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Geek Culture / 3+ years down the pan

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Levanthus
22
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Joined: 17th Apr 2003
Location: Cumbria, UK
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 20:40
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My 2tb external hard drive just died... Lost 3+ years of dbpro coding, my entire game is gone... I just want to cry... Funny thing is i bought the external drive because this happened once before... Lost over 80 gigs of music too...

I can see from your smile, you're not here for the sunset

Windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 Black edition, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 4650, 2.5 TB HDD
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Seppuku Arts
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Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 20:52
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Ouch, that's incredibly unfortunate. Without trying to be insensitive, but this is why I urge people to back up their data regularly and to multiple sources. I've had a computer AND my back up fail at the same time before but because I kept another backup (an online one) I didn't lose my important data. It's annoying to do, but it makes up for it. It's totally balls when this happens, but I guess the best you can do is try and see if the HDD is repairable or the data is retrievable and learn from this.


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Levanthus
22
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Location: Cumbria, UK
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 20:57
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I initially bought the external to use as a backup... That's what makes it the biggest punt in the nuts

I can see from your smile, you're not here for the sunset

Windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 Black edition, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 4650, 2.5 TB HDD
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zeroSlave
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Location: Springfield
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 21:10
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That sucks you lost so much. Sorry, bro.

"Drink to the dead all you still alive, we shall join them in good time. Should you go crossin' that silvery brook, it's best to leap before you look."

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 21:12
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There are programs that you can use like Get.Data.Back. Even though the hard drive doesn't work, I have found that you can still get stuff off it.

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Fallout
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Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 21:20
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Bad luck dude! Backing up is so important. I back up to a separate HD on my machine at the end of every day, and to a third external HD once a week (which I could grab in the event of a fire).

I second Pincho's suggestion at trying recovery.

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swissolo
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 21:27
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Sorry for your loss
I feel the same way in a sense, plenty of perfectly good code no longer works Why? Who knows...

swis
Joined: Tue Dec 16th 2008
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Levanthus
22
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 21:41
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I wouldn't mind so much except this is the second time it happened... Although the first time I'd had a connection at codemasters and they wanted to use my idea... So this time not so bad... But yeah... I bought the external to use as back up and proceeded to fail to do so...

I can see from your smile, you're not here for the sunset

Windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 Black edition, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 4650, 2.5 TB HDD
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bruce3371
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 22:14
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This is why I have a huge pile of DVDs with all my stuff on them!!
Until recently, I even had a huge pile of floppies!! I like to do my backing up oldskool!!

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BatVink
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Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 22:16
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Step 1...Open up the PC, point a big fan at it, and try to recover the data to another device.

Step 2...Get Dropbox, Skydrive, whatever to keep it backed up permanently. Every time I change a file, it gets backed up immediately to Dropbox, no effort required.

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MrValentine
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Playing: FFVII
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 23:25
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*sigh*

Without sounding prickish...

Boy am I glad I am not the only person yo lose several (7) years of data in one moment...

I share your agony... mine decided to break a few months ago...

My solution...

Put it aside for now and come back to it when you have the financial means to...

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Kezzla
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Location: Where beer does flow and men chunder
Posted: 18th Mar 2012 23:52
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you may be able to get it back, but if it's impossible the only thing you can do is let it go.
I lost a hard drive with more than 10 years worth of musical,artistic, writing and general creative projects. It was a friend who thought he understood computers, he tried unplugging the hard drive while the computer was running and killed it. I just turned and looked at him and it was too late, he'd already unplugged it.
turned the comp back on drives gone. My first thought was that I was going to kill him. but then I felt dizzy at the sheer volume of work that had just been lost and I just went calm. I felt as though my Lifes blackboard had just been wiped clean. the new space was the only thing that kept me from losing it.

I've lost work on another hard drive since but non hit as hard as that one.

Now i use an external hard drive and dropbox for important projects.

but still, I feel your pain mate.
- to data no longer with us.

Sometimes I like to use words out of contents
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fallen one
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 03:07
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There are programs to get back the data, if they dont work there are companies that retrieve data, so dont give up, use what is available to help you.


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rolfy
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 05:18 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 05:22
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I recently used Get.Data.Back to recover a lost hard drive, worked a treat and I recovered everything, you can even recover a formatted disk. If your drive is physically damaged though its not going to be helpful as your not going to recover data from a drive that has no means to read. You could try the demo first which I believe will recover a gigs worth for you and store the rest for when you use the full version (no need to rescan). If your hard drive is fried then its going to cost you plenty to get data recovered, it needs a sterile environment, as the drive needs to be opened to get access to the disk so it can be re-mounted.

Awesome! Its one of those threads.
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Dark Java Dude 64
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 06:38
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Oh... Ouch... It hurt to read that! Man im sorry that happened! Hope you can get data back like the above^^^ mentioned...

Copyrightz © 2012 dbd79
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Inspire
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Location: Rochester, NY
Posted: 19th Mar 2012 09:54
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I completely understand your pain. I think we all do on some level.

I find that when I lose everything, it is strangely liberating. Look at it as an opportunity. It might take a while until you can see it as such though.



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Levanthus
22
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Location: Cumbria, UK
Posted: 19th Mar 2012 17:09
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Sad thing is it was a 2tb drive with only about 120gigs of data on it... Only about a year and a half old too

I can see from your smile, you're not here for the sunset

Windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 Black edition, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 4650, 2.5 TB HDD
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WLGfx
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Location: NW United Kingdom
Posted: 21st Mar 2012 01:30
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Hopefully a recovery will work on it and you're able to get at least the important bits back. It's happened to me also more than a few times. Last time it happened it work out beneficial as I got a chance to re-write everything from scratch and better. It was only a 40Gb external at the time, a bit of music, images, and my latest project.

I still haven't learnt my lesson though and I think it is about time I need to think about online storage.

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
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Dark Java Dude 64
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 01:40
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I wonder if the online companies store multiple copies of what you have as opposed to just one?

Copyrightz © 2012 dbd79
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MrValentine
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Playing: FFVII
Posted: 21st Mar 2012 02:21
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that depends on the host... aka DATACENTRE

but it is likely they will have a backup mirror but yeah eitherway you must have a double backup regardless come on... look at MU for a simple proof example of this ^^

[This was a short response... so darn busy...]

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TheComet
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Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 21st Mar 2012 10:38
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Ouch, it hurt me just reading that.

The data isn't gone, it's still physically stored on the drive. I used an external SATA to USB connector and was able to retrieve the data using a program I found on ubuntu. Dont' give up

TheComet


TimePlan : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmuAKJolqASndEVYOWMxb3l2OWV0UkV1anRSczZScHc
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 15:13 Edited at: 21st Mar 2012 15:14
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I have had drives where 1 partition still works fine, whilst the other partition is screwed up (still able to Get.Data.Back). In fact most of my broken drives has a working partition. If you have two hard drives, just backup to the other hard drive. Not much chance of both drives, and both partitions screwing up, and its fast. If one of them breaks, insert a new hard drive, and make two partitions, now just copy the backup back to the new drive.

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maho76
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 15:20
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sorry to hear that, happens to me to all internal and 2 external harddrives while i want to do savety-copies of my last movie-cut.

you... nevaaaaa.... walk .....alooooooone....

but a professional data-recovery costs around 300-700 € here in germany, maybe cheaper in your country. if the data is that important to you for your inner peace, kick the next holiday and invest that money to get the data back. they change drive-motor (most causing crashes) and data will be (hopefully) completely recovered.
and just a warning on recovery software to do on your own: this software tries to rearrange the blocks of the drive. when done without success, no pro can ever recover this harddrive again... or if you are lucky, it costs a 500 more.

justmy2cents

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Van B
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 15:29
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It depends on the number of files usually, but I sent a 2tb drive set for recovery, cost about £2000 (UK) and got probably 70% of the files back. It was justifiable, as re-generating some of the files would have been time consuming and expensive, but for personaly data that has to sting.

If it is worth it - don't go for the cheapest or easiest option, send your drive to a well established company - don't give it to any wizkids - they don't make wizkids like they used to, only give it to someone who knows how to retrieve the data on a forensic level. If it's a hardware problem on the drive, then no software will work - the drive has to be transferred physically before anyone can get at the data, that can be expensive... I mean you could end up spending £4000, easily, it just depends if your data is worth that to you.

Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
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Levanthus
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Location: Cumbria, UK
Posted: 21st Mar 2012 16:03
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Tried get.data.back... Didn't work it only found 3.98 gb of the drive and no data in that area at all. Urgh... Can't really use online backup at the moment either since I don't have Internet in my house... (I'm stealing wifi from my local pub at the moment)

I can see from your smile, you're not here for the sunset

Windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 Black edition, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 4650, 2.5 TB HDD
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Van B
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 17:01
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FAT tables are probably corrupt. Seeing as you don't even have internet, I don't suppose you have a spare £4000 to get it back.

Cruddy situation with no real solution... I think I'll do a backup tonight just in case.

Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
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Benjamin
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 17:55
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Sorry for your loss.

The moral of the story is to always have a backup AND the original copy, so you always have two copies in case one is lost.



Support a charitable indie game project!
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Green Gandalf
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Playing: Malevolence:Sword of Ahkranox, Skyrim, Civ6.
Posted: 22nd Mar 2012 01:13
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And don't do what I did once. I was editing my Excel file containing our household finances. Saved the file then immediately replaced my backup with the new saved copy. Unfortunately the new master copy was corrupt so I had replaced my not very old backup with a copy of my nice new corrupt version.

I now check the integrity of my new files before backing them up.
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Toffeemouse
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2012 02:30
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Quote: "My 2tb external hard drive just died... Lost 3+ years of dbpro coding"


I literally felt your pain for about 5 seconds when I read that, as if it just happened to me. What a very weird feeling.

I have only ever been set back a few days by stuff like this happening.

Any chance to try and get a data recovery on it?



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WLGfx
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2012 03:16 Edited at: 22nd Mar 2012 03:17
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There are some free recovery programs out there, but not good for recovering everything. The last time I used recovery software was just for image files from a corrupt memory card from a digital camera. All the software did was scan the drive for particular image headers and then grab the rest of the data for the picture and save them to another location.

Another piece of software I used scanned for recognised chunks and then pieced together the files (it scanned for over 200 file types at the time), unknown data was then dumped into manageable chunks, which wasn't any help. Either that particular program is now a paid one or has moved further I don't know, but it done the job. Very slowly...

If your drive had (got to say 'had' at this point), pdf, word files, movies, then most recovery programs would only select so many of what it recognises. Even paid for software just increases the chances of finding certain file types (by headers and other file type recognition). Its not even guaranteed that the big companies that charge umpteen's of zeros will get every last byte.

(Your best bet is the intelligence agencies, their HD scanners are second to none.)

NB: Using recovery software will, unfortunately, take a 'very' long time.

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
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Dazzag
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2012 10:54
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Ouch. Personally I backup after every coding session (7z encrypted with password) to about 3 different USB sticks (one is on my house/car keyring), my iPhone (I stick it against an obscure app so is pretty secure), and a NAS. I also use box.net to back it up online. Plus my virus killer (Webroot) automatically backs up my coding directory online too.

When totally on the ball I also back up to a couple of old external drives about once a month, along with a DVD-RW about once a week, and a DVD+R once a month (keep a stack of old versions). Plus again about once a month I'll do a complete machine backup of my two main coding PC's onto a couple of external drives.

Can't be too sure! Once bitten you don't go back!

Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.
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Dark Java Dude 64
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2012 07:07
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Well someone is a tad paranoid about losing data!

Nah just kidding it's always great to be safe!

Copyrightz © 2012 dbd79
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MrValentine
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2012 08:25
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DBD how much have we debated these smileys hahahaha

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Dazzag
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2012 11:42
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Quote: "Well someone is a tad paranoid about losing data!"
Not really. Once you have one major loss then you get a bit more over the top. Then again your house burns down and I imagine all your backups are lost. Keep one on you and backup online too (with encryption for security of course).

Also when I back stuff up after a coding session I don't backup the whole lot, just the project I worked on. 3 USB sticks take no time whatsoever, the online backup is pretty quick, and then copying to the Mac and moving a copy to a hard to guess place on my iPhone is pretty quick too. For day to day stuff it only takes me about 5 minutes at the end of day. And my automatic online backup kicks in after a bit too.

Plus for a while there when I worked as a contractor from home in Cyprus (and again from next month whooo!) everything important was on my PC. It's all very well to lose some hobbyist programming, or even one or two games (not exactly Angry birds level of success lets say...) on the app stores, but to lose everything about my actual programming job would be pretty tragic. Do that for a bit and it becomes part of your routine.

Hell, where my wife works she brings home the backup tapes from work as they rotate around the office. When she used to work at HP they used to make sure servers were greater than something like 25 miles away from the users and backup tapes had to end up being that distance away too with old tapes never being thrown away. Even the companies I work on recycle their tapes every month or two. I'm guessing the 25 miles rule is worst case scenario. As in a nuclear bomb falls on your server. At least your resulting zombie employee workforce can carry on serving customers where the bomb either didn't destroy everything or simply wipe everything out magnetically. Nice to know.

Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.
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s4real
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2012 15:30
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@Levanthus sad to hear about your drive, I find that these tend to break down if you have them plugged into your pc all the time.

My m8 got threw a few external harddrives because he keeps them plug into the usb, if you using it for backup make sure to unplug because the drives tend to keep working when plugged in all the time.

best s4real


Pack ya games with vishnu packer its free. Vishnu game launcher is now released.
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Jeku
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2012 20:45 Edited at: 23rd Mar 2012 20:45
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I don't understand.. you bought an external backup drive and it was your only copy of your code? Once a backup drive becomes the primary drive for content, it is no longer called a backup!

Sorry for your loss, though. Back in 2005 I lost my final degree project and over 100 hours of work, so I feel your pain.

Nowadays I use BackBlaze for offsite backup. Every time I change a file it gets uploaded to somewhere in California. So far I'm storing almost 200GB with them so I feel good that if I lost my hard drive that at least I could re-download it all.


Senior Developer - CBS Interactive Music Group
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Levanthus
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 12:59
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Yeah initially I used it as a backup but then I got lazy... My own fault really, I do have some of my code but it's really old and missing alot of the stuff I put on In the last year or so...

I can see from your smile, you're not here for the sunset

Windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II x4 Black edition, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 4650, 2.5 TB HDD
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Dark Java Dude 64
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 13:28
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Quote: "Not really"
As i said i was just kidding. You cant have too much protection! I suppose you should take what i said as a complement!

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Dazzag
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 15:11
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Quote: "As i said i was just kidding. You cant have too much protection! I suppose you should take what i said as a complement!"
Sorry, I was miffed about what someone said to a post I did on another forum. Was in a bit of forum rage that day

Cheers

Current fave quote : Cause you like musicians and I like people with boobs.
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Dark Java Dude 64
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Posted: 26th Mar 2012 20:36
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Ah that's ok haha!

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