don't you love it when your computer craps out on you?

[Straight Edge Ryan]

and you lose 300+ GB of data including (but not limited to) music, art work, games, program settings, pictures and school documents?

Get this, my computer breaks so I take it to get fixed, 5 days later the dudes at the repair place call me and tell me the drives were too badly damaged so they had to wipe everything clean, huge bummer. SO I try to look on the bright side, I had a lot of stuff backed up on an external hard drive, but it turns out the most recent back up was from December '08. OK so I lost a lot of stuff that I can't get back but at least I got some, so I'm still trying to look on the bright side. So I run the restore from the external hard drive and in the process I apparently restore some registry and set up files that conflict with the new ones which means MY COMPUTER CRASHED AGAIN, NOT ONLY ON THE SAME DAY, BUT ON THE VERY AFTERNOON THAT I GOT IT BACK

Which of course means I must now vent my frustration on a concept art site. If one more thing goes wrong I'm gonna hulk out on the entire neighborhood

Y'know sometimes I swear I can hear god laughing at me

[rossipoo]

I hate my damn computer as well, its really slow, but i don't have the money to get a new one. It's a 2005 Dell XPS, it was fast, but now its ZZZ, ( dont say pr0n :) ) I get really fustrated when im trying to paint on photoshop and it gives you a 3-10 second delay in between strokes, it just interrupts your mood to paint.
But why dont you just get a new computer

[FourTonMantis]

But why dont you just get a new computer

I think a better question is...

Why don't you?

[XanaChama]

rossipoo, I'm assumed you've reformatted recently. If you're on a very old OS install, you can expect your computer to be slow. Sometimes maintenance isn't enough.

[Straight Edge Ryan]

Well my computers still good, damn good in fact (when it works haha) it was built for gaming and at this point it would be cheaper to fix it than get a new one. But I guess the bright side of this situation is that by this point everything is wiped, and when your computers broken everyones main fear is "oh god I hope I don't lose everything" and I already lost everything so technically I have nowhere to go but up, so to speak

oh just a tip for PC people who's computers are running slow:

-click Start>Run>type in "CHKDSK" and let it run

-frequently run the Disk Defragmenter (should be in your control panel, just use the search feature if you can't find it)

-also frequently run "Disc Cleaner" (also in the control panel)

also be sure to run any anti-virus or computer maintenance programs like McAfee or System Mechanic. Everything above are standard things with PCs that a lot of people don't seem to know about, you'd be amazed how much better your computer will work if you do them regularly

[TASmith]

I just had a similar experience. Hope isn't lost yet. You can find companies that'll read your old harddrive and recover what they can. It can be expensive. It's costing me around 560 Euros. Hopefully I should get my data back today. Long story short, back up everything at least 5 times, on the internet when you can, and don't reformat - see what other options are available first.

[Flake]

Yeah, mine died a couple of months back, you may have noticed less noise in the lounge.

I was able to swap out the HD and reinstall the OS, then put the frazzled old drive into the secondary channel and grab what I could from it, which was actually about 80-100 gigs of uncorrupted stuff.

Thing is, apps can be reinstalled, cds re-ripped , sketches re scanned etc the one that would have made me all "Noooooo" would have been all the holiday photos but they came through fine. \o/ (then I remembered they were still on the card in the camera, but still..)

Computers will do this when you least expect it. If you can't afford to lose it back it up.

Also Ryan, don't go back to that repair shop. There's a bunch of stuff they should have tried before wiping it, they're more time consuming but they should have been able to get something off your drives if they were still readable. (and If they installed a clean OS to the same drive, they probably were.)

[Baron Impossible]

I got a new custom PC delivered yesterday after waiting two weeks. Fine, except the retards at the delivery company had decided to throw it on the ground and jump on it or something - totally trashed. So back it went and now I'm awaiting a second try. Can't blame the suppliers, they have been spot on and it was obviously well-built, it's the warehouse monkeys that need a good kicking.

[Parka81]

Alway backup.

I've the OS on a partition and data on another (2nd) harddisk. Then I backup my data on an external (3rd) harddisk.

Having that sense of loss is bad.

[rossipoo]

I think a better question is...

Why don't you?

Lol uh.. in my post i told you i didn't have enough money to get a new one :/

[Liz Edwards]

I feel your pain :(

I was worried about my main harddrive 3 months ago because it made some funny noises. So I bought a new one and backed everything up onto it. I ran out of room on my main drive so I thought, HMMM they are both working fine, how about I delete everything on my main drive I have two of so I have more room? What could possibly go wrong!

My secondary drive died and I almost lost everything -_- I'm not sure how, but I was able to access it for long enough to get my art and some photos off. I guess that was the last straw for it because it's dead now. I don't think there's any way of recovering the rest of the data without sending it off to a data recovery place that I can't afford. I'm just glad it wasn't my OS drive so my PC still works. My own stupid fault, but I didnt expect a brand new, decent brand name drive to die on me :(

[Black Spot]

I managed to delete a vital operating file when tidying up my computer, and made it run like walking waist deep in mud. Luckily I managed to back up everything before doing a total restore. Making a list of all the programmes I’d downloaded was a pain. It took two days to get everything back as it was. And then there was the time I looked at my RAM and managed to put it back in the wrong way only to fry the motherboard – I thought computer bits were supposed to be idiot proof. Still haven’t lost any data – touch wood, but I do back up fairly often.

[jhofferle]

Hardware can fail at any time. I've had hard drives fail a couple days after opening the box and I still have working hard drives from ten years ago. Just because a computer is brand new doesn't mean it's any less likely to fail. Most of the data loss I see is from people that store a lot on USB flash drives. They tend to forget to back these up.

Test your backups. There are dozens of stories about IT departments that backup data religiously, but lose everything because they fail to test the restoration of those backups.

Create multiple backup sets. The most common and simplest way to make backups is to just copy your files to another place, like an external hard drive. I have seen many small companies run a job every night that copies their data to a second drive, overwriting the previous day's files. The problem was that bad memory started corrupting data and they were left with two copies of irrecoverable documents. If you have the space, keep multiple backups so you can restore a file from a week ago, month ago, six months ago, etc.

Use offsite storage. One thing to consider is the complete loss or theft of your computer. If your backups are sitting on your desk, they won't do much good if your house burns down. I burn my irreplaceable stuff to a DVD every month or two and store it in a safe deposit box.

Not all data recovery services are created equal. If you do end up taking your failed drive somewhere to attempt to recover data, most shops only have specialized software that is able to recover corrupted files from a drive that still works. If something is physically wrong with your drive to the point that it can no longer be recognized by an operating system, then the data recovery shop needs to be equipped with a clean room and equipment to disassemble and repair the drive. This is far more expensive and usually only used by companies that stand to lose a lot of money if they lose their data.

[DuneFishUK]

I got a new custom PC delivered yesterday after waiting two weeks. Fine, except the retards at the delivery company had decided to throw it on the ground and jump on it or something - totally trashed. So back it went and now I'm awaiting a second try. Can't blame the suppliers, they have been spot on and it was obviously well-built, it's the warehouse monkeys that need a good kicking.

Wasn't TNT a delivery was it? - helped unload a 40 odd Dell XPSs for a job at at work the other week. They were stacked about 6 high in the truck, but the stacks of boxes had fallen over in transit and they were all over the place. Then the guy started throwing them and slamming them down.... Not my money luckily.. but bloody hell... :wtf:

[MiniGoth]

:( Sorry to hear that. My old alienware died a while ago - I was computerless for two months and still transferring files from the old hard drives.

[LORD M]

Sorry to hear it man. The same thing happened to me some years ago, and since then I have a back-up harddrive which I update like once a month, just in case.

[VulgarDragon]

Or get an extra computer and add a second hard drive to both. I have three computers all networked together...so I back up all my stuff on each of them...so if one croaks, there's always another one. Hard drives aren't like what they used to be...my brand new Seagate drive died after a few months, and fortunately, I didn't have much on it anyway.
I came to own several computers because when I upgraded and built a new one, I kept the old one as a backup.

[Flake]

Hardware can fail at any time. I've had hard drives fail a couple days after opening the box and I still have working hard drives from ten years ago. Just because a computer is brand new doesn't mean it's any less likely to fail.

True.

I've seen that cranky old drive that always made funny noises last 5-10 years and the new uber-silent expensive high speed vast cache drive fail out of the box.

Computers are not your friend, do not trust them. At best they are a collaborator.

[Straight Edge Ryan]

Yeah what's bad is for months I've been saying to myself "y'know, it's been a while since I've backed everything up, I should really do that" but of course me and my procrastination didn't, and now I'm paying the price for it. Oh well, least I'll know to be better about it in the future

That's what I hate about computers though, they're such a huge part of everyones every day life, they can hold things essential to your job, family, relationships, anything realy, but they can still break at any time for any reason without warning. That and at times they're kind of like working with a really smart guy with absolutely no people skills and occasional short term memory loss who keeps coming up and saying "oh hey man you should install that update" "oh I should? ok then I'll download it" "oh hey man that update didn't download right, you want me to come back in 3 minutes and remind you so we can repeat this conversation" "what? no man that'd just be annoying as hell and it serves no logical purpose" "oh ok cool. I'll be back in 3 minutes then"

[odetososa]

The computer can always be replaced, however, it's the ideas and time you've put into
the files, mostly workfiles I guess, that can disappear forever.

If you're reading this, ask yourself when you last made a backup.

I do HD and DVD backups at least.

If you've ever lost a file, I feel ya.

[Bushido]

Sorry to hear this, im really paranoid about it.

Thats why i love to paint in oils !

And yeah make dvd backups can help a lot

Or have 2 HD with the same info

[callyK]

One more paranoid here. I usually burn everything onto DVD so I will have them all.

[Brashen]

Just hookup your pc to a server that downloads everything once a month to separate HDs. very inexpensive to build for the safety you get.

[Flake]

Nothing is bulletproof.

Downloading your entire HD to an offsite server looks secure.
Until the data on your first HD corrupts and you just overwrote your backup with junk.

Incremental saves to as many locations as you can think of are the safe route.

Spare HD, DVD backup, Online storage, MP3 player, Post the cds to your gran?
Cool.
The more of them you've done the safer you are.