It’s All Gone…
July 5, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzI was in the middle of a game of Starcraft 4-days ago, trying to recoup after being behind from a failed attack, when my screen started to flicker. At first I thought I had received an AIM message or something and would need to alt-tab to fix it, but then my computer rebooted.
“Sigh, he’ll think I disconnected because I was losing” I thought. Pissed at my computer, I waited for Windows to load again. However, my computer kept getting stuck at the “F8” screen. No matter what option I chose, the end result was the same with the Windows loading screen appearing, then a quick blue screen flash, followed by a reboot, which then took me to the F8 screen again.
After checking for any hardware issues, I then tried a Windows CD installation ‘repair’. That at least paused the blue scren for me to see what the error was. It was very vague though, stating that there was an issue with ‘ntfs.sys’.
Long story short, my computer has been in for repair for a few days now. Unfortunately, the technician said he couldn’t recover my data and is now putting the computer back together. Damnit. It’s all gone. The worst possible thing that could happen to my computer happened; my HD completely broke and all my data is lost.
The good news is that fortunately I kept monthly backups on DVD, and I made my most recent backup on June 27th so it’s only 5-days of lost data. The bad news is that I’ll have to repopulate my advertising records (I still have the receipts and information in E-mail) which will be a pain, and other modified work data I’ll have forgotten, such as new entries to my work and blog ‘todo’ lists, changefiles of my blog, etc.
In all truth, it’s not too bad. If I hadn’t made my backup DVD’s, I’d be in a big mess though. I’m still waiting to get my computer back, but hopefully I’ll get it later today or else tomorrow, so that I can begin restoring it and getting it ready to work on again. I’ve been on my laptop since then. It’s funny – I’ve only used this laptop a number of times, and forgot how useful a laptop can be. The past few days I’ve been playing poker and browsing around on my laptop from my couch in the livingroom, while watching TV. Right now, as I type these words, I’m sitting at my kitchen table, with my windows open and a gentle breeze flowing in, helping to dissipate the warmth that the summer sun has brought in.
I really need to get some furniture for my little patio outside so that I can work outside, that would be amazing.
Anyhow, this is why you haven’t had a blog entry in a few days. I’m going to write a few right now though as soon as I post this.
I’m sorry you lost your data, but glad you have opened your eyes to the benefits of laptops. Its been 3-4 years since I last had a stationary box. (Well, I do have one, but I just cant be bothered to throw it out).
Once you get used to it, take it out, go to a cafe, or sit outside in the forest and work. Its amazing how inspired you can get from sitting outside.
I am sitting outside on my balcony right now, with the rain pouring down, and having a great time with it.
Enjoy restoring your data :-/
What? I can’t believe your data can’t be recovered off the drive. I’ve never not been able to recover data off a failed drive. If it’s worth it take that drive to someone else.
“the technician said he couldn’t recover my data”
Yeah right, I have gotten data off hard drives that were completely shot. The tech was too lazy to do it, that’s all.
The freezer trick never fails 🙂
Yeah.. a lot of people have been telling me I should have been able to restore my data. Sigh.. $300 later and with all the data lost, it’s too late unfortunately 🙁
My computer is pretty much back up and running right as it was before though, thanks to my monthly backups on DVD, but I had to hand-restore a lot of stuff still, and download/isntall a crapload more.
I’ll be buying an extra gig of RAM though and am considering having RAID set up… If I do, I’ll make a blog post on it.
Man, the things we take for granted. I’ve even had numerous hdds fail and still not very good about backups. I have hundreds of blank dvds just sitting there as well but just don’t take the time to do the burns.
I actually went out and got a couple FreeAgent external drives since one of my raid drives is messed up (broken power adapter) and seems to be close to causing problems. Have I backed up onto those drives yet? No, they are sitting in the boxes still lol.
I think I need to follow your tips on setting up the auto backup as I can’t trust myself to do it on my own. So off to read those post in more depth heheh.