# Complete Imbecile's Guides--History!



## Ductapeforever (Mar 6, 2008)

Anyone waiting on future Modeling Guides for publication? My computer hard drive has meet an untimely end. On it...120 gigs of research material and the manuscripts for the Seaview and Flying Sub Guides. Over 300,000 photos, blueprints, rare studio materials...all gone! The loss is catastrophic...like having the Library Of Congress destroyed by fire! Reclaimation is impossible
there will be no furthur guides published.


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## MonsterModelMan (Dec 20, 2000)

And I take it that you never backed this information up on an external hard drive......that is truelly catastrophic. Sorry to hear this!

MMM


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## Paulbo (Sep 16, 2004)

Damn, Herb. That sucks, bigtime. I'm sorry to hear about the loss - not just for the lack of any future updates, but also because I know the kind of heartache you must be experiencing.

I know it's too late for you, but please everyone reading this remember the importance of backups. For the price of a couple of cheap hard drives and a free/cheap utility (don't bother using the built-in backup software included with your computer) you can make sure this doesn't happen to you.

*Does anyone out there work for a data recovery company that might be able to help Herb out?*


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## zike (Jan 3, 2009)

Yes...not to rub salt into this hideous wound but this is a warning tale.

I just hooked up another 1TB external HD to my desktop PC. I have three external drives backing up material (one is almost full and about to be retired).

One drive is on continuously and automatically backs up everything. The other drives are used for manually backing up my files. One drive is always disconnected when not in use so that even a lightning strike won't take it out. Every reference image I have is backed up in at least 4 locations.

A terrabyte of storage costs less than $100.00.


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## wander1107 (Aug 12, 2006)

Sorry to hear about your loss.

I experienced the same thing last year before I got an external hard drive to backup my important stuff. 

It felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

I did give my PC to a tech service and they were able to retrieve some of what I couldn't get to. Still I lost of work and personal stuff.


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## Joe Brown (Nov 16, 1999)

If the hard drive is physically OK - no bullet holes or melted parts, then it is possible to retrieve an amazing amount of data. This happened to me - I had done something dumb -Three Stooges dumb- and zapped a hard drive clean. And then discovered that the 'back-up' I'd made... wasn't.

Desperation had me hunting the WWW looking for inexpensive help, and Recuva saved me. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva

http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html

I cannot say enough good things about this software!


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## Kitzillastein58 (Jan 27, 2009)

Joe Brown said:


> If the hard drive is physically OK - no bullet holes or melted parts, then it is possible to retrieve an amazing amount of data. This happened to me - I had done something dumb -Three Stooges dumb- and zapped a hard drive clean. And then discovered that the 'back-up' I'd made... wasn't.
> 
> Desperation had me hunting the WWW looking for inexpensive help, and Recuva saved me.
> 
> ...


Joe is right, recuva is an excellent recovery program, but will only work with a working hard drive to recover data that has been deleted by accident. However, you may still be able to recover all of your data off the dead hard drive using a program called "GHOST". You will still need a new hard drive to transfer the data to. With Ghost, it is possible to "CLONE" all of the data from the bad hard drive to the new hard drive. This will involve hooking up the new drive in a free drive slot inside your computer, then you will have to adjust the jumpers on both of the hard drives so that one is the MASTER, and one is the SLAVE. If you are not comfortable working on a computer, then you may still have to take it to a tech service, but the Ghost program is still cheaper than a recovery service, and if you follow the instructions very carefully, you should be able to get back all of your saved data and put it on a brand new hard drive. There are free alternative's to Ghost, but they are not always that great. 
Hope this helps a little.


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## azdacuda (May 7, 2008)

Hey I thought we call may be able to help Herb by helping him rebuild the files, I downloaded a lot of his files so maybe if we can create a repository where we all can upload any files we got from him hopefully that will help.


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## Ductapeforever (Mar 6, 2008)

I appreciate the kind words and offers of help, but as this was my main computer. I had to do a system restore. Sadly in an effort to save the host I'm afraid the process has made any such retrieval quite impossible. I'm afraid anything on the drive is now lost to the ages. I had a small amount of data backed up on an external hard drive, however it was merely a fraction of the volume. A Navy pal of mine with access to DOD military recovery software ran it on the drive, what was recovered was gibberish!


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## Fernando Mureb (Nov 12, 2006)

300,000 photos !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
120 GB of data !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm trying to find some words to express myself, but sometimes it is as if you were watching in person to the destruction of the pyramids by some terrorist group. You just keep your mouth open and stay paralyzed and looking ....


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## Ductapeforever (Mar 6, 2008)

Sadly Fernando, the audio files you sent are gone as well. I enjoyed them while I had them.


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

Ironically, I got a Blue Screen of Death Friday morning! Unmountable boot volume. Staples has had it all weekend, and the tech says he's going to be able to save it.

But - and I think this is a good idea for everyone - I had all my data one a secondary hard drive, which is unaffected by any crashes. 

And I also just backed everything up tuesday to an external HD. And my website is always backed up to both a 4GB datastick and my PC at work. So the data is always safe.


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## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

Can you back up everything on the computer using CD R disks ? I am not even sure how to back things up, i see a backup option in my program settings, is this where you go to create backup disks ?


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

Sure, you can save all your data to CD-Rs, a 2nd hard drive, datasticks, DVDs, whatever.

A true backup, of course, would include ALL your C: drive files - everything you need to boot and run your PC. I don't do that, myself, but it's the proper way to backup.


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## bert model maker (Feb 19, 2002)

So I would go into my control panel or whereever the backup option is and click back up after inserting some disks ? I have never done this and may have prevented the computer repair place from having to find everything on the infected old harddrive from that desktop virus that went around several months ago. the repair guy found it, got rid of it and found our hard drive ready to fail so we replaced it and he spent a weekend transferring everything he could find. If I would have had backup disks, this would have been easier i think. Thanks John !
Bert


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## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

So did the drive get scrambled or have a head crash? If neither of those happened and it has only had a motor or head seek hardware failure the data should still be on the platters. If that is the case you can send them to a drive recovery company that will put the platters in another drive and recover the data. However I believe that is very expensive. If that is possible you could ask for donations for such an effort. I would chip in $5 or so.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

That's truly unlucky. But nothing is ever lost on a computer, if you're willing to pay to have it restored. There are many agencies out there that do data recovery. The only way anything can be truly erased from a computer is if the places on the hard drive where the data existed were overwritten with other data. If you haven't added 120 mb of new data to your computer or haven't used a commercial data eradication program to overwrite everything, then the stuff is still there. You'll have to decide whether the cost of recovering it will be offset by whatever you want to charge for your guides.


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## Ductapeforever (Mar 6, 2008)

The Department of Defense Recovery disk my Navy buddy loaned me couldn't bring up anything but gibberish, he said if THAT disk can't recover anything it's lost. The FBI uses that recovery program to recover evidence from computers used in crimes, it's supposed to be the best there is at data recovery.


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## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

But the question I had is, did you have a hard failure of the drive? Something electro/mechanical go wrong. These would be a failure of the platter spin motor or the head seek controller or the head itself. If it is a hard failure then the platters should still have the data on them. If they do then the high tech recovery guys lift the platters and put them in the same model drive with new motors and head seek device. Then they can recover the data. However it is expensive. I read an article a few months back about one of these places. They are costly as first off they have to have a huge number of drives in stock to drop the platters into. Then they need a high end clean room and all the equipment necessary to do this. It may not be worth the cost but I would donate, like I said before, if you wanted to make an attempt at it.


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## Ductapeforever (Mar 6, 2008)

I got the blue screen of death and the system was totally unresponsive. I tried everything before the final option of a system restore. I have had several tech types take a stab at it with no luck whatsoever. After four days of deliberation everyone agreed a system restore was the next option, with no guarantee it would even boot.
Even after a system restore the computer doesn't work correctly. I am in the process of replaceing it alltogether it's a five year old XP platform anyway.


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## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

Keep the drive then. How big was it and did it have the OS and the data on it? Do the new machine with a new more modern drive and then plug this one into a spare port. Take a look at it and also run CHKDSK on it when it is in the new machine. It actually sounds like your friends said, the computer has problems, possibly memory or electronics, or the OS was screwed up. If you haven't reformatted then there is a good chance the data is still on the platters.


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## Cajjunwolfman (Nov 15, 2004)

If you do not want the drive let us know on the message board. I'm sure a lot of people would be glad to try to recover the data for free, just so we could salvage all your hard work!


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## Ductapeforever (Mar 6, 2008)

Sadly the laptop in question is my only WORKING computer. The drive has already been formated and WRITEN over to prepare it for a full system restore. The full disk capacity has been imprinted with one's and zero's several times to eliminate any possibility of infections. It's a whole new machine...flys like the wind. I have a hardware firewall and a software firewall, and good anti-virus program now. I now have Carbonite to do backups to the cloud. Should have no more worries till I get a new machine.


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## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

Well that definitely seals the deal then. Once you put a new windows on it after the fdisk and reformat any data was definitely gone. It might have been recoverable up until that point but that ended any recovery options. And it appears your problem was not a physical problem with the drive. However, be a bit careful with the drive although in my vast experience if you got through a clean install without problems the drive itself is probably ok.


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