Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: USRanger on May 25, 2011, 08:40:39 PM

Title: Starting over
Post by: USRanger on May 25, 2011, 08:40:39 PM
   A couple weeks ago I joined the brotherhood of those whose hard drive has crashed.  My pc became stuck in a nonstop loop of reboot, error, reboot, error, etc.  The only way to get it working again was to do a destructive restore, which took my pc back to the day it came out of the box.As a result, I lost every program file I had, including ALL of my AH stuff.  Everything.  Those that "know" me here can only imagine how much AH stuff that was.  Years of terrains, skins, offline missions, sounds, films, ect, all gone.  I bought 3 different programs that help to retrieve files after a reformat, but sadly, only one terrain file made it through.  It's pretty frikkin' heartbreaking.

   Anyhoo, I'm ready to begin starting over rebuilding my AH warehouse.  Gonna take some time (it was 9 years worth of stuff!).  The purpose of this thread is to tell anyone who I've promised a terrain, skin, mission, sounds update, etc. to, it's gonna be seriously delayed and I just wanted to apologize for that.  This really sucks.  Luckily, my project lineup is all safely in my bbs PMs, so I still have that to go by.

   To anyone who's ever had a fatal hard drive crashed & lost everything, I  :salute you, because even though I've read about it happening to many people here over the years, I never realized what a traumatic experience it can be.

(http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/124/wambulance.gif) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/wambulance.gif/) <--I'm calling 'er in for myself this time.  Me sad. :( 



Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: B4Buster on May 25, 2011, 08:44:25 PM
Sorry to hear that, Ranger. Hundreds of hours of work gone. Same thing happened to me last year, but I didn't have nearly as much to lose as you.

You'll get it all back though. Surely you backed some things up on third party sites or with a thumb drive?
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: M0nkey_Man on May 25, 2011, 08:45:24 PM
 :cry
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: AceHavok on May 25, 2011, 08:46:52 PM
Sorry to hear about that, Ranger.  :salute
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: gyrene81 on May 25, 2011, 08:50:53 PM
sorry ranger...tough break bud, i know how you feel.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: flatiron1 on May 25, 2011, 09:20:32 PM
mosy.com is a free backup system, might have helped
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: BaldEagl on May 25, 2011, 10:52:24 PM
Ranger,

Buy a second hard drive and a $10-15 external enclosure for it (USB).  Periodically mirror your drive to it.  If it happens again just mirror back from the external to the main drive.  Boom.  Right back where you were.

BTW, GetDataBack should have recovered your files but you have to do it the first time.  If you don't do it the first time you'll lose a large percentage of what could have been recovered.  I used it to save thousands of files on a bad drive.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: CAP1 on May 25, 2011, 11:10:53 PM
if there's anyone in this game that does not deserve this to happen....it's you sir.


good luck. any way any of us can help?
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: Husky01 on May 25, 2011, 11:20:52 PM
 :(
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: TequilaChaser on May 25, 2011, 11:23:37 PM
I too am sad to hear of your misfortunes, Ranger......... I can seriously imagine all the AH files you have lost and it would be mind numbing for most to realize how much you really lost

one thing that might help you is if you shared any files in the past with other community members, if they might could send you copies of files, textures, skins, etc.. or create a list of stuff and an upload portal to an FTP server to possibly help you gain some stuff back at a quicker pace.......... I know this would only be a limited amount, but any amount is something


wish ya the best, Sir!


TC
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: Vudu15 on May 26, 2011, 12:52:59 AM
setting my backup right now.......
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: Max on May 26, 2011, 06:01:34 AM
Another simple solution is Carbonite.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: oboe on May 26, 2011, 06:16:00 AM
Sorry for your troubles, USRanger.  Good lesson for us all on the need for backups.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: JimmyC on May 26, 2011, 06:52:52 AM
I salute your demeanour
You sound pissed but taking it in your stride
You have contributed to AH above and beyond
Suppose it's a new start
Good luck sir
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: 321BAR on May 26, 2011, 07:02:32 AM
mosy.com is a free backup system, might have helped
if it's tied to the internet then people hack it and take all personal info to wherever they want
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: Shuffler on May 26, 2011, 09:10:55 AM
Too bad you did not alert us on here. You should have installed a new drive then restored the system or removed the damaged drive and and slaved it in another machine to get your files.

It could have been as easy as restoring the boot sector on the drive. In any case the files probably could have been saved.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: ToeTag on May 26, 2011, 09:21:31 AM
Too bad you did not alert us on here. You should have installed a new drive then restored the system or removed the damaged drive and and slaved it in another machine to get your files.

It could have been as easy as restoring the boot sector on the drive. In any case the files probably could have been saved.

I tried this when mine crashed.  upon reboot it wiped the fresh install on the new drive. I saw my files for a second and blue screen. 
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: ImADot on May 26, 2011, 10:06:15 AM
Too bad you did not alert us on here. You should have installed a new drive then restored the system or removed the damaged drive and and slaved it in another machine to get your files.

It could have been as easy as restoring the boot sector on the drive. In any case the files probably could have been saved.

There was a big thread in the Hardware/Software forum on this.  Bad news is I think it's Ranger's only PC, and he couldn't even fire it up to log in and post a help question.  The only way he knew to get it to boot was to use the recovery partition/cd to factory-new his system.  By that time it was pretty much too late.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: Shuffler on May 26, 2011, 01:18:58 PM
I tried this when mine crashed.  upon reboot it wiped the fresh install on the new drive. I saw my files for a second and blue screen. 

That will not happen automatically. I have used these methods for years repairing systems and culling files from damaged drives.

Only drive I ever had to send out was one that the plates froze.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: ink on May 26, 2011, 01:55:09 PM
sux Ranger.....bad.
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: USRanger on May 26, 2011, 10:15:13 PM
Thanks all for the kind words.  I'll get started rebuilding this weekend.  Gonna feel strange downloading my own stuff lol.

 :salute
Title: Re: Starting over
Post by: Shuffler on May 27, 2011, 09:28:52 AM
Thanks all for the kind words.  I'll get started rebuilding this weekend.  Gonna feel strange downloading my own stuff lol.

 :salute

True that lol