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Just lost the lot.

ndicki

ndicki

Charter Member 2016
My C drive went corrupt after a power cut, and as my D drive was on the same disk (stupid, but you learn in the end) I've lost all my CFS3 installs. The lot. Most of the aircraft I've got backed up somewhere, but it's going to take time. So no new things from me for a while... (Although there is something Rene and I have been working on which is probably pretty close to release!)
 
Yes, if the computer can actually detect the drive. James sent me one years ago, which did a good job on a drive which was corrupt but visible. This one isn't, so it's a shop job or the bin. I'm not taking it to the shop - prices start at around 500 euros. The bin is cheaper.
 
ndicki said:
Yes, if the computer can actually detect the drive. James sent me one years ago, which did a good job on a drive which was corrupt but visible. This one isn't, so it's a shop job or the bin. I'm not taking it to the shop - prices start at around 500 euros. The bin is cheaper.
Click to expand...
Ran into a similar problem. When mine crashed i had a free Win 7 pc given to me. Have a new one ready to go , but waiting on the case, Win 11 OS , and a larger SSD to complete. Takes time to get things going again. i have them all installed on a external SSD just for things just like this. Sorry buddy , for your trouble.
 
I got a new computer for my Birthday last week and the biggest hesitation with making the change what not wanting to risk losing the last 6 years of work in the transition. I spent three long days methodically moving and recreating everything I had on the old system, scared with every step of the way that it would all go sideways with some minor mistaken click of a mouse that would reformat a drive, or corrupt a file transfer. Fortunately the worst that occurred was the bad ethernet cable that I was initially using until I realized that all my files transfers the first day were taking 10 times longer than they should.
 
Been there, done that - several times!

To be fair, it was time to start a bit of tidying up. Some of my installs had got completely out of hand.

The good news is my skins workshop and my library - everything I download or upload gets copied into my CFS3 library - are both intact. So for example Jon's GMAX files are still there. That's quite a relief!
 
from AI. "
Sorry to hear about the crash — here’s what you can still try before writing the drive off:


If the disk isn’t even seen in BIOS or Disk Management, that usually means a dead controller board (PCB) or seized motor. No software will touch it in that case, but sometimes a replacement PCB from an identical drive (same model + firmware) can bring it back. A few eBay sellers even offer to transfer the little BIOS chip for you — worth a look.


If it does spin up but won’t mount, try it through a powered USB-to-SATA dock or on another PC. Windows sometimes refuses drives that another machine will see.


If it shows up at all, don’t write anything to it — just scan it with something like R-Studio, TestDisk, or Recuva and recover files to a different disk. If you can, image it first — R-Studio’s “create image” option or Linux’s ddrescue will copy every readable sector.


If Windows can’t see it, a Linux live USB (Ubuntu or Mint) sometimes can. Boot from that, open a terminal, and run sudo fdisk -l to check. If it appears as /dev/sdX, it might still be clonable.


If there’s truly no life — no spin, no detection — then sadly it’s a physical failure. Professional recovery starts around €400–600, so it’s only worth it if the data’s irreplaceable.


For the rebuild: put Windows on a small SSD, CFS3 installs on a separate HDD, and use a free backup tool like Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper to make weekly images. Keep mission XMLs and readmes synced to a cloud or USB — tiny files, but they save a world of grief.:
 
Backup tools like Macrium AOMEI and Acronis may also help you to retrieve the lost data, even if the disks aren't visible in Windows anymore.

But, like @mongoose said, if it's the controller, then you're looking at new hardware (not necessarily the disk)

Hope you'll be able to retrieve your data. I've had horrible crashes a couple of times, but I've learned to make regular backups.

Good luck!

Priller
 
Was a bit late yesterday. For all softwares that I mentionned, make the bootable backup media for it. Boot from it, and see whether you can retrieve the lost partitions.

Priller
 
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