...crashed :(

[*89x2*]

...my main computer, the one that I had put all the pictures on of the Callaway Gathering last month, etc. has crashed! :eek

Talking w/ my good friend "the computer guru" - he thinks it is recoverable - I hope so, as I am sick to my stomach right now - kinda like Luigi's bad luck w/ the erasure of the pics when he "formatted" the data card :eek

...what else can I say

CD's will have to wait, for those who I promised them for - Sorry

 

[TurboLuigi]

:CRASH Arrrghhh!..........

Live & Learn... On my home computer I now keep the OS physically separate from my assets (pics, videos, documents, etc). Plus I have multiple drives (4 - 200 GB drives) and mirror all of the important stuff and also keep multiple 200GB removable drives. Of course, that doesn't keep my fat finger from formatting the flash card on the camera by mistake - thankfully I had saved the pictures taken the previous day with good friends.

-Luigi
:cool

 

[SurfnSun]

damn I about had a heart attack when I saw the title to this thread.

Chris, I went thru the same thing about 3 months ago. Cost me $200 but I got all my pics back.

 

[Peer81]

You sure know how to scare people Chris!
But i know what you mean, my harddrives brake down in a 2 to 3 year interval. Most of the time's a week before a important school presentation..
Good luck with saving what is left to be saved!

Groeten Peter.

 

[*89x2*]

Live & Learn for sure - I am still full of anxiety over the "loss" from the crash - I am still crossing my fingers that the data is not lost, as some wasn't "backed up" Ouch!

 

[SurfnSun]

Windows XP has a built in back up on it. Can you even fire windows up?

 

[*89x2*]

Can you even fire windows up?

nope

 

[Brangeta]

What exactly happened? I had a problem where I thought I lost everything, but after some computer nerding, I got everything back long enough for me to burn some cds and then reformat the harddrive and reinstall windows and all my programs.

 

[Aurora40]

FWIW, sometimes a last ditch effort to save a drive is to put it in the freezer. You'll need your computer up and running on a different drive, but it might buy you enough time to transfer the data off the bad one.

 

[TurboLuigi]

:crazy

Cryogenic Recovery? :Silly , that's a first for me....

If Windows won't even go to Safe Mode so you can do a Checkpoint restore as Surf mentioned, try to see if you can boot from CD (assuming you have a Windows Disk). If your data is on the same partition or physical drive you may be OOL.

If you are able to boot off another drive or read the drive with another PC, then you could use data recovery software like "RecoverMyFiles: from element5.com which is what I ended up doing when I had everything on one drive. Data/OS seperation is a good thing in case you got hit by a virus, worm, trojan and disk mirroring will save you from a physical drive failure.

-Luigi
:cool

 

[*89x2*]

...tomorrow, I will be addressing this - or at least having it addressed.


WHen I turn the pc on, it does not even get to the log in screen before it simply powers off - so bizzare - SO Frustrating

Thanks though for the suggestions

 

[*89x2*]

...my main computer, the one that I had put all the pictures on of the Callaway Gathering last month, etc. has crashed! :eek

Talking w/ my good friend "the computer guru" - he thinks it is recoverable -

It's back - up & running!

Whooo Hooo!!! :bar

 

[*89x2*]

:crazy

Cryogenic Recovery? :Silly , that's a first for me....

If Windows won't even go to Safe Mode so you can do a Checkpoint restore as Surf mentioned, try to see if you can boot from CD (assuming you have a Windows Disk). If your data is on the same partition or physical drive you may be OOL.

If you are able to boot off another drive or read the drive with another PC, then you could use data recovery software like "RecoverMyFiles: from element5.com which is what I ended up doing when I had everything on one drive. Data/OS seperation is a good thing in case you got hit by a virus, worm, trojan and disk mirroring will save you from a physical drive failure.

-Luigi
:cool

Luigi, thank you so much for the link to that one program - It did show I had zero malicious programs on my machine :cool Thanks

 

[TurboLuigi]

Well that close call should be an eye opener....

I would recommend tha your backup plans ALSO include something like this portable drive http://cgi.ebay.com/Samsung-40GB-5400-8MB-2-5-Aluminum-External-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ8825978617QQcategoryZ116254QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
which you can connect to your desktop, laptop and travel with you.

Glad you're up and running, I hope you just had a bit of dusting to do!...

-Luigi
:cool

 

[*89x2*]

Well that close call should be an eye opener....

I would recommend tha your backup plans ALSO include something like this portable drive http://cgi.ebay.com/Samsung-40GB-5400-8MB-2-5-Aluminum-External-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ8825978617QQcategoryZ116254QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
which you can connect to your desktop, laptop and travel with you.

Glad you're up and running, I hope you just had a bit of dusting to do!...

-Luigi
:cool

Dusting was the understament of the year :CRASH

I will look into those links - Thanks for the ideas / help

 

[Brangeta]

CDs, shouldn't be considered "backups*", but I just burn CDs of things I want to keep at least once a year.

*= a CD will warp over time and be hard for the computer to read, especially as CD spinning speeds go over 48x and stuff now a days.

I have old CD-Rs from 6 years ago that make a terrible sound in my current computer. It sounds like chips of them are flying off, but in reality, the foil inside the plastic-sandwich is probably cracking and my data is getting bad.

 

[*89x2*]

good points - I will look into other opt's but burn a CD in the meantime just in case..