Today one of my worst WorldWorks design fears was realized. I’m sure this will bring a smile to the faces of my few adversarial competitors out there…

My computer had been acting up over the past few weeks, chugging along, getting slower and slower…and slower. I did all the usual things, checking for spy ware, adware, viruses, Trojans, hardware and software conflicts, changed drivers, cleaned things up, altered file structures for efficiency, ran f-disk, defragged and Norton’d up the ying yang. All of this and things continued running in a suspect manner.

Late last month my CDRW destroyed two backup discs by spinning them at over 28,000 RPM, literally exploding the CD’s in my tower. Luckily that thin sheet of metal was there to protect me or I would have had CD shrapnel embedded in my skull (Nope it‘s not a Myth…this really happens with some burners). I promptly removed the CDRW and ordered a new DVDRW online. Because my computer had been acting up recently I was really hoping the thing would show up so I could back up some precious files just in case. Then it happened…

I was finally getting back into ‘Streets of Himmelveil’ production after setting up the office in anticipation of Paul’s arrival. Life was starting to level out and we were getting settled into a bit of a work rhythm. As I pulled up some of the SOH files I had been working on in previous months I noticed that some of my filters in Photoshop had completely disappeared. This was something I had never seen happen in all my geeky computer years. After a quick reboot I received a devastating blue screen of death (a “STOP: 0X0000007b” error). This error can mean many things but after several failed reboots and some more error messages it was discovered that my hard drive had completely failed.

Panic…anger…reflection…anger…“What did I lose?”…astonishment…”No not that!”…denial…”Yup, that”…insane laughter…tight ball in chest…anger………acceptance.

I can’t even begin to relate to you all that I lost in that hardware failure but the thing that hurt most of all was about a month of work on ‘Streets of Himmelveil’. There is no lesson to be learned here, I was doing what I could to back up the files and they were even on a separate partition. Time and money were against me on this one only receiving my new burner today (24 hours too late). So as it stands now I have many SOH prototypes sitting here but the pain and agony really revolves around the countless hours spent texturing lost forever in a digital vacuum. Is there a place in heaven for dead files?

Just thought I would share this morbid bit of news as I sit here on my laptop starring at my main computer and the blue screen of death. What is SOH’s fate? Why did this ultimately happen? I’ll have to go with my Mothers favourite saying when things go black “Everything happens for a reason”. I hope it’s a good reason as I swallow the loss and start again from square one.

There is a very small chance that I can come in the backdoor of a certain partition once I get my new hard drive up and running. I’ll keep you posted.

I was there and saw the BSOD. Ouch.

That is truely awful... How tried any of the disk recovery programs out there? I had to ask, just in case you didn't...

Suggestions:







Good luck. I recommend chocolate to help ease the pain.

I second (third?) the thought of taking the drive to a professional. Its often amazing what can be gotten off of hard drives that appear 100% completely dead.

I also highly recommend an external USB hard drive. They're pretty cheap now ($150 for 200G+ drives, I believe), incredibly easy to use, and are great for backups, especially scheduled ones. There is a cool little free program called Syncback that you can quickly and easily setup drive syncs (ie, backups), with rules about what to overwrite, delete, etc on the backups. I've used it personally and professionally for a few years. Look here:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/

Denny,
That is all kinds of suck. Last year I burned out a hard drive after putting in several months of image retouching into some 70 year old family photos. Power surge burned through the surge protector and fried the drive.
The data recovery services are generally excellent, but costly. Until you consider how many hours/days/months have gone into your project...then it doesn't seem too costly anymore. If the slave option doesn't work because the platter won't drop or spin, seriously consider forking out the cash to have a service recover your work.
Ever,
Jon

Jeeez....that's a bummer. I third what others have suggested about recovery services, and I also second what Robby said about backing up to an USB HDD.

I hope you get it all sorted out, Denny. I hate losing work, and I'd be very discouraged if it happened to me.

-Mel

CCotD'

I don't want to pour any salt on your wound, but I gotta say that I cringed when I read that "There is no lesson to be learned here." As other people have been mentioning, they are many other/better backup solutions than burning to CDs. (Re-writeable no less! Never overwrite a back-up!) Either spend a little now or spend a lot later when you take it to a professional recovery service. I say this not to mock you but to encourage you to invest in these other solutions. We don't want to see this happen to you again.

Since it hasn't been stated yet, I'll say it. What are the chances of a CD-Writer and an HDD both going bad that close together? Is their something else in the computer causing things to "go bad"? Power supply maybe? I'd hate for you to get a new DVD-Writer and HDD just to have them suddenly stop as well. If you can, I would try a different power supply with the current hardware (well, at least the CD...dont want to risk further damage tot he HDD) just in case.

I recently got a Seagate 250gb 7200rpm HardDrive w/an external enclosure that is both Firewire/USB2 from TigerDirect for $100.00USD.

And I gree with Kane figuring out what the fook is up with your system where 2 devices fail near to the same time. A Powersupply would be a very cheap and easy option too...

~Floyd

Man oh man.....

I feel your pain Denny. Last time I upgraded, I hooked my shiny new drive up to the old one, but something went wrong and I lost everything that had been on the old HDD. 60+ gigs of university work, mp3's, movies & gaming stuff. Fortunately I had hardcopies of most of the game stuff.... if not my (then wip) dissertation.


But yeah, I will third (fourth?) the suggestion of the data recovery service. You never know...

To look on the bright side, this might turn out to be a blessing in disguise in some manner that isn't yet apparent.

Sorry to hear this has happened Denny. It's painful whenever a HD dies, but to potentially lose all that work must feel pretty rough. However, I definately agree with others that there is a chance the data can be saved through either using the drive as a slave (first step) or taking it to a data recovery service.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

Arabin

I'll just cast my vote in with the others for professional help. I'm not very computer savvy and a firm believer that if something needs done you make sure its done right the first time (no offense to those of you who are competent with computers and do it yourself).
Richard