Oh God, I have become one of the statistics!

T

TomSteber

Charter Member 2010
It happened. Oh God it happened. And we were going to pick up an external HD this last weekend for backup purposes. Well, you know the rest. Last Saturday morning, things came to a sputtering end. And we lost all of it. All our pictures, word documents and ALL of my flight sim downloads ( Payware & freeware).
Just now got the computer back from the shop and got internet service again.
Believe me, I've been kicking myself for days. It'll never happen to me I kept thinking.
I don't even know where to start. I guess with trying to redownload, if possible, all my payware add-ons and planes.
It's just overwhelming to think about all the freeware planes and repaints I had.
I know, I know, a nice new clean install. I don't know if I have it in me right now. It feels like it'll take years!
Ok, enough venting.
I'll get it back... piece by piece.
Might need some of your help finding things again though.
Patience
 
Hi,

Call me paranoid .. maniac .. obseded .. but all (I tell all!!) I download is saved on CD-DVD ...
My collection is 15 CD's and 60 DVD's so far ..... for Flight Simulators.
Each time I have 1 GB of files downloaded .. I save them on a multicession DVD.
I'm not waiting my HD crash with a smile .. but at least I will not cry when that happend (never happened so far ... after years of good services of IDE's and SATA's from Western Digital)
I wish you patience and perseverance for rebuild your HD.
I will not suggest you to make backups .. it's no more necessary .. you know .. but if you want make a full functional backup (a image of HD .. so it's easy to put on a new HD) Acronis is very good at this.(I use it and the tests I made were positives)
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing
 
Happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Caught a nasty virus and had to wipe the HD to get rid of it. Luckily I was able to save my FS install along with a few other things. And I do mean luckily.

The upside is that my comp is running smoother and faster than it has in years.
 
Tom, I feel for you and can relate - this has happened to me twice now in the past 2-3 years.

Hopefully you will be up & running soon!

Mike :salute:
 
If I had $5 for every HD snafu I have had in the last 3 years, and if I had $1 for every hour's worth of tweaking, paint template work, paints, sound pack tweaks, etc that I have lost in those HD snafus.....I would be the richest man in the universe! I now make sure to back up my sim installs to an external HD once a week, back up my sound packages to the same external once a week (it's nice having all my sound packs in one folder outside of my sims...makes it easy to back them up). Sure, this does not 100% guarantee that I won't lose some files here and there, but it drastically minimized the amount of stuff I will lose.

Tom, if you need help finding freeware stuff....just give a shout in the forum, someone is bound to know where to find it. Seems as though the folks on this site know where to find every single bit of freeware goodness there is to be had.

OBIO
 
I've backed my stuff up for a while now, and I hate having an internal back up HD, but that's all I have. In case of power surge, it could still knock that out. I do have an external 300 GB drive, that remains plugged in... Crap, this is kind of a wake up call. All my data is plugged into same outlet. I have a Philips surge protector that has like $5,000 insurance on it if it blows stuff, but I doubt they'd cover it.

Anyway, to the backup of FS. What I did, was copy the whole whoppin' 25 GB FS9 folder from Program Files to that external. Mind you, you can not simply copy that to a new OS's Program Files and expect things to work. However, you simply re-install FS9, then copy all important folders from said backup of FS9, and let FS9 rebuild the CFG, and copy only the CFG tweaks you have copied. This works quite well, and I had to re-install very little after my most recent 'FS-rebuild' session.

It's really the best way to go, other than an image of your entire drive when it was healthy.... Which usually takes a rather large drive. :d

Best of luck to ya, Sir! You'll get 'er runnin' again, and you'll realize you don't need to re-install every little thing you had. You'll lean it, and re-install most of the stuff you really liked and frequently used. :ernae:
 
Hi,

Mind you, you can not simply copy that to a new OS's Program Files and expect things to work
Click to expand...
Indeed .. that's were Acronis come at the rescue :)
With Acronis you make a exact image of your hard disk (all inclusive .. OS .. registry .. all !!) so all your licences and keys of payware are also saved.
You can store this image on any support of your choice (like a small external drive or DVD's).
For restore it's just to format the HD (better but not mandatory) and launch the Acronis restore process from your backup storage.
Restart the PC and you go :)
For give a idea .. I have a entire system saved (it's a HD of + - 65 GB data and stored on 7 DVD's .. restore process is approximately 1 hour :) )
I have already made 2 restores with no probs.
 
This is a call to action.

Apart from copying to DVD and using HD imaging tools etc, do people simply copy and paste e.g. their entire FS install to an external HD? How long would that take for say 25GB, about 12 hours? Also, my experience copying large FS folders - e.g. the entire gauges or scenery folder gives rise to hiccups ie where the copying stops and you get a message box re duplicat files - so it wont' run all the way through over night necessarily.

I keep a large active "hangar" and payware copies on the external HD but really should also copy there the entire FS install - the aircraft folder currently used has of course favorite a/c and my custom artwork, but also add on scenery and gauges etc.

What is a good back up routine? Some here say each week - do you just copy over last week's FS9 copy on your external HD?
 
I do not only keep an external aircraft hangar for my payware downloads, but also a seperate disk for modified cfg's. Especially if you need to re-install Shockwave lighting this comes in handy, as it was so time consuming in the first place. (Trial & error method).
 
Ouch!

But thanks for posting, there at least two good outcomes:
1. We'll all have a little think about some insurance backups now, and
2. Your new install will have all the best stuff, and run better than ever!
:wavey:
 
I used to have Norton 2003 on my system. Last time I tried to buy a new definition renewal, they (not so) politely informed me that the 2003 suite was no longer supported and that I'd have to purchase 2010. I did - and it was instant bloat! AND... It was less secure! Something got through that FUBAR'd all of my file associations. So I used the one part of 2003 that I kept, an bootable CD with Norton Ghost, to restore from a backup copy of my OS on a separate partiiton. Then I grabbed Norton's removal tool and wiped Norton off my system. I now have Avast, and my system has never run faster. And the best part is that the bootable CD still works so that I can still burn backup image. Which reminds me, I need to burn one again soon.

As far as my future with Norton, they can kiss my milky white derriere!
 
I got an ecternal HD two years ago, then got another one. I use one for storage and use of all media and downloads (and all my FS repaints with layers) and the other simply as a backup in case something happens to the other external. Like claudius, prior to that I backed everything of importance to a CD or DVD. My internal HD is only for programs, no media. It makes defragging and cleaning much quicker and your HD isn't cluttered with little items.

Caz
 
Copying the whole 25Gig folder didn't take too long given SATA drives and USB 2.0. Maybe an hour or two, and this is my easiest method. I don't have room really to make a harddrive image of this whole drive, because even though my primary is a 300, and my backup external is a 300, I also store stuff on that 300.

I'll consider doing it, now that I'm thinking about it. However, I can only wonder if there's any minor infections already on this machine (AVG's not bad, but never catches anything when I know there's a little something--When it does, it shows it to me but does not let me quarantine it or anything else) that I may not want to come over to the new install.

I'm going to figure out how I can do this. I'll try acronis, but I've successfully used a Clonezilla bootable disk for this.
 
Ok, for the last hour I've been working on getting my 300 gig external ready for a hard drive clone... :d I'm going to copy it today or tomorrow (knock on wood). I'm saddened, and glad for your post at the same time, as you're probably going to keep it from happening to many people just by reminding and showing them what can happen to their drives.

Thanks for posting, and again, I'm sorry you gotta put up with this sh**
 
I use a program called Snapshot both on the PC based machines I work on and for my personal use.
It is very simple to use in both directions (making and restoring a backup) and covers the entire system.
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm

So if the unfortunate thing happens all you need to do is replace or format the HD and restore. You do have the option to split the drive image into and size chunks that you can handle if you do not have or trust an external HD.

I have a complete BU for my FS PC with FSX and FS9 installed and running great including all the payware I have on DVDs as the ultimate fall back.
Once a month I connect my external HD and create a new system BU of the FS PC on that. This would be my normal restore option since it is obviously more up-to-date than the DVDs.

The Image is not locked up either...using the software you can treat it as a logical drive and copy files out of it without doing a complete restore. Of course when you do that you do risk infecting the Backup to some degree if your system has a bug in it.

The best parts is that the software can be downloaded from the site for free and works 100% for 30 days. After that you would need to purchase a licence......but not until you actually need to restore :D :D

Stefan
 
Hi,

I also use Acronis, which takes a complete image of the drive(s). The resulting image file is usually highly compressed, so (going from memory) my 120Gb-odd FS2004 installation is imaged as a file in the region of 50Gb. Imaging a whole drive is faster than cherry-picking the folders, but even if it takes an hour this is still much faster than having to completely reinstall everything.

And if you do an Incremental Backup (only the changed files) the subsequent Backups are much smaller and faster.

Having lost my C: drive last autumn the package has already saved my bacon once ! I now backup my C: drive weekly .....

Cheers,

Alastair
 
Thanks guys for all the kind and consoling responses. I still want to kick myself from time to time, but I know that won't get the stuff back. I've been trying to contact all the payware places to see about re downloading their products. So far so good. Some of them I was able to retrieve from my saved emails off Hot Mail. Still haven't reinstalled FS9. I want to get as many of my payware add-ons lined up to go first.

Thanks again and I'll be taking to the skies again soon.

Tom
 
For the last 2 years, I've backed up everything to 2 external H/D's. All Flight Sim, Bike, GP, Train and Bike Sim downloads, Music (15,000 tracks), Photo's, Documents,etc. They are cheap enough, these days. If any HD, external or on any of the computers, shows ANY signs of screwing up, I get another 500G H/D and copy the copies! Call me paranoid, but.......
I also have about 30G of USB sticks, and there is lots of stuff on those, I don't have the heart to wipe..I just keep buying new sticks (4 G's also very cheap, now).
 
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