My sudden absence...

[~][FGS][Nobody~]

I'm sorry for my sudden absence.. it was caused by a hardware failure on Sunday (18th Dec).

The whole thing actually started about a month ago already.
I was browsing on the forum and my firefox froze. I was annoyed because it tends to freeze sometimes anyway.
Then I noticed, it was not the only thing that froze.. the whole fücking windows froze and 5 seconds later even the mouse pointer froze.
I was confused about the happening. I was investigating my opened PC and looked for something weird.
I noticed the status LED of my SSD system drive was being red!
I thought wtf.. I can't remember it being red before. So I made a warm restart by pressing the reset button.
The result was that the status LED remained being red and the BIOS didn't recognize it anymore.
Thus I got scared and turned off the PC completely. Next day, I turned it on again and THANK GOD the LED was green again.
Then all was fine again.. until about 2 weeks ago.. there windows froze again. I looked at the status LED and it was red AGAIN!
I turned everything off and turned it back on again, just like the first time and all was fine, but I was sensitized.
Whenever anything was hanging or freezing my view moved to the status LED on the SDD instantly.. but nothing wrong happened anymore.. until Sunday.
Around 3:30pm, I was phoning with my mom. At that time also anihex sent me a message on MSN and I told him that I'll be right there when I'm finished with phoning.
While I'm phoning, my windows got a bluescreen all of the sudden. I automatically stared at the SSD status LED which was RED!!
I was annoyed, powered off the PC and powered it on again.. and WTF, the LED remained being RED.
I tried it several times again but it wouldn't turn green again along with not being recognized on the BIOS.
I also tested it with another cable and on another PC but all gave the same result. It refused to work!
At that time, my mood was already at DEFCON 3.

After accepting that I wouldn't be able to boot from that drive anymore,
I attempted to reactivate my 3 years old and totally messy windows XP from my 2TB HDD (which I used until I got the SSD), so that I can boot the PC at least.
On the first try, this failed, because the old system partition wasn't marked as "active" anymore.
I was planning to use my multi-tool (MT)DVD to activate the partition again.
The attempt failed because that DVD was at home and not at my apartment at UNI location.
I went to a fellow student along with the image to burn a copy to a DVD. Unfortunately the burn process failed at 72%, ffs.
I took the DVD nevertheless.. perhaps enough was burned already in order to provide what I needed.
I put the DVD into my good 'ol plextor DVD burner and it tried to read and read and read.. and FAILED to read it.. I was like RWAR!!
So I turned on my notebook to make a second burn attempt with a new blank DVD. Fortuinately, that burning succeeded.
Then I put that properly burned DVD into my plextor drive wit the intension to finally activate the old system partition again.. but NOTHING..
it tried to read and to read and to read.. and FAILED at the end!
I was like WTF.. now my 8 years old plextor dvd burner is suddenly broke too??
At that time my mood turned DEFCON 2.

Alright.. fine.. I can't boot from the SSD anymore and I can't boot from a DVD anymore in order to activate the system partition on the 2GB drive again.
That made me to dust off my old retired 400GB drive again. IT contains the same messy windows partition as the 2TB drive, because all partitions were copied to the 2TB drive back then.
Anyway.. that plan was finally successful!
I booted the old XP from the 400GB drive, activated the boot partition on the 2TB drive, disconnecteed the 400GB drive and booted from the 2TB drive.

Now there comes the part where my mood turned to DEFCON 1..
After 5 minutes the old XP was booted from the 2TB drive. However, some partitions were having wrong drive letters and some weren't showing.
So I went to computer management -> disc management in order to re-order the drives again.
While staring at the listed partitions, I started getting confused more and more..
Then I finally noticed, that the 2TB drive got a free space area of 1.7TB and 3 partitions were MISSING!
Those include the two most important ones.
1. My games partition.
2. My private partition.

My private partition contained all fav music, study files, other files (like source codes of my programs)
and the most important of all.. family photos and memories.
My games partition contained, among other stuff, my 8 years old DX folder along with all content (maps, mods, etc).
I need to admit.. when I noticed that all this was gone, I was being in a state of shock. I thought my dinner would come out again.
Well, that day I just turned off the PC yet and went to bed...
On the next day (monday) I investigated the 2TB drive with a forensic tool. I was still up until Tuesday 1:30am
but I was able to find the data of the lost partitions.
However, it wasn't possible to restore the partitions itself because the tool just provided a backup function of the data.
Due to a lack of available space, I couldn't back up the data at that time. So I turned off the PC and didn't turn it on anymore.
Well, now I'm at home on my notebook. I'll continue the partition restore attempt with new energy, when I'm back at UNI location after christmas.

Fazit:
1. My SSD failed.
2. My good Plextor DVD burner failed.
3. My two most important partitions disappeared.

So yeah.. it was really a black Sunday for me..


Sorry for my long post..
It's usually not like me to post such novels but I felt like posting it to give a vent to my anger..
I hope to be able to restore all data and to be fully online again soon!


The hope dies last!

PS:
Sorry, ani, for my sudden disappearance on Sunday.. but now you know why.

[[FGS]Kalman]

Wow, 8 yearw lost
I would hang myself, if I lost my DX folder
Good LUCK, I hope u can restore ur data

[[FGS]Chees]

That sucks, I lost a HD last month 12GB of DX stuff gone. also broke my TV remote today and watch stopped working and brakes shot on my car...**** happens!

[Majestic]

Holy *loving* metabolic end product. I'm sorry to hear that, that's some really rotten luck. Sounds like it's already taken a lot of your time, too. That really sucks. All I can say really is good luck with backing up all that data.

[~DJ~]

Woah that's sad Noodels..

BUT THIS ALSO MEANS THAT I CURRENTLY HAVE ANCIENT-ER DX THAN YOU OMG. Not for long though, everything's gonna be fine.

[chin.democ.]

Why do so many coders suffer from corrupted hard drives? This sucks badly.

[Majster]

If I well know, are special firms, which can recover data from HD, but I don't know how much expensive it is.
Anyway, good luck.

[anihex]

PS:
Sorry, ani, for my sudden disappearance on Sunday.. but now you know why.

Are you kidding me? Beeing absent in a dialog would be the last thing I'm concerned about if half of my PC refuses to work. Honestly.
Glad you're back. Maybe we can turn to my problem, when yours are done.
Wasn't much anyway. Just some pieces for the chess map. ^^

[IchoTolot]

I'm sorry for my sudden absence.. it was caused by a hardware failure on Sunday (18th Dec).

Around 3:30pm, I was phoning with my mom. At that time also anihex sent me a message on MSN and I told him that I'll be right there when I'm finished with phoning.
While I'm phoning, my windows got a bluescreen all of the sudden. I automatically stared at the SSD status LED which was RED!!

Ani killed your HD?

...

j/k

WB Nobody

[~[FGS]SaSQuATcH~]

That's so much data I'd pay money to recover it if it happened to me I just got an external 500gb but these stories make me feel unsafe

[synthetic]

I've heard nothing good about SSDs. The apparent fact that a certain bunch of SSDs are not meant to last more than 6 months is icing on the top for me. Mate just replaced his SSD and then replaced it again, as the replacement didn't work longer than a week.

I hope you get at least the private stuff back; dx history or old songs can be dismissed in the end. Lot of that will start resurfacing from all the most unlikely places. I deleted my 7 years worth of dx history the other day, the relief was bigger than regret that made sure to appear. These things don't really matter, but your post makes me think of backing up some photos here.
Fingers crossed for you alter.

[~][FGS][Nobody~]

I can tell of good news!
I managed to restore all of my partitions successfully!
Just like I assumed and hoped, the partitions itself weren't touched.. since there was actually no moment where it could have started a raging deletion.
After two hours of analyzing, it found all lost partitions and rewrote the partition table.
To make sure there is no physical damage, I made a 6 hours lasting surface analysis and it finished without errors.

Now I am using my revitalized 3 years old windows XP installation that I used before the SSD era.
Some feeling of nostalgia hit me when booting it up the first time again... it was like returning home after a while of absence.
It was a bit messy but I cleaned it up a bit and now it's running pretty well.
The best thing is.. metabolic end product's simply working.. I was always having minor but annoying issues with windows 7.
Either my hex editor wasn't installed properly or UnrealEd wouldn't start or DX malfunctions or the burn program has compatibility issues..
Now, after returning to the old system, all works again.. how ironical.


According to the SSD.. well that piece of poop is broken but I'll send it back since it's still within the warranty period.
Apart of the system and installed programs, it didn't contain important data.
The data loss is < 0.1 % altogether I think.

Only sad thing left.. my old Plextor DVD burner PX-712A..
I have no idea why it's doing so hard on reading DVDs.. I thought the lens is dirty but it looked pretty clean.


Anyways.. Nobody is back along with his DX folder and stuff!

[Majster]

Congratulations!

[chin.democ.]

Less than 0.1%?!!! any less and you'd have gained data!

AMAGAD WHO IS DIS SMEXY GIRL WIT DA NAKED PHOTOZ!!!!

[~[FGS]SaSQuATcH~]

Nobody's a winner here, so let's just all go home