(no subject)

[brigdh]

So, it appears that I'll probably have to reinstall Windows. Imagine my joy. At the moment, I'm still hoping that I'll figure out some way to get at least part of my files before doing so, mainly because if I didn't have that hope I would break down. It's not just the thousands of mp3s, because whatever, I can deal with having to rebuild my music collection, or the hundreds of icons and wallpapers and images I've gathered, or even the papers for school (though I'm dreading the thought of having to rewrite my freakin' statement of purpose). It's all the little things that I saved in Word docs to remember- grocery lists and wish lists and recipes and whatever. It's all my bookmarked sites.

Most of all, it's my fic. Anything finished I've posted to livejournal, so at least that's not gone. I nearly had a breakdown last night, thinking I might have lost all of Clubsoka (which, in its various version and plot outlines and notes, probably totals over 50,000 words), but I somewhere have a hard copy I made a few months ago, and not too much has changed since then. It'll be no fun to retype all that, but at least it exists. I have probably lost entirely several things which weren't finished, including the Saiyuki fic I've been working on.

God, that's depressing.

Anyway. The building I live in is apparently starting a book club, and if you join, they'll give you a free copy of the book. Of course, I am fascinated by this: free book! Unfortunately, they're doing Memoirs of a Geisha, which I've already read and wasn't fond of.

Still. Free book!

Poem spam (ganked from incandescens): Everything Changes by Cicely Herbert.

And finally, a meme, ganked from everyone, but last from esrafil: You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section (examples: "5 Sexiest Things about Kinomoto Touya" or "Top 5 Songs to Write Smut To") Then, in a separate post, I'll post the answers to all your Top 5 ideas, according to me. Then post this offer in your own journal.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Hey, tell them that if they do Fishes next, I'd talk to the club about it via speakerphone.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. Excellent idea. I enjoyed Fishes a million times more than Memoirs of a Geisha.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you've thought of this, so I hesitate to even mention it, and yet I feel your despair and want to try to alleviate it: is there any way you can pull your hard drive, stick it in a temporary housing of some kind, and hook it up as a secondary drive on a computer whose OS is working? If you can do that, you can at least offload your files before you reinstall Windows and lose things.

I know it would work on a Mac, or at least that if the underlying files weren't damaged it would work on a Mac. On some machines, you wouldn't even have to pull the hard drive, because they're set up to pretend they're standalone drives under the right circumstances. I don't know whether that trick would work on Windows, but if so, it certainly seems worth trying.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

-- or, alternatively, pick up a second hard drive and install Windows on that, leaving your current drive alone?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Actually, I hadn't thought of it, mainly because I have no idea how to do it. I think I'd have to unscrew my computer's casing to even get the harddrive out, and I'm not sure I'd be able to disconnect it without damaging something. It's a project for someone with far more computer hardware knowledge than me.

Also, I suspect that what happened was, in reformatting the ipod's drive, I somehow managed to reformat my harddrive as well (the linux is currently running off a CD). I'm hoping that the information on it at the time is still recoverable mainly just because it seems impossible to have lost so much so quickly, with one click of a button and without any warnings, but that's probably just unwarranted optimism.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

You would have to open the case to get the drive out, but that might be simpler than you think. By which I mean, I've done this, and I'm far from an expert. I was terrified the first time I decided to work inside the computer myself rather than sending it to a pro -- terrified, but desperate -- but once I'd done it, I was astonished at how relatively simple it turned out to be. It's a big pain with a laptop, where there's not a lot of space to work in, and you need a good schematic and clear instructions, but it sounds like you had enough on that drive that if you possibly can, it's worth using a clean drive for the time being and seeing if you can recover the data on the old one before you give in and reinstall Windows there. I don't know much about data recovery, but given that computer security people say that the only way to be sure you've wiped a hard drive is to physically break it into little pieces, I'd think there's at least a chance that a pro could recover what's on the disk for you. And that's assuming it really did get seriously damaged, and that this isn't something where all your non-system files would show up the minute you could boot into Windows.

I don't want to create false hope, but something not entirely dissimilar once happened to me with an external drive -- the machine kept telling me the drive was unreadable, and asking whether I wanted to initialize it -- and it turned out that all that was wrong was that the directory had somehow gotten corrupted. One recovery utility was all that it took to save everything, and in less than twenty minutes. But I could only get to the recovery utility because I had another drive running the same OS to boot from: if it had been my only drive, I'd have been in the same situation you're looking at right now.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. It does sound doable, and I'm certainly willing to try anything. I've got something else to try first, though- a program that should be able to read even corrupted or reformatted harddrives. But I need to get to the computer lab to burn a copy before I can use it, so I haven't had time yet.

But it's good to know that even if that fails, there's yet another option. Thank you.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

. . . and now that I've made a flamewar icon, I clearly need to make a geek icon.

With any luck the program you're chasing down will work, and all this will be redundant. But if it isn't, it occurs to me that there may be a much easier way to do all of this, if you want to throw money at the problem and if your computer can boot from USB 2.0 drive. Externals already neatly installed in cases for your convenience have become readily available and relatively cheap -- I assembled mine myself out of horror at the prices of the ready-made ones not so long ago, but a quick look at the Newegg website shows me a Fantom 7200 rpm, 160 gig drive in a USB 2 case for ninety dollars. And that's just what they've got front-paged today. There are almost certainly less expensive options.

If you go this route, you shouldn't even have to pull your old drive. You'd just install Windows on the new drive (preferably using another machine to avoid any possibility of confusion about which drive you wanted to install onto), then plug the new drive into your USB port, boot from a CD, tell your computer to boot from the external drive, and restart.

If your machine's anything at all like mine in terms of hardware, even if you didn't immediately see all your data you could run your computer forever without ever touching the drive whose data you needed to recover, buying you the time you'd need to get it to the pros.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's very tempting. I know I have a USB drive, though I'll have to check to see what version it is. I'll have to stop in at the local hardware store and see what kind of prices they have.

After all, irregardless of my current problem, an extra harddrive is more memory space, and that's never a bad thing.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

If this works at all, it should work even if you turn out to have USB 1.1 rather than USB 2 (although I doubt whether it's an issue -- even knowing what USB 1.1 was probably outs me as older than the dinosaurs). It would just be painfully slow, and not fun if you had to work from it for any length of time. USB 2 and Firewire, by contrast, are so fast that my 7200 rpm external is actually more responsive than my 5400 rpm internal drive, and I now run my system from it for preference.

And as you say, there's no such thing as not needing more hard drive space.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I somehow misread 50,000 words as 5000, and thought, well, that's not so bad... On second read, ack! I'm so sorry! And about the partial versions of things, too.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks.

[solo.livejournal.com]

Like p_zeitgeist says, the data are probably recoverable as long as you don't install Windows over the whole thing now. Well, they'd be recoverable even then, but at far greater expense. And given all the things you mention that you've lost, it sounds like it would be well worth getting a second hard drive and trying to access from there - even if you have to go to the pros to get it done.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah- I was aware that reinstalling Windows was very much a last option- if I couldn't recover any of the data, at least I'd be able to use my computer normally again. But thanks anyways!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Man, good luck with your computer. It must be the season for breakdowns, or something.

[katsue_fox]

I really hope that p_zeitgeist's solution works - this must be an incredibly frustrating experience for you.

As for the top 5 things: top five methods of stress relief!

[redshoeson.livejournal.com]

I just thought of something: Have you thought about taking it to Best Buy and asking them to find the hard drive? I did that when my comp died before and they were able to make a back-up for me. It's free if they can't find anything.

Just a suggestion?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but didn't you buy your computer at Best Buy? I don't think they'd appreciate random people strolling in and using their tech support, particularly since I'm fairly sure that I don't have a warranty.

[redshoeson.livejournal.com]

I double-checked on the website; it doesn't matter whether you purchased your comp there or not. The Geek Squad list of services (http://www.geeksquad.com/servicesandpricing/) is right here. Like I said, it does cost $, but if they can't help you, it's free. I /think/ what you want is a data transfer/back up, but you might want the diagnostic. The closest Best Buy is at Easton, unfortunately, and it will take them a few days to look at it, but it's better than not, ne? If you want a ride, I'm free for comp-relatedBrigdh-related emergencies.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thank you, but it doesn't look like they can help. What I need is data recovery- not transfer or backup, because it's not currently there to be transferred or backed up, and not diagnostic, because I know what the problem is, I'm just not sure how to fix it.

Thanks for the offer, though!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I am sorry about the hard drive, but glad you didn't lose ClubSoka!

I probably still have the version you sent me somewhere, but I expect it's months out of date.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was very glad to realize I hadn't lost it, too.