lost everything after formatting

[stixitin]

i dunno what happened,but i have lost everything downloaded,i was lucky in a way that i still had login details for here so i will have to start all over again.....stixitin


i found out why i lost everything,my neice had used my pc and erased everything (by mistake)instead of her own part,so ended up having to format and start again

 

[chyjc1]

i dunno what happened,but i have lost everything downloaded,i was lucky in a way that i still had login details for here so i will have to start all over again.....stixitin

It is natural to lose everything after formatting.

 

[vietxmikey]

ouch! well you should of split harddrives and have one as where to keep stuff and the other to reformat or get a external HD.

 

[Denamic]

To format is to erase everything on the hard drive.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

That's really unfortunate, dude. Something similar happened to me in 2005. I lost my laptop (hard drive went dead, and other parts were failing) but right before it kicked the bucket one of my tech-savvy friends managed to extract the data from it and transferred it to one of his several computers. Not long after, that machine of his died too, so I effectively "lost all my data" for around 6 months, not knowing if I would ever get it back. Then he surprised me one day with several DVD-R's saying that he'd finally gotten the parts he needed for his machine and the first thing he did was burn my data. :surprised2: :bow-pray:

Try to look at it this way: you'll never not back your data up again. Some people choose to do it by burning it to DVDs, others prefer the speed and ease of transferring it to an external HDD, but whatever you choose it'll be better than not backing it up at all. Small comfort now, I know, but trust me: you'll get most (if not all) of your data back some day, and along the way you're going to find so much better, cooler stuff that when you finally do get back all your old data you're not even going to need it. I know a lot of the material I ended up getting back I no longer have on my machine (it's burned, yes, but not on the machine itself) because it was crap compared to later stuff I found. Like, if this was 2003 I'd have thought it was great but if I saw it today I would delete it 10 seconds after downloading it and seeing how crappy it was.

 

[Denamic]

If you're gonna backup stuff, you might as well do it proper instead of buying some external USB crap.
Set up a raid 1, and you'll back up everything the moment you write it on top of getting a performance boost on read speed.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

:frozen:

I actually decided against a raid despite having two 500 GB SATA disks and a compatible motherboard. There are lots of valid approaches, and a raid is just one of them. Several reasons why the idea may not appeal to some is:

• the cost of purchasing new hard drives (assuming internal, of course, which is better but still =\)
• the cost of getting a new mobo / computer if necessary (most of my local electronics stores don't even sell IDE hard drives anymore)
• the fact that dual-writing to both drives in equal amounts means that you're wearing-and-tearing them both down equally so when one kicks the bucket the other's not too far off
• some people may not be able to handle knowing that they have x TB of disk space but only x/2 TB of practical disk space
• some people don't like keeping all of their eggs in one basket. If a power surge jolts through your computer and kills one drive, it has just as much chance of killing the other(s). Or what if you're concerned about computer theft? Or other natural disasters (tornados, fires, earthquakes) compromising your data?

For the record, I'm not saying that I agree with all of these reasons. For example, in the long run it's much more cost-effective and time-effective to go buy a 500 GB internal HDD for under $150 than it is to buy spindles and spindles of DVD+R's. And that 4th bullet point is stupid (but I've met people who have that very problem!). I would agree that the raid is very convenient and by far the biggest time-saver.

But the last bullet (about physical damage/loss of the entire PC) is one of the main draws for people like me who prefer to back their data up optically and store the discs hundreds of miles away from where they currently live. It's not an option available to everybody and you're free to call it "obsessive" or "neurotic" or "a big waste of time." I'm just saying! As someone who has also known what it's like to have a house fire (we were lucky, though, it only destroyed the kitchen) and as someone who has had colleagues who have lost everything in housefires of their own, I'm not a firm believer in raids or anything else short of storing data in multiple physically disant spots. It doesn't help that I live in Tornado Alley (hell, I had to go to a shelter not even 2 weeks ago because I live in an apartment with no basement and there was a tornado spotted right outside our town headed straight for us).

Sorry if I sound argumentative like always :sick:, but I was a little offended when you said "if you're gonna do things proper," as though all other solutions are the wrong way and only a raid works. :defeat: Sure, a raid is very convenient ... but it's important to be respectful of people's different circumstances and to provide them with as many suggestions as possible and to leave the choice up to them.

Again, really really sorry if I sound like a dick. :bow-pray: I wouldn't have clicked "Submit Reply" though if I didn't think it was important to share this other side of the argument.

 

[Denamic]

Stop apologizing, geez.
You couldn't sound more of a dick than I am if you tried, and I never apologize for that.
Of course there's drawbacks with RAID. Just as there's drawbacks with optical storage media and external HDDs. Frankly, nowadays, you're more likely to scratch your discs and drop your external than to experience a power surge that goes through all failsafe mechanics and is powerful enough to actually damage your HDDs, and even then, your data is probably not your primary concern. And while many argue RAID only increases risk of failure, that is only true for RAID 0. RAID 1 and 5 are actually safer than running solo. And in the case of fires, it doesn't really matter how many backups you've got, since most people have their backups in the same house as the computer's in anyway, which means they're as likely to be lost as your primary HDD.
Also, you don't need a new mobo for a raid set-up. Just get a PCI raid card.

If you're neurotic, just build a file server and set up an SSH tunnel or something.
It'll be cheaper in the long run.

And despite popular belief, HDDs last much longer than optical storage media.
It's just that HDDs are often under constant stress for years, while optical discs just lie around.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Okay, I'll quit apologizing, just didn't want you to take it the wrong way. :frozen:

And despite popular belief, HDDs last much longer than optical storage media.
It's just that HDDs are often under constant stress for years, while optical discs just lie around.

Then HDDs don't last as long! -.- I know what you're trying to say, but say it! Here, I'll say it for you, and if I make any technical mistakes then someone can correct me:

Submitted to the exact same stressors (e.g. time, temperature, and usage), magnetic disks are actually more durable than optical media. The dye inside an optical disc that you never use will eventually bleed out and/or the metals inside it will eventually migrate and cause permanent loss of data. The time it takes for that to happen is much less than the time it takes for data on a magnetic disk to naturally corrode, demagnetize, etc.

But as you pointed out, the biggest practical issue is usage. Putting lab tests and technical specifications to the side, the fact is that we write to our hard drives often, even the ones we back data up on. (Consider that even if you have an ExtHDD and you only write to it once a year you still write to it many more times than you will ever write to a DVD+R or DVD-R: once.) And the person with the raid setup? He writes to his back-up drive as often as he writes to his main or "real" drive. Meaning that if his real drive dies on him one day 3-4 years after purchase, his back-up isn't far behind.

The reason for not using a server (as you suggest doing) is mainly to do with privacy and legal concerns. It is very expensive for a US citizen to find a server which will be willing to house legal doujin hentai, never mind digital copies of commercial hentai; and even if he could find that there's the issue of privacy, of knowing that the sysadmin can always snoop around his files (whether it's legal to or not).

Getting back to money, do you think you could find such a server and sign a contract for under $20 a month? I doubt so. But that's what you'd need to do to financially compete with the alternatives: since a spindle of 50 good DVD+Rs can be had for about that price after one month and 2 good hard drives can be had for that price after 12 months (i.e. $240).

Most people I know who run big-scale hentai operations that aren't through BitTorrent either:

1. host it on their own servers (which is more expensive than ANY of our proposed means so far for backing up data! :XD: )
2. run commercial enterprises and pay big bucks for big corporate servers

 

[Denamic]

You misunderstand.
I meant build your own fileserver and hook it up over LAN.
A cheap rack or hightower, cheap RAM, cheap mobo, cheap CPU and a high quality PSU, then just start plugging in drives.
It's a one time investment, aside from the drives, and it'll last for years and years, during which time the money you saved on not buying DVDs will have paid off.
On top of that, you've got an e-peen boost and a very handy set-up.

It's what I'm using right now.
Build my 'file server' with spare parts left over after my upgrades on my main computer.
When idle, it doesn't even take up as much power as a light bulb, and it's a huge money saver.
I also hate having hundreds of discs lying around, and it's really convenient, since it's so quick and easy to back stuff up.
And the outdated stuff can simply be deleted and replaced with up to date stuff, while DVDs will simply be wasted.

Before HD-DVD and Blu-ray comes into the discussion, they would be far more of a waste because of their cost.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

You misunderstand.
I meant build your own fileserver and hook it up over LAN.
A cheap rack or hightower, cheap RAM, cheap mobo, cheap CPU and a high quality PSU, then just start plugging in drives.
It's a one time investment, aside from the drives, and it'll last for years and years, during which time the money you saved on not buying DVDs will have paid off.
On top of that, you've got an e-peen boost and a very handy set-up.

Sounds ... right up my alley. I'll look into it. I have 2 spare machines, one is a total POS I experimented with ages ago (lol 16 MB RAM) but the other's a Pentium III with 128 MB, should be good enough for a file server.

 

[Denamic]

You might also want a 100Mbit network card.
I'm unsure if such weak processors could handle high speed data exchange, but it'd do for just data backup.
It likely won't be very fast though.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

It wouldn't need to be very fast; but actually, I just realized that what with American cable companies clamping down on heavy uploaders that probably wouldn't be the best solution for me after all.

I'll probably stick with either optical discs or (if it becomes cost effective) purchasing spare hard drives and dumping data to them in one splurge (the way you might a traditional external HDD) and storing that hard drive the same way I would store the DVD+Rs.

 

[stixitin]

a thank you everyone

thanks guys for some really useful info,i have set set up spare hd for 'work and the other for pleasure,its about all i can do at the moment with a limited budget........stixitin