Disaster

[quietrob]

I started up Poser and my runtime didn't show up. Further investigation showed the external drive where I keep the runtime and a few other programs and PZ3 files isn't being accessed. It's changed in the windows directory from External Drive to Local drive and can't be accessed.

The good news. It's not my C: drive. I try and keep that as clean as possible, installing only programs that crave that C: drive location. Tons of Room. That's good news because that is where my page file is set up. As my systems sits there it reads and writes to the hard drive. It shouldn't read nor write to the failed hard drive.

The Bad news is that is where I store my real working runtime. If it's a power failure, I should be able to move the innards to a hard drive enclosure and regain my drive.

If it's a read/write failure of the heads or platter. The Term SOL may apply. Consult your urban dictionary for the meaning if you don't know.

It's a disaster. I'm sad. Very sad. I'm totally looking for sympathy and experiences on this.

 

[Alisa]

I don't have any experiences, but I DO have a ton of sympathy! Hope it's not the worse scenario!!

 

[Sunfire]

Perhaps it is your computer having a moment of confusion. Try disconnecting the external drive, and rebooting the computer and then reconnecting the drive. Sometimes OSes just lose their mind and that's all it takes to fix.

 

[Willowisp]

Ouch, you certainly have my sympathies!

Had an external bork up myself couple of years back, but Linux managed to rescue it. If all else fails, try booting from a linux usb drive and see if it can read the disc (Linux is better at reading failing disks than Windows), then move the content to a healthy drive.

 

[quietrob]

@Alisa Thank you, Alisa. It may not be the end of the world. There a lot of things that are a lot worse that could happen to one's self. The saying, "It can't get any worse" is a huge cake eating lie! I do appreciate sympthay though. Even the smallest of hard times is made better with a little sympathy.

@Sunfire It's one of the miracles of modern computing that many faults can be fixed by turning off your system and then turning it back on. In this case, NO drive detected changed to a local drive that can't be accessed. There is only hope in that windows does indeed see something. I'm going to try hooking it up a friends laptop and see if it is accessed. If it is, then I'll know something is going on with the USB. Also, I'll have a chance to run chkdsk. Chkdsk can fix a plethora of problems. One thing is that the computer you're working tends to give out ownership of the files. Ownership is a result of permissions. That can be tricky. If you need to take ownership of a file, let me know. I have a tiny little app that lets me take ownership of any file.

 

[quietrob]

Ouch, you certainly have my sympathies!

Had an external bork up myself couple of years back, but Linux managed to rescue it. If all else fails, try booting from a linux usb drive and see if it can read the disc (Linux is better at reading failing disks than Windows), then move the content to a healthy drive.

Linux has been around soooo long but it keeps popping up on my google searches as a way around my problems. I'll try the laptop first and then Linux. I don't relish having to burn another hundred bucks to get a storage drive of the same size but I need my files, I want my files!

Suddenly online storage doesn't seem like a bad idea. I just wondered about the security of such a thing. Anyone that works for the company can have access to your files. I store idea's. That's what 3d modeling is. Idea's. I don't want to give them away.

Sorry. I totally digressed. Thanks for the idea. I'll let you know what happens. It's good to put up a problem because I guarantee you. If it happened to me, it can happen to someone else.

 

[Miss B]

Sorry about the hard drive. I hope it turns out to be something easy to fix. I know I'd be cursing like a construction worker right now if that happened to me.

 

[seachnasaigh]

@quietrob That sucks like a Hoover.

 

[Stezza]

hopefully a failed cable.......

one day I was reinstalling windows when upon the initial install boot I went through and deleted the partitions and reformatted the drive thinking it was the OS drive... only to find out it was my whole Runtime content drive....!!!@@#^&%

dunno why I did it..... lucky though I had 90% of it backed up on an external drive... but I did have that sickly gut feeling when I booted up after install and only to find there was nothing there on my content drive!

still dunno why it happened......

 

[Bonnie2001]

Could Windows have changed the drive letter? I had that a while back and I ended up having to go in and permanently rename my external drive so it wouldn't get changed again.

 

[Alisa]

@Alisa Thank you, Alisa. It may not be the end of the world. There a lot of things that are a lot worse that could happen to one's self.

True, but bad things happening are no fun whether they're bad or awful or calamities

If you need to take ownership of a file, let me know. I have a tiny little app that lets me take ownership of any file.

Ooooh, that would be lovely. I've had that drive me crazy in the past. Want to yell "it's MY computer. I own ALL the files!!"

 

[FairyFantastic]

sorry to hear tht rob its horrid wen it happens i had a external die amonth agog and i loast every thing runtimes 2d 3d stuff i had collect over the yaers im slowly trying to get some back hope u can sort something out with it x

 

[StudioMartillo]

My sympathies quietrob. I just dodged that one by migrating to SSD. HDD's have a definite limit to their lifespan. It's always stated in the manufacturers specifications. My old drive had a 2400 hour MTTF (mean time to failure). After almost four years of about 20 hours per week I was really pushing it. My new SSD has a 1.7M hour MTTF (yep, million!) lets see now, that would be .... 1,634 years.

 

[quietrob]

True, but bad things happening are no fun whether they're bad or awful or calamities


Ooooh, that would be lovely. I've had that drive me crazy in the past. Want to yell "it's MY computer. I own ALL the files!!"

@Alisa I have to reinstall my OTHER external drive but I did manage to store a plethora of stuff away. I'm pretty sure it's on that drive as well. Just let me know cuz for me it happened when I switched computers on a formerly failed hard drive. That hard drive I lost only one..count 'em one file.

It was called Runtime.

I was able to get back the files however some of them said I no longer owned them. That meant I couldn't use them, nor copy them over to a new drive. I could look at them but that was it. That little app once added to your context menu gave me access to the drive and all folders. No renaming, No permission seeking, No enumerate object. It hacked my registry just a bit, was perfectly virus and malware clean and worked like a champ!

 

[quietrob]

sorry to hear tht rob its horrid wen it happens i had a external die amonth agog and i loast every thing runtimes 2d 3d stuff i had collect over the yaers im slowly trying to get some back hope u can sort something out with it x

Thanks!

You know it's not just the files. I rarely buy from Smith Micro so I don't have to get those files back. My other files are located in DAZ and Rendo. The DAZ files are stored on another external hard drive. The Rendo files are archived at Renderosity.

But my hybrid characters, Transformed OBJs, Freebies they aren't stored anywhere else. Every Christmas Renderosity gives away free stuff. They DON'T archive that for you. I had about two or three hundred poses that I think reflect my style when it comes to the human body. Those are lost. Extra Programs, Art and more that comprises some half a terabyte of data. I. WANT. THAT. BACK.

I am currently researching DIY data recovery once I figure out how to get back in the drive IF the heads didn't crash or the motor didn't burn out. If it's the last two, I'm f....I'm fouled up...

Still, thanks for your interest and responding. More stories!!

 

[quietrob]

My sympathies quietrob. I just dodged that one by migrating to SSD. HDD's have a definite limit to their lifespan. It's always stated in the manufacturers specifications. My old drive had a 2400 hour MTTF (mean time to failure). After almost four years of about 20 hours per week I was really pushing it. My new SSD has a 1.7M hour MTTF (yep, million!) lets see now, that would be .... 1,634 years.

How big is it? It's gotta be faster but how big is it? I couldn't even find a SSD drive that was half a terabyte. I do envy your speed. The Hard drive has been around since 1980 something...it's well past time we got a new storage medium. I wonder why we can't make a 6 terabyte flash drive? It's just chips.

 

[StudioMartillo]

The new SSD is 500MB, which was more than enough for what's on the HDD. The HDD is 1 terabyte. I was able to clone the HDD on the SSD even though it's half the size. I just resized the windows partition.

You've got some massive library. I think my Poser directory is not quite 40GB and all of my content is there.

Crucial, Toshiba and Western Digital make 1 terabyte SSDs. I got a WD Blue drive. Now if I take out the old HDD I'll have another SATA 3 slot and can put in another WD Blue and be back up to the original storage capacity.

There doesn't seem to be a significant change in speed really. Even thought the SSD is five times faster than the old drive. Programs start up quicker but renders take just as long.

The most noticeable difference is how my musical instruments work. Some amount of disk streaming is used, like when I play notes all over the keyboard using dual layers and split keyboard.
My favorite is a grand piano across the keyboard layered over double bass and classical guitar split.
The samples have five sets of velocity files so the audio load is huge. With the hard disk some anomalies were apparent but now it's super clean.

 

[Alisa]

Hoping it's not all lost forever!

I did find a page with tools to allow you to take ownership of files
6 Tools To Take Ownership and Get Full Control Of Files and Folders • Raymond.CC

Not something I face a lot but I have and it's a real pain to go through their rigamarole.

 

[Hornet3d]

Really sorry to hear about your problems and hopefully some of the data can be recovered. If Windows can 'see' it there is a chance that it could be connected up to another system and that might be able to read it. The suggestion to try Unix sounds a good option. I know this is just the luck of the draw but from my experience it is fairly rare for conventional hard drives to fail completely, unless, as you suggest there is a head crash or it just stops spinning due to mechanical failure.

If you do have to spend out for another hard drive see if you can afford the few extra dollers for the type recommended for NAS storage as they are designed/built to run 24/7. If you are going the SSD route I always look for the length of the warranty but I have to say I have a real bias for Samsung Spinpoints for conventional drive as I have both the 1TB and 2TB versions and they are quiet and have proved to be reliable. I also like their SSDs but that is just down to my personal experience.

As to Cloud back up I am using Amazon Drive at the moment mainly because I had free storage there as part of being a Prime member. Not enough space for a Poser/DS user but I also had a 3 month free trial for unlimited space so I thought it was worth giving it a go. If I decide not to continue after the 3 months my data is held for 90 days so I have time to move somewhere else. Is it secure? Who knows, but then that is a big question no matter who you use but one point in Amazon's favour is they are already used by one of the 3D market places. I can't remember which but I know the download links pointed to Amazon servers. They are not the only company offering the service mind so I hope other will give us their experiences. If you are unsure on your ideas being nicked you could encrypt the files before up loading.

 

[quietrob]

The new SSD is 500MB, which was more than enough for what's on the HDD. The HDD is 1 terabyte. I was able to clone the HDD on the SSD even though it's half the size. I just resized the windows partition.

You've got some massive library. I think my Poser directory is not quite 40GB and all of my content is there.

Crucial, Toshiba and Western Digital make 1 terabyte SSDs. I got a WD Blue drive. Now if I take out the old HDD I'll have another SATA 3 slot and can put in another WD Blue and be back up to the original storage capacity.

There doesn't seem to be a significant change in speed really. Even thought the SSD is five times faster than the old drive. Programs start up quicker but renders take just as long.

The most noticeable difference is how my musical instruments work. Some amount of disk streaming is used, like when I play notes all over the keyboard using dual layers and split keyboard.
My favorite is a grand piano across the keyboard layered over double bass and classical guitar split.
The samples have five sets of velocity files so the audio load is huge. With the hard disk some anomalies were apparent but now it's super clean.

My libraries are split between DAZ studio and Poser and some files are duplicated due to DAZ studio taking over the storage of their files. Before I used to be able to unzip directly into Poser and they also had EXE files that did the same. By the way, Poser was quite happy to have two different iterations of Mike and Vicky 4 without an error. So yes, they comprise years of collecting and storing. Too large really but my idea's change from moment to moment. One moment I could be working on a simple scene with mother and daughter enjoying a coke by an old style gas station, the next I could be illustrating an epic poem. It worked for me. If I had to do it over again, I'd split my runtimes on different drives for different era's and genre's. Say One for Fantasy and the other for Film Noir.

I really thought with no hard drive and head movements as it gathered it's information, the render process would be faster. I suppose once it's in memory it still comes down to the CPU and GPU processing power with little page file use. My C: Drive is 285 Gigabytes. Not even a quarter of my storage drives.