I recovered "my life" :phew:

[iceman (Mike)]

Well, a tale of woe not unlike h0ughy's from the other day..

I stuffed up my laptop somehow trying to delete codecs and video compressors, so it wouldn't play or record avi files anymore. Obviously not good for someone who wants to do imaging!

So at work today I arranged to get my laptop re-imaged with the standard Windows XP SOE.

I backed everything up to my external 300gig drive, so it contained EVERYTHING. My whole life, basically. All my work stuff, all my iceinspace stuff, other sites I've developed, all my photogrpahy, all my astrophotography, EVERYTHING is on that drive.

Great, let's start the re-image.

Everything goes fine, reboot my computer. Look for the external drive, hmm, no drive letters. Go into disk manager, it tells me there's 280gig of unallocated space! WTF!?

I come to the conclusion that the re-imaging software looks at every drive letter and deletes the partition table. So the data is still there, but windows can't access it.

I search the net and finally found some software, Partition Table Doctor 3.5, which finds the partitions and re-writes the partition table. I had to buy it before it would save it back to the disk, but for US$39 it was worth every cent.

My data is back, i'm happy and I've got my life back!

I've taken it as a stern warning to go and buy another 300gig drive to back everything up to!

[drmorbius (Randall)]

Good news Mike... that's not a job for the feint of heart... takes years off your life

[ving (David)]

that sorta stress ADDS years to your life... got a few more greys now mike?
glad you got your life back

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Ouch! Backup your backup your backup


Is that anything like rocking up to work on a Monday morning and finding all the non-networked computers you've been using for the past 5 years have been replaced with nice new ones, and the HDD of the old ones have been premanently unrecoverably errased? Not once but twice

[avandonk]

My friends think I am mad because I have four desktops (3TB total)and two laptops, but I have both laptops backed up to at least two desktops and more than one copy of all files on at least two desktops. So apart from the house burning down should be safe?
Not even then! Thanks for the reminder and great to see you got it all back!
Here is a very expensive solution? what is your data worth? All those cold nights collecting etc ......
http://www.pccasegear.com.au/prod3949.htm

Bert

[h0ughy (David)]

thus starts the vicious cycle.............................. ..........

[C.]

Yikes Mike. Very glad you didn't lose anything. It's a horrible feeling isn't it.

[Shawn]

I think I would have passed out before my brain said to itself WTF?!.

Data storage allways seems pricey till you loose some really important data, then all of a sudden that huge HDD becomes suddenly affordable. all too late normally,

Great it worked out in the end..

[netwolf]

If that was me I would have just given up and signed up to an instution but alas there are no beds in NSW hospitals.
Nice to hear you recovered.

Regards
Netwolf

[cjmarsh81]

Will be good when we can get those 50GB Blue-Ray discs. Much easier than having many DVD's hanging around for backups.

What you need to get is one of those Netgear network storage devices. Works the same as your external hd except it can take a couple of hard disks and automatically synchronises both drives, so it doesn't matter if one fails.

[EzyStyles (Eric)]

external dvd burners less than $100 mike.

[iceman (Mike)]

DVD's aren't permanent storage, so i'm avoiding copying to that.

[netwolf]

The verbatim armoured life time warranty ones should be better than hdd's prone to surge or electrical/mechanical failure. Make two coppies if it helps and keep them seperate. There was a Iomega Rev drive with 30gb cartridges, basicaly a super sized version of the zip disk. But like its predecessors it is not so popular.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/hard...9150058,00.htm

But the problem with fast rewritable solutions is people tend use them as external storage rather than backup archive storage. With a DVD you write once and add more DVD's to the set as time progreses, you may also reburn some older DVD's if you overly protective.

Regards

[RB (Andrew)]

OMGosh Mike I missed this thread, glad it worked out ok.
Scary stuff.
I'm glad you knew what was going on, I would've had a coronary.