15 years.....gone. Thanks Windows.

[Ginsu Victim]

Just have to vent a moment....

I went to install a new video card and was having some problems I couldn't figure out, so I did the easiest thing....I reinstalled windows xp.

It said it was installing to c:\windows and I told it to format my C: so I could start fresh. Well, somehow it decided that the C: was now an E: and it wiped out my entire 250GB drive and over fifteen years worth of files. I'm in the process of trying to recover as much as possible, but I lost a LOT of stuff. Might as well have been a house fire, because there's so much I can't get back.

Up yours, windows!

[missioncontrol]

one word..


Regular backups

[Blanka]

Never ever install a new OS without having all documents in a second and a third place.

[ChadTower]

Ow... ow.

Always disconnect data storage drives when making OS changes.  Don't store valuable data on your OS drive with Windows.  Keep them physically separate - not even separate partitions, keep the valuable stuff on a drive you can unplug when there is potential danger.

[Ginsu Victim]

one word..


Regular backups

Sound like my wife after this happened.

I'm constantly burning stuff off, but it was always the big files that were taking up a lot of room. Documents, pictures, and small, hard-to-replace programs were the main losses.

[Ginsu Victim]

 Don't store valuable data on your OS drive with Windows.  Keep them physically separate - not even separate partitions, keep the valuable stuff on a drive you can unplug when there is potential danger.

Totally different hard drive. Never had a problem like this before, and like I said, it told me it was going to c:\windows, and when it was done, it was now on E: and my C: was untouched (of course, I moved all the important files from C: over to E: before formatting, so there's nothing left on C: even though it didn't get touched)

[FrizzleFried]

I picked up a 1TB removable drive just for this kinda stuff.  I've got an image of my main computer, and all 3 MAME computers in the garage.  I try to keep it at least 90 days current... though 90 days of stuff lost would suck too.

Screw messing with DVD's etc.  Removable HD's are so cheap now-a-days it's hard not to justify the purchase.

[Ginsu Victim]

I mean, hey, I'm totally at fault here for not taking better precautions, but the least it could've done was formatted and installed on the correct drive.

[ChadTower]

And most people can get away with much much smaller than a TB.  Frizz is backing up stuff that is replaceable but would be a PITA.  If you limit that to just data you cannot recover you'd be surprised how little that tends to be.  Movies, music, etc are all nice to have but it's really just the financial stuff, family photos, the stuff that is yours that absolutely must be backed up.

[Ginsu Victim]

First thing my wife said is, "You lost my photos?!?"

Luckily, it looks like those I'll be able to recover.

[saint]

Painful lesson I know. C: doesn't mean anything, it's the drive number and partition to pay attention to. Sorry man.

What I do is have a server on the network that I copy files off to periodically. That's primary backup. Then really important files, such as family pictures that are only digital, get copied to my thumb drive or portable hard drive, and brought to work and copied onto my work machine. Multiple backups in different locations FTW.

[Ginsu Victim]

Painful lesson I know. C: doesn't mean anything, it's the drive number and partition to pay attention to. Sorry man.

Yes, I found this out the hard way. I totally should've paid attention to the drive size. 40 GB IDE vs 250 GB SATA

[saint]

And most people can get away with much much smaller than a TB.  Frizz is backing up stuff that is replaceable but would be a PITA.  If you limit that to just data you cannot recover you'd be surprised how little that tends to be.  Movies, music, etc are all nice to have but it's really just the financial stuff, family photos, the stuff that is yours that absolutely must be backed up.

I have 34 gigs of family photos, and that doesn't include the many years of photos that haven't been scanned yet.

2004 - Roughly 6000 photos, 8 gigs
2005 - 3200 photos, 3.6 gigs
2006 - 2700 photos, 5 gigs
2007 - 5500 photos taken, 8 gigs

At this rate, terabyte isn't too far off...

[ChadTower]

That is way higher than average, though.  And it's still a longass way from 34g to over 1000.  At 8 gig a year you'll never see it unless you start scanning stuff at >600dpi or start ripping video.

[Blanka]

I would never post it here. Dig your head under the sand. Walk it against a lamp post. Whatever, but don't tell others. Its soo dumb, hearing the truth from more people than just from your wife (take care of your own pictures CENSORED BY SAINT - READ RULE #2 it manager!) is sadomasochism.

[Ginsu Victim]

Oh, I totally deserve a beatdown for being an idiot, so I came here to take it.

[Blanka]

What I wanted to say, is that those wives always expect you, the man, to take care of their computer stuff! They just trash all CENSORED BY SAINT - READ RULE #2 files in one directory. Just give her the bricked HD and tell her to fix it herself 
Then when she starts wining, just say: "Hi love, do you love me for rescuing 90% of your stuff. It was a hell of a job, but I did it for you bunny!"

[Ginsu Victim]

She never touches the computer. I think I have her scared to touch it.

I just asked work if I could borrow an external HD for the weekend, so this will help things go a little smoother.

[lanman31337]

Have you tried any data recovery software?

[Malenko]

i just uplad my pictures to arcade controls, saint provides my online back up.
I know the loss of an errant format, I lost alot of Exgirlfriend/exfiance porn once......


luckily part of it was backed up to DVD

[Ginsu Victim]

Have you tried any data recovery software?

Yep. I'll be recovering everything it managed to find when I get home tonight.

[ChadTower]

Let us know if you find the rest of Malenko's ex-porn.

[Xiaou2]

 You may wish to consider yourself Lucky.  Hard drives fail eventually, and unless you
are willing to spend over $3000 for professional recovery... then you would be
just as messed over... if not much worse.

 With a recovery program you can get back most of the data.   Once you do get it
back.. get a 2nd hard drive in which you back up the data to it monthly.

 Dont back up to CDs/DVDs!  Rewritable discs are known to fail as the materials break
down over a short time.  Usually less than 10yrs span.  Not to mention that optical formats
become obsolete so fast its not funny.

[XyloSesame]

hey, ginsu, i'm in tulsa - pm if you need any help with your recovery/forensics apps...

[Ginsu Victim]

hey, ginsu, i'm in tulsa - pm if you need any help with your recovery/forensics apps...

Appreciate the offer, but I think I'll do alright. (BTW, I've been in OK since '91 and I've never been to Tulsa. Several hours away and I've never had a reason to go.)

[ark_ader]

Depends on how you view 15 years.

If it was precious - I'd take the drive to a professional.

If it was oops i learn't my lesson - try to recover it yourself.

Remember recovering data is one thing. Recovering data using the wrong tools will make it worse, or near impossible to get back.

I would start thinking of getting a NAS or a USB external.  I have both and use HDD for archival use.  At the end of the day its cheaper to store on HDD than burning to DVD.  I had to recover and destroy 1000 DVDs with film stock I created with my video camera.  It took two weeks non stop getting it off the discs.

 

[Grasshopper]

Ow... ow.

Always disconnect data storage drives when making OS changes.  Don't store valuable data on your OS drive with Windows.  Keep them physically separate - not even separate partitions, keep the valuable stuff on a drive you can unplug when there is potential danger.

I totally agree with this. It’s the only way to be sure.

A few months ago I set up a dual boot Windows XP/Linux system. I already had XP on my main hard disk and didn’t want to risk shrinking the XP partition. So I decided to put Linux on a smaller secondary hard disk I had lying around. I physically disconnected the XP drive and then changed the BIOS disk boot sequence before installing Linux on the second disk. I then reconnected the XP disk, put the BIOS settings back to what they were, and manually set up a dual boot system using Grub for DOS. It was a lot of extra work, and took a bit of trial and error to get right, but was absolutely worth it.

You simply cannot trust Windows. Another obnoxious “feature” of the OS is that it has a habit of silently writing over the MBR. This is OK if Windows is the only OS on your computer but it can screw up a dual boot system.

[SavannahLion]

You simply cannot trust Windows. Another obnoxious “feature” of the OS is that it has a habit of silently writing over the MBR. This is OK if Windows is the only OS on your computer but it can screw up a dual boot system.

That was the only reason I stayed with floppies for so damn long. It was less effort to keep a small 3.5 half in a drive than it was to mess with a trashed MBR every time Windows decided it knew my box better than I did.

[Level42]

[ChadTower]

Those commercials make me want to buy a Mac and destroy it yelling "WHY DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE DIE HARD IV SUCK SO BAD?!  IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!  KEEP KEVIN SMITH OUT OF MY ACTION MOVIES!"

[Ginsu Victim]

Level42:
I was wondering how long it would take you to say it.

[leapinlew]

Ouch!

I learned this lesson once. When I format a computer nowadays, I make sure the only drive in it is the drive I intend on formatting.

Luckily, my lesson didn't have as high of a price.

[danny_galaga]

Painful lesson I know. C: doesn't mean anything, it's the drive number and partition to pay attention to. Sorry man.

What I do is have a server on the network that I copy files off to periodically. That's primary backup. Then really important files, such as family pictures that are only digital, get copied to my thumb drive or portable hard drive, and brought to work and copied onto my work machine. Multiple backups in different locations FTW.

here here. i keep a complete backup on a secondary hard drive, but also a USB hard drive. kept away from the computer. we getted burgled, ive still got the drive. we have a fire, its the first thing im grabbing. im in the process of scanning old pics too. it would suck to lose all that work.

bummer ginsu, you had the right idea in a separate hard drive. weird, weird windows. time to switch to mac or linux 

[patrickl]

bummer ginsu, you had the right idea in a separate hard drive. weird, weird windows. time to switch to mac or linux 

I don't know about a Mac, but Linux is just as dangerous.

Still the whole point is moot. If you depend on a single hard disk for your important files then you can only blame yourself. Hard disks fail, it's only a matter of when. Or that you click yes when it asks you to format the wrong drive.

[Space Fractal]

Linux is worse than Windows about data loss, when something went wrong on the hardrive. If you fortmat in Linux, the change to recover a formatted drive is same as 0. On Windows only index is really formatted, and you can still recover files with a recover applications which typical cost around 30-50$. Try the demos of them first, if they can find the files, then it whould recover them with the full version. Demo versions typical max recover 64kb of each file.

Make Sure NOT to write ANYTHING on the harddrive, because the demanged files might been overwrite, so you need second harddrive to move your files to.

[fjl]

I formatted the wrong hard drive once. Luckily it was back when I was first starting computers and didn't have that much info to lose. If that happens now, I'd die. I have way too much important stuff to lose.

I took the same advice as someone already mentioned. I run two hard drives. One for windows and one for all my files. And everytime I reinstall windows, I make sure to unplug my files hard drive first

[Jess--]

getdataback will be able to recover most of what was on the drive (and stuff you had delete beforehand)
they do versions for ntfs and for fat.

that software has got me and friends out of problems many times

[DaOld Man]

Errr.. Saint, what in the world have you been taking so many pictures of?
You are not CIA or a Man in Black are you?
Or is it better if I know nothing?

[Ginsu Victim]

Been working on this crap all day...

I recovered most of what I needed to recover, but I tried the new video card (my other one mysteriously died and wasn't even a year old) I was having the problem with and it still has the problem, so this was all for nothing! It's a motherboard issue!

---fudgesicle--- ME! Now I gotta buy a new mobo, processor, etc.

[Level42]

Yeah......life sucks.


May soon sell my Mac Mini. Really tired of it. It's too boring. You just use it, and use it, and use it, and never do I need to do a virus-scan. Or update the virus-scanner. Or defragment my drives. Or run a myriad of malware/spyware scanners. Or update my drivers. Or make back-ups (soooo boring, Time machine is doing it all for me.....). Or....

Yeah.....that Mini is going out.

So I can get a nice new iMac.

O and Ginsu.....enjoy your tea !