Life couldn't be more shit.

[Max Levin]

My SANDISK CRUZER usb memory wanted to help me by installing a new nifty interface or something. Guess where this is leading?
I double-checked my SANDISK CRUZER usb memory again just now and, yep, everything is gone. Unfinished music and pictures, notes and what-nots, counting up to about 1,5 gig if I remember correctly. And here's the worst part:
I shrugged.
Same thing happened a couple of months ago when my character in an online-game died and lost alot of important stuff with him. I had the choise to continue without these things or storm out of the game not to pay a dime for the damn crap again!!! But I really didn't storm, though I had spent YEARS playing it. I had realised that game was never really fun or meaningful, just a waste of time. Not an important loss.
I feel that if the computer would crash now while I write this(which takes long time for me because I hate to write): the same thing.
But now I'm saying "Good riddance" to my music and drawings. This is boring, I wanna watch SouthPark instead.

[trace]

That was not fun to hear
Can't you use some recovery program? or is everything _really_ gone?

[Chris Abbott]

Damn, that sucks.

Chris

[Max Levin]

Unless such a program is preinstalled into Windows Vista and really just needs a fingersnap to recover the files, I wouldn't care. It's that bad.

[Makke]

What is it with all the fancy crap they put on the USB memory sticks these days? It makes them impossible to use in some situation.

Yesterday I was going to rescue some stuff off my sisters laptop since Windows had completely b0rked on it. Booted up a Knoppix from a CD and thought I'd be able to just pop the stuff over to the usb memory. Nope. Needed drivers. Drivers not available on Linux. Thanks.

I solved it by putting it on an FTP in the end, but that felt a bit overkill when I had storage locally.

Shitty thing about your stuff though, Max. I bet you had some good stuff on there. Then again, a good solid loss of data is good for creativity. Clears your mind of old projects so you can focus on brand new ones!

[Vosla]

Goddamn bad news, Max! Flash memory devices aren't to be trusted with important data without a backup... HECK, all storage devices aren't to be trusted without backup!

I used a memory stick music player as portable player and storage for my resumee... it croaked and to claim guarantuee I had to send it back to the manufacturer... no chance with that resumee on it! So I reduced that bitch into a heap of fine powdered something.

I really hope Makke's right... that this incident will clear your mind to do fresh things and not dulling your inspiration into resignation...

[Analog-X64]

If you havent written to the memory stick everything will be recoverable.

Let me know... and I'll send you the utility.

I bought a 4GB Sandisk CompacFlash card that included the recovery disc and works with all Sandisk and non sandisk cards.

[Max Levin]

That would be really helpful, Analog. Some of that stuff was too close to "Done!" to be started all over with(not to mention the tecniques I've totally forgot). If I'd just pull my shit together and finished those then maybe I could have a harddrive crash another day
For as I said, I don't believe I'm a creator of things anymore. But for those three(maybe two) people who were waiting around expecting me to do a job for them since I promised them... well.

[Analog-X64]

I just got home..... will PM you info.

[Tonka]

That pointelss Sandisk software can be removed, btw. I removed it the first day I had mine (just to recover the disk space I paid for)! Too late for Max, I know, but:

http://blog.kgrothoff.net/2006/08/24/re ... ash-drive/

[Steve B]

I have a recovery program that can help.
If you get no joy else where, let me know.

i know how you feel.
You know the Trap 2 demo i did ?
All that is left is the mpg file.
All the 'work' is on a hard drive with a snapped ide pin.
Thats gone.

[Max Levin]

Thanks Steve. Your help is in the queue, testing Analogs' wonder-tools first.
Thats another thing about memorycards that makes me nervous(although it was your harddrive that broke), how often does it happen that people accidently bumps into them and they snap? They're basically ca 5cm twigs sticking out of the computer, afterall.
Too bad about Trap, atleast I have the video here aswell

[Tonka]

Thats another thing about memorycards that makes me nervous(although it was your harddrive that broke), how often does it happen that people accidently bumps into them and they snap? They're basically ca 5cm twigs sticking out of the computer, afterall.

LOL! I saw a show on TV once where they put a flash USB stick through it's paces. They put it through a washing machine, dropped it down a few flights of stairs. I'm pretty sure they ran over it with a car, too! All the data on it was still fully accessible. I'd trust it over optical storage such as CD or DVD. It's just a shame that the U3 software on the Sandisk stick is so crap - if you get your stuff back, back it up and remove the U3 software is my advice.

[Bog]

I've had three - count 'em, three - half terabyte external drive go "poo, fup. I'm bored of being a hard-drive, I wanna be an electric paperweight instead." and just crap out on me.

In the last 18 months.

Now I see why they're about a ton - they're shite. Utterly, unreliably, do-not-use-for-storing-important-stuff shite.

I honestly don't know what to do for a stable, safe, long-term bulk-data storage solution.

*sighs*

Good luck, Max. I know exactly what you mean about thinking "....nah, I can't be arsed". I get that. I think it's my psyche's way of hiding from the screaming tantrum I'd throw if I actually let myself think about what's just happenned.

[Analog-X64]

I just recovered data for a Friend from a 350GB Hard Drive... he just wanted family photos and some documents that he had on there.

I did a scan on the drive and it was the same thing as what I've been experiencing.

A backup of the Partition Table exists, however the FAT Table is obliterated.

Drive is only 6 months old, since PC was under warranty they will be shipping him a new one.

Including the O/S there was only 30GB of Data, so it was not an issue of filling the drive to failure.

I'm trying to pin point the cause to all these recent failures... and so far everything is pointing to Software and not hardware.

I've been able to re-certify these failed drives, running special read/write surface tests and able to re-format and use again. I'm ruling hardware out.

If you look at you're Hard Drive properties under Policies you will this option enabled.

Enable Write Caching on the disk:
This setting enables write caching to improve disk performance. But a power outage or equipment failure might result in data loss or corruption.

I suspect this option which is enabled by default is the culprit.

Especially when it comes to External Drives... think about it... the Cache has not been written back to you're internal or external drive and for some reason you're PC crashes or reboots.. I bet that can cause a fat table corruption.

I dont want to go into a big rant, but there is no Reliable Data storage such thing does not exist.