentally formatted  or just not booting? If it has some really bad blocks that stop it from booting run spinrite 6 on it overnight and see if it'll recover any lost data. Then you can back it up and bin it! Post a bit more info on what happened, maybe theres a way to reverse it. There are a lot of people who know how to get stuff back off dead or wiped drives  (Not me tho, I've just had good results from SpinRite!)

Basically, whenever I try to acsess the drive (Drive D, slave) it says it hasn't been formatted. I have know clue how it all started, but the day it started was a few minutes after I finished installing Half-Life 2 GOTY edition. We haven't told it to re-format yet because we're still trying to decide what the best course of action is. Is there any way we can recover all the stuff from it?

[xar256]

Try GetDataBack, It's awsome, and more often than not has been able to retrieve files from dead hard drives for me...The demo will at the very least tell you if it can retrieve anything...

Good luck bud...It's never a fun situation
Xar256

[Pez4Brains]

Gross...Been there and done that.  Generally speaking though I've had a lot of luck getting things off of drives that windows just can't read with software so long as the drive isn't making a loud clicking noise about once a second.  Physical crashes are a little out of my scope unless you want to try shoving it in the freezer but that's sort of a last ditch kind of thing.  Anyway, here's two programs you might find as useful as I have.

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm is free, and quite good at doing what it says it can do.

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/ has gone up quite a bit (like $40) in price since I bought a copy, but it's worked some wonders for me.  As with the program from the last post, you can try it and it'll tell you what you can get before you buy it.

I wouldn't recommend running anything that offers to "repair" the drive just yet, it's best to just stick to passive scanning and copying for now rather than ending up with at best thousands of lost files without names or extensions and no chance of matching things back.  Drop a line if you need anything else, or even with just an update.

Oh yeah, and good luck.

[dennis808]

Check out this easy tutorial on how to copy your data to another drive using a free boot-cd called Knoppix:
http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/
It helps if you know in what way the corrupted drive was formatted; FAT32 or NTFS.

As you see, a lot of us have been there before, so you just hang in there...

[Timstuff]

Wow, thanks for all the advice guys! I'll be sure to try some of those this afternoon when I've got access to my main computer.

[Nipedley]

I've had this trouble *3* times before, Windows likes to do it after every time I install it. The way I fix it is using Acronis Disk Director Suite, they have a fully functional free trial too. Might wanna check it out =).

[Timstuff]

Try GetDataBack, It's awsome, and more often than not has been able to retrieve files from dead hard drives for me...The demo will at the very least tell you if it can retrieve anything...

Good luck bud...It's never a fun situation
Xar256

I tried the free trial, and it looks as though pretty much all the files on the D drive will be recoverable if I regester it. YESSSS! Thank you to everyone who offered advice in this thread, you all helped me a ton! It's such a relief to know I'll be able to get my work back.

[Brain_stealer]

All of my arcade machine art is gone now, except for the vector file I made of Solid Snake that I made a long time ago which I uploaded to the Arcade Art Achive ages ago. I am very dissapointed about all this, but there's not really anything I can do to recover the files (which includes the Ryu vs. Sub-Zero CPO that I labored for over a month to make). I guess my only choice now is to start over, but it still sucks to have all my work go up in smoke.

Nothing to worry about, your data is still safe in your hard drive but you are not able to see or access it. If data has not been overwritten 100% data can be recovered. Try using some of the data recovery software. The Best one which I can suggest is Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS. Download the demo version from the site http://www.stellarinfo.com. The demo version shows the recovered data. To save the data buy the software. Hope this software recover your 100% data if it is not damaged.

[Lutus]

Brain, did you register here at the forum and then post on a topic that was concluded in January?

LOL, not busting your chops, just thought it was kinda funny. 

[pcates]

Brain, did you register here at the forum and then post on a topic that was concluded in January?

LOL, not busting your chops, just thought it was kinda funny. 

At least we know he is trying to read the old stuff before posting questions that have already been answered

[Lutus]

Dang, I just got put in my place. 

But you are right, at least he did not come on here and ask....

"What is the best joystick?"

[hypernova]

But he's answering a question, and had no question of his own...how did he come upon answering that thread???  What was he searching for?

[NightGod]

This thread reminds me of an crucial saying:

"The only important data is data that has been backed up."