An urgent reminder for everyone here - please read below!!!

Ravyn, sooo good to hear you're with us again, what an experience. In reply to your response further down the page, I agree with you about partitioning a HD, it's saved me countless hours of work on more than one occasion, also, one of the first *lessons* I learned on computers (back in the days of Windows 3.1), was to do backups *before* taking the cover off the machine - even if it was only to *look*. You have my DH's sympathy about the excess of static and getting zapped, I do that to him ALL the time. If I'm wearing synthetics and take my clothes off in the dark – they light the whole room up for quite a few minutes, and I can put on a show dancing my clothes around the room, haha! Have a beautiful day everyone...

1 comment

by ravyn 30 Jan 2008

(Ruthie said "they light the whole room up for quite a few minutes, and I can put on a show dancing my clothes around the room,")

ROFL!!! What a hoot!!! (((HUGS))) & thanks for your kindness - and a good laugh!

so sorry about your mess..it happens when we least expect it...if you throw it into the fan it will splatter!! bummer..hope its all worked out now. go to the free listings I posted and get lots more free stuff..

that is why they suggest saving everything onto disk..I always save into folders then put all my folders onto a disk at the end of the day. but your suggestion is also good, just expensive and time consuming..disks are good for saving and can never be lost..

Thanks & (((HUGS))) to everyone for all your kind words & the great tips! LOL - to add a quirky end to the story - the final consequence of this whole mess was that we had to run out & get me a new computer. The motherboard in my system got fried shortly after all this happened! We found out what was going on though - even though we've worked on 'puters for years & we know to ground our hands well before handling boards, hubby apparently must build up an excessive amount of static, rolling on the carpet in his powerchair. He was about to put another HD in my system & ZAP - major short/sparking/pop -- serious zap this time - I heard the pop all the way in the other room!!! and after checking everything over & testing everything out, the motherboard itself got fried that time. SO... from now on, any hardware issues are up to me, he's not going to *touch* anything anymore! ROFL! Amazing, 'cause he'd grounded his hands repeatedly, but I've noticed he does tend to 'zap' me alot lately when it's been cold - guess he just builds up alot of static.... SO... anyway, in past times, we would have just replaced the motherboard - but I needed to be going *now*, and separate components end up running almost as much as just buying a pre-built system these days... so we borrowed some money & got me a new system... of course it came with Vista though, so I had to nuke that & get all that junk off of it & get my win2k on it instead, get programs installed, etc etc etc so,I'm FINALLY back up & going properly today!

If it is not too late - there is a program which can retrieve all your files when you have had a meltdown. I had to reinstall my operating system and although you are not supposed to lose the data all the programs have to be re-installed and consequently you have lost the data stored in them. the program is rd-studio and is not that expensive - around $60. I was able to get some very important files, all my embroidery designs and my photographs. I would be more than happy to assist.
That being said another way to protect your embroidery files is to create a folder on your desktop and everytime you download files do it twice...once to that folder. Then once a week archive the folder and email it to yourself at a hotmail account where you can store up to 250 MG of email. That way you have off site storage. You can also do this with gmail and yahoo. :-)
Edie

4 comments

by jrob 29 Jan 2008

oh, aren't you clever....thanks!

by ruthie 29 Jan 2008

Thanks for that mumra - hope Ravyn reads it, and that no-one else needs it! Here's a flower for you.

by ravyn 30 Jan 2008

Thanks for sharing the info, Mumra -- sadly the HD is actually *dead*, not just 'unreadable' or 'unbootable'. The circuit board itself is fried - the drive will not even get power/spin at all - it's shorted out totally. Another tip similar to yours is to partition your hard drive. That's what we've done for years - I don't keep any data/personal stuff at all on C: - don't install programs on C:, etc. - the only thing on my C drive is windows itself - even my browser, email, etc is all on other partitions, not C. If Windoze crashes & I have to format my C: drive & totally reinstall windows, all my data is on other partitions, so none of it is touched by formatting. Some programs themselves might need to be re-installed because of the .dll's & such that must go in the windows system area, but all the actual data is safely sitting on other partitions. So -- if it had just been a system meltdown, we would have been totally OK - but the drive itself is truly dead - inoperable whatsoever. There ARE companies who can replace the circuit boards on a dead drive but it must be done in a clean-room environment & so is *very* expensive, much more than we can afford..... (grin) I've already uploaded what few things I've gotten back & put them all online for safe-keeping (I've got my own server, so have essentially unlimited space), got everything copied on two different external drives, and got zipped copies of everything put on several of our other computers as well. LOL, so I've got about 6 backup copies of everything total right now - HOPEFULLY that will keep me safe! LOL!

by marjialexa 30 Jan 2008

Cool idea, gonna try this one! Yahoo mail has unlimited storage, btw, incase anyone didn't know they changed. Marji

My husband is always telling me to BACKUP. A week ago I noticed when I last backup and though I better do it and haven't yet. So thanks for that unfortunate reminder. Good luck in retrieving your designs!

Thanks for the reminder, Ravyn, and I'm so SORRY! Wow, what a lot to lose. I lost sentimental stuff in a flood in my basement, & that hurts! All those designs, all that work, oh my. Backup is the name of the game, and sometimes even that doesn't work. But CD's DVD's are so cheap now, just takes a bit of time (or a lot, depending on how much you have). Jrob, I'm like you, had a business years ago, not embroidery, auto mechanics as a fact, but I had duplicates & triplicates of every piece of paper I had. We didn't use computers back then, it was the 'dark ages' lol. Ravyn, if I can be of any help, other than cry with you, please ask, and I'll try. Marji

Oh Ravyn, my heart bleeds for you, I am so very sorry that you've lost everything. I've never had that experience fortunately, but I can well imagine how I would feel if I lost everything from my computer. I would be absolutely inconsolable, and because of that I do backups and backups and backups on a regular basis. You sure have a lot of work ahead of you trying to put together another collection of designs, but please keep in touch, if you need help, as in if you can't remember web addresses, or where you got certain designs from, just ask, someone here might have the answer. Here's a flower for you Ravyn hope it helps a little.

1 comment

by ruthie 28 Jan 2008

Ravyn, forgot to say, have a look at my latesr project, it contains some of your hearts, thanks very much for giving them.

thanks for the advice I will do a second backup now

oh, ravyn, I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. We actually have a business(not embroidery) and have a back up on the premise, one that is no more than 2 weeks old in a fireproof vault and one that is kept off site. Seems overkill, but you are witness to the fact that it is not! Thanks for the reminder.

Nickie, I am so sorry for you. My heart aches. So may things all going wrong at the same time. I hope you can retrieve some of your data and find the strength to go on.
And thank you for the warning.

I know we all hear it over & over -- but do you have backups of
*everything* on your system? Do you have redundant backups? If not,
do it *now*!!

Yesterday's fiasco would almost be hilarious, as it was such a string
of unlikely events - I'd be laughing if it hadn't had such a
devastating effect.

If you don't want to read my horror story below, the moral of the tale
is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP -- and have multiple backups no matter what.

Yesterday, I lost *everything* I had on my system due to a HDD
failure. Initially, we thought it wasn't too big a deal - got recent
backups on an external HD, and backup CD's of older stuff from way
back when...

Believe it or not, went to use the external HDD & IT had failed! Same as
my internal - circuit board is apparently fried, as it won't even spin
up at all... SO... I thought, well at least I still have my older
stuff on CD's... We dig out the boxes of computer disks/cds/stuff
that goes back for years - some of hubby's older things are there, but
not a one of my backup disks & CDs! We tore the house apart, and best
we can
figure is that one of my boxes somehow got lost in our last move...

SO - *everything* I had was lost. Thousands of embroidery designs I'd
collected over time, including many purchased designs - thank goodness
that EmbroideryLibrary keeps an order history & lets you re-download
there! My additional fonts from EM2, all my own designs I'd done...

I had digital artwork that I had done, going back over 15 years - all
gone. I've got .jpg copies of some items that I had online, but
that's not the same as the original 'working' vector files. More &
more keeps coming to mind, much of it "older" stuff that can no longer
be replaced... wonderful graphic/design tutorials & lessons saved from
websites that don't exist any longer, old emails that had sentimental
value, photos, programming I'd done, the list goes on & on... you
don't realize how much of your *life* is sitting inside your computer
until it's wiped out....

From now on, I'm keeping 2 backups here - one on CD/DVD, one of an
external drive - AND keeping additional backups stored online as well.

I know - what are the odds of *two* hard drives failing at once, AND
backup discs being lost to boot? Pretty durn slim, I suppose - but
that's what happened. I was quite literally in hysterics yesterday
afternoon, thinking of everything I'd lost - but I'll just have to
rebuild from scratch & start over... sigh...

SO --- if you haven't backed up your system, or if you just have ONE
backup -- backup or do redundant backups NOW! Then do more backups of
your backups! Store irreplaceable stuff online someplace - storage
space is super-cheap or free, and then you'll have it in case all your
"home"
backups get lost, damaged, or fail.

Yep - we could have the data off these drives retrieved - at a price.
From what I understand, if the drive is completely dead like this -
they *can* replace the circuit board & retrieve the data - but it's
exceedingly expensive - it's not the same as data retrieval from an
'unreadable' drive that's still at least getting power.

Thanks for listening to me vent - and take my advice - backup,backup,
backup -- then do backups of your backups, and get stuff stored online
as well!!! Don't think you're "safe", like I thought I was, just
because you've got an external
drive or some CD's ....better to have too many backups than not enough....

1 comment

by pasister 28 Jan 2008

Not as drastic a catastrophe, but I had my external back-up hard drive die on me last week and a couple days later my external DVD/CD writer also quit working. I had been in the process of writing to DVD all my years of embroidery designs and photographs of my family. Luckily, I still have my computer working and will again back-up on new equipment which I bought over the weekend. I keep extra back-ups in my home fireproof safe, my bank safety deposit box, online, and also I scanned a copy of all important documents (no, not embroidery files, he would laugh at me!) at my attorney's office. Having experienced two Hard Drive failures in 4 years and this external HD failure, Back-up, Back-up, Back-up is the code we all know and should be diligent about.
Good Luck with your data retrieval!