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The Ultimate "Fail"

falcon409

falcon409

Moderator
Staff member
Somehow yesterday, while thinning out my various HDD's of unwanted and unused folders and files, I somehow deleted my entire scenery library. Every scenery folder I've added over a 4 or 5 year span. . .gone. Normally any deleted items go to my Recycle Bin, however the sheer volume of deletions must have been such that some of the larger ones were simply wiped away as this particular folder does not show up in the recycle bin. I've done a search over all 3 HDD's in case it somehow was moved into another folder and that was also unsuccessful. I haven't purged the Recycle Bin as yet, so does anyone know if there is a way to recover items that don't show in the "bin" but might actually be there or am I wishing for the impossible? lol
 
I've been in the same situation myself. First of all, if you can, try not to use the HD in question. The files you deleted are not really deleted. Avoid copying stuff on your HD so they don't get overwritten. Get a recovery program and do a scan. After that it's probably a matter of patience and a bit of luck, but it can be done. I used http://www.file-recovery.com/ and it literally saved my life! Good Luck!
 
I am not an expert - but as long as nothing new is written to the memory area - you *can* recover the data. Windows, AFAIK, does not actually delete the file - it just removes the entry in "file list". So, you should be able to recover it/them. But I don't know what software to recommend - probably it's pretty expensive. I'd search for forensic/recovery software... just make sure to install anything new on a different hard drive.
 
SixGhost said:
I've been in the same situation myself. First of all, if you can, try not to use the HD in question. The files you deleted are not really deleted. Avoid copying stuff on your HD so they don't get overwritten. Get a recovery program and do a scan. After that it's probably a matter of patience and a bit of luck, but it can be done. I used http://www.file-recovery.com/ and it literally saved my life! Good Luck!
Click to expand...
I found the folder, went to purchase the recovery program, (of course this folder exceeds the amount of recovery the "Free" version can do so it must be purchased to proceed.) and the purchase form keeps dropping the "Credit Card Security Code" window so the purchase keeps getting declined. I have sent an e-mail to their Sales Dept. in hopes that someone (or something) will answer this week, lol. I'll just refrain from doing anything with that drive until I get the software registered.

Thanks for the HU.
 
Hi Ed,

sorry to read this, I know how much work is involved here. Did you try to right click / properties the next folder above the one that you deleted? It might be possible to recover it via the shadow volume function (activated by default in Win7), just look for "previous versions" in the context menu that pops up.
The other possibility is to recover the files by rebuilding the FAT with a tool, but this depends on the integrity of the data that remained on the hdd. If it's already written over it's gone.

Cheers,
Mark
 
Thanks to everyone for their assistance with this. I was able to purchase the program mentioned by SixGhost (Active@ File Recovery) and I was able to successfully recover the Scenery Folder with all folders intact. I did also try "Recuva" Paul, but it was unable to find anything recent to recover. Not sure why, but it could only find files up to 5th of this month and the Scenery Folder was just deleted yesterday. Anyway, The scenery is back and again. . .thanks for the help, much appreciated.:applause:
 
_ben said:
might be worth buying an external hard drive to copy your folders to :)
Click to expand...
I did that about 6 years ago, kept my backups on that drive and only on that drive. . .that drive failed leaving me with nothing. In my world, nothing is absolute. . .if I had two external drives they'd both fail simultaneously.
 
re bu

falcon409 said:
I did that about 6 years ago, kept my backups on that drive and only on that drive. . .that drive failed leaving me with nothing. In my world, nothing is absolute. . .if I had two external drives they'd both fail simultaneously.
Click to expand...

err, ouch!
 
falcon409 said:
I did that about 6 years ago, kept my backups on that drive and only on that drive. . .that drive failed leaving me with nothing. In my world, nothing is absolute. . .if I had two external drives they'd both fail simultaneously.
Click to expand...

Mr. Murphy sez: "You KNOW you cannot escape -- you'll only get tired trying."
 
Good to hear you were in luck...;)

When windows 'deletes' a file it is simply an altered first character to the name so that the OS file system [fat-ntfs-etc] cannot 'find' it again....unless it's in the bin still.
Rewrites to the same drive sectors eventually obliterate the data....more than 'just' the name.

Invest in redundancy backups....meaning more than one. Ideally you should have the original files....on one drive....a backup on a second PHYSICAL drive...and a second backup on a third [in case both prime and backup 1 both fail/corrupt].
Odds of a third going too is long enough to be meaningless.

External drives tend to fail a little too often due to heat in the enclosure and/or bad data CRC due to wobbly cabling.
Internals are more reliable...and while you're at it...get an UPS to protect from spike/surge and forced shutdown [blackout/brownout].

I do this.

One eternal truth in Computers...

There are only two types of User...
Those who backup...
and those who cry....;)

Edit....
I should also add....with someone who 'skins' aircraft...and really wants to protect the hours, days, years of 'work'... I actually have a fourth drive....not in the computer....that is updated less frequently...as it resides in a fire-safe...;)
 
Glad you got everything back, Ed.
I know what I'll do tonight - I didn't back up for half a year now and much work would be lost if the drive would fail.



Cheers,
Mark
 
glh said:
Burn to CD/DVD.
Click to expand...

Which eventually degrade over time, get scratches or even lost, redundant backups is the way to go. I use a Windows Home Server which has multiple drives and stores eveverything duplicated. Its handles all of my 3x system backups and i can just browse the backups to drag a file off them. Dead simples! The latest version is Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials as MS dropped WHS.
 
Hi,
If "System Protection" was turned on for the drive FSX is installed on (it's on by default for C), "System Restore" would have restored the file pointers so they were again visible. Any additions or deletions of files would have to be re-done from the time the scenery was deleted until a System Restore was made. This usually isn't a big problem. As Scenery.cfg is treated as a text file it wouldn't have been modified and you'd see all sorts of warnings about scenery problems but once the system was restored it would once more be happy. Don't forget that this is "SYSTEM" restore so it's not only FSX that will be returned to the restore point but all Windows files. Protection is not on for text files so if any have been modified they won't revert to some earlier version.
Jim F.
 
For a truly failsafe backup solution, you might want to consider a NAS with two (or more) drives in RAID. if one of them fails, replace it with a new one and the data will be restituted automatically.

I have one now after having two external drives fail on me. Never again!

Dumonceau
 
I appreciate the great lengths many of you apparently go to to protect your files. Despite the times I have had HDD's fail, I've been pretty lucky in that other than purchasing a replacement HDD and the time it took to reinstall the things I've lost. . .I've missed very little. I'm not a developer so in that sense there isn't anything I would lose that would just be devastating to my livelihood and I do have a pretty good stack of DVD's with a lot of work backed up on them. Fact is, if I had the money to invest in some of the suggestions here, I wouldn't put it into my system anyway. I have a 7 year old car that will most likely be my last. Keeping it in running order is more important than anything I might want for flightsim or my computer. Thanks again for the information and help with retrieving the lost files. By the way, apparently there was some corruption of some of the scenery folders as I have found at least three so far that lock up the sim when I try to install them. There could be more, but I haven't tried installing anything else at this point.
 
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