GONE! ALL GONE!!

[Syxx_Killer]

I feel like crying. Last night Windows XP took a dump on me to make a LONG story short. Anywho, today I had to reformat and reinstall. I lost ALL my SH3 mods!! All 4.15 GB of it!!! :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: I lost alot of other data as well. I have been meaning to back it up and have been taking things easy not to risk things. Who would've thought something really simple and mundane would have caused Windows to puke. Looks like I will be spending a LOT of time at terrapin's site later. Now I must get back to reinstalling drivers and programs. :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn:

[Gizzmoe]

I hope that you have learned from it. ;) That shouldn´t happen a second time in your life.

[SmokinTep]

I back up my important stuff regularly.

[Carcassonne]

You have my sympathy man... :cry:

[Nopileo]

You have me deepest sympathies as well! :(

Question to those who know:

I've been meaning to buy 2 identical hard drives the next time I upgrade, and run them as 'mirrored' on my RAID ports. Will this prevent anything like this from happening, or will a Windows 'breakdown' be mirrored onto the hard disks as well, rendering both of them useless for restoring lost data?

[Gizzmoe]

RAID1 only protects you from harddisk failure. If one harddisk dies all the data is still on the second one. I once had a customer who´d thought that RAID1 is a 100% protection, then his PSU died and killed his entire computer. Harddisks, CPU, Board, everything. He also had never made a backup... :roll:

A Windows breakdown will be mirrored. But of course the data can be recovered, simply attach your harddisk to some friends PC as the second harddisk and copy all important data. That would have also worked for Syxx.

Also never use only one partition, create at least two. Don´t store important data on the Windows partition.

[Tuomas.ss]

Why did you have to format your drive? Last time I had to reinstall XP (it totally failed to start anymore) I just deleted the Windows directory and reinstalled.

[Syxx_Killer]

In the past, I have had rather dismal experiences trying to install Windows on an unformatted hard drive. Plus, if I have to reinstall, I might as well start with fresh slate. :-?

[Gizzmoe]

But at least it would have saved your data! :yep:

[Syxx_Killer]

I tried doing a repair to Windows XP. When it installed and I got into Windows, the themes were gone, I could still not connect to the Internet (part of a rapid chain-reaction of events before Windows croked), and when I restarted I could not even log on. It would get to my wallpaper and hang.

In my latest turn of events, the new Nvidia chipset drivers refuse to install properly. I uninstalled the old ones, restarted, then installed the freshly downloaded ones. That somehow affected the ATI drivers (I was going to update them anyway). Everytime I would open Forefox the dumb Nvidia firewall would kick in asking for Firefox's permission to connect. When I would click accept I would get the blue screen of death. I uninstalled the newest drivers and went back to the ones included on my motherboard's CD. I'm going to get rid of the Nvidia firewall and go back to Zone Alarm. I liked Zone Alarm. :damn: :damn:

Maybe it has something to do with the current revision being 6.66. :-? :88)

[kholemann]

Time for a DVD+R

[Syxx_Killer]

Time for a DVD+R

hehe I have one. A DVD+RW drive with dual layer capabilities. I could have sure used a few dual layer DVD+RWs. :oops: :oops: :oops:

[Nopileo]

Time for a DVD+R

Hehe... :cool: Well don't expect it to work if you have SH3 installed, at leat not 'DVD-backup'... :ping:

This depends on type of writer, of course.

[gdogghenrikson]

thats why I have all my mods on a jump drive, But bummer about your harddrive

[Calculon]

Sorry to hear that. If you can, buy yourself an extra HD and use Ghost to make an image on a regular basis. It doesn't take long and you have an exact copy of the drive for safe-keeping.

Once I had a crash with about 2 years worth of files that went bye-bye. ONCE!

[U-104]

I feel like crying. Last night Windows XP took a dump on me to make a LONG story short. Anywho, today I had to reformat and reinstall. I lost ALL my SH3 mods!! All 4.15 GB of it!!! :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: I lost alot of other data as well. I have been meaning to back it up and have been taking things easy not to risk things. Who would've thought something really simple and mundane would have caused Windows to puke. Looks like I will be spending a LOT of time at terrapin's site later. Now I must get back to reinstalling drivers and programs. :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn: :damn:ouch!

[Tuomas.ss]

When these things happen its good to have Windows on it's own partition, that way you can format just that one and keep all other data. Last time I did this I found that most games actually work without their registry entries. Had to reinstall other apps though.

[gws226]

I have a spare 60gig POS that I keep handy for backing up my data. I could probably use something a little bit bigger, but its great to have around in pinch.... and it no longer takes hours and hours to backup to dvd.

[jasonb885]

RAID1 only protects you from harddisk failure. If one harddisk dies all the data is still on the second one. I once had a customer who´d thought that RAID1 is a 100% protection, then his PSU died and killed his entire computer. Harddisks, CPU, Board, everything. He also had never made a backup... :roll:


Completely agree. Always make backups to another device in a different system. When backing up to media, make multiple copies. Store at least one copy offsite. Backups are your friend.

[Damo1977]

:hmm: Me thinks me better start making backups....

[svenks]

Sorry to hear your tal, Syxx...

We have a saying: "Real men don't make backups...but then they cry a lot".

Forget about CD/DVD backups. It takes WAY too long, and there is always the possibility that a small hiccup ruins it. Get yourself a large harddisk, 160-200 GB, an USB-to-IDE cable and power supply or an external cabinet with a fan in it. Here in DK, that would cost you around 1000 DKR = some $150.
You can you XP's own backup (needs to be installed from CD), or I can recommend Paragon Drive Backup. That has saved MY a** more than once. It's not too expensive, and the nice part of it is, that it comes with a rescue CD, which lets you restore a backup without having XP running. It does have a few, minor bugs but I find it is worth it!

EDIT: Gizz is absolutely right about RAID1. It only protects you from exactly 1 kind of failure: The chrash of one of the disks. Also, you need a RAID controller to be able to do this. XP can't do it, unless you want to hack a couple of the system files...No, well I thought so..

BRGDS
Sven

[ICBM]

Auch man, I've been there as well, lost an entire drive full of my beloved music, movies and other important stuf due a very rare FAT table failure. :-? I was ready to kill someone!

I bought another HD + an external USB drive.
XP + progs & Games on drive 1, important stuff on drive 2, and the USBdrive mirroring #2 with SeccondCopy 2000: auto backup.

That RAID stuff is to cumbersome and prone to failure imho, this is much easyer. (and cheaper since you don't really need duplicate HD's)

NEVER trust Hard Drives!

[redstorm101]

I feel for for you...Hope you get it running smooth and soon.... :|\

[Mr.Werner]

Windows xp sucks, that's why you should do like me and only use WIN 95. :up:
Sure I can't play SH3, but who needs that when you can play AOD!

[Kpt. Lehmann]

... been there... done that.... got the T-Shirt....

You have my sincerest sympathies. :(

[Syxx_Killer]

Thanks guys. I'm getting there. I pretty much have most of my mods redownloaded and unzipped. There are still a couple that I am searching for, though. I guess in a sort of deranged way, it is good that I lost the mods. It didn't take me that long to regain most of what I lost and it allowed me to streamline my collection. There were a lot of mods from the older patch versions that I knew I wouldn't use anymore. With mods being updated, I let them kind of clutter up.