Disaster

[quietrob]

Yeah, multiple backups didn't help me this time, but... Well, it's all one really can do...

Yep, I think I'm probably going to burn Apollo, Dawn, and Dusk's runtimes off on discs (it'll take a DVD for Dusk and Dawn and a CD for Apollo) and move them to the new drive. Then, I think I'll clean up the main drive a bit and start the Daz history download process. I want to sort stuff certain ways, so I'll be downloading manually (as always). Won't that be fun. I think there are around 6,000 things in that order history... LOL

Quietrob, have you gotten responses back from all the vendors you've contacted? I won't name names, but I've had utter silence as a response from a few...

I have so many items from DAZ and they've made only mistake that I know of. The rest of my content is right there and since I can tell the DIM (Daz's Download Manager) where to locate stuff, I'm pretty tight there. One issue with downloading things and installing them. Why does DAZ list them in a "content" folder. I want them in my Poser runtime. I typically unzip the files where they are, copy the runtime and then paste it into my main runtime. Extra steps I don't need to take.

As far as vendors...I won't name a few as at least one asked me to be patient. He seems like a nice fellow so I'll be pinging him once a week so he won't forget me. No more than that. He IS busy, he is still making content...not for Poser but I can understand that I'm not his top priority. Yanelis3D not only gave me back my content he (she?) gave me old Aiko 3 content they were no longer selling but I have long lusted after. Karanta sent me a fresh pair of ballerina shoes right away. Kony was the same way. I still have to hit up Kaylela but she's all ready proven to be one of my favorite vendors (that I support with my hard earned shekels). Like Russell Cook, the creator of RTEncoder, most are very kind and understanding. These are the people who sold at the defunct stores that I'm hitting up. I'm so glad I backed up my AerySoul, AlfaSeed collection from RDNA. She is one busy person!! Content Paradise pretty much told me to go suck a egg...nicely. 'Oh! I can re-download the freebies for free? How kind of you.' I bought my latest copy of Poser at Rendo for a reason...

Another problem is that if a Vendor had their OWN website, I'd buy directly from them so they could get a bigger slice of the money pie. DAZ has brought them and consequently killed their websites so I can't download directly from them. I'd always rather go to the vendor if possible but lately I can't take that chance!

Honorable Mention. Idelacio is just so cool! He linked me up right away. A vendor you may not have heard of but made the coolest stuff.

 

[Miss B]

Another problem is that if a Vendor had their OWN website, I'd buy directly from them so they could get a bigger slice of the money pie.

I prefer to do the same as well, and still do with one of the vendors at Renderosity.

Honorable Mention. Idelacio is just so cool! He linked me up right away. A vendor you may not have heard of but made the coolest stuff.

Hmmm, the name sounds familiar, but I can't place where I know it from.

 

[Hornet3d]

Yeah, multiple backups didn't help me this time, but... Well, it's all one really can do...

Yep, I think I'm probably going to burn Apollo, Dawn, and Dusk's runtimes off on discs (it'll take a DVD for Dusk and Dawn and a CD for Apollo) and move them to the new drive. Then, I think I'll clean up the main drive a bit and start the Daz history download process. I want to sort stuff certain ways, so I'll be downloading manually (as always). Won't that be fun. I think there are around 6,000 things in that order history... LOL

Quietrob, have you gotten responses back from all the vendors you've contacted? I won't name names, but I've had utter silence as a response from a few...

Downloading manually is a right royal pain but I always do it that way, it saves a bunch of time searching for stuff and makes back ups easier, like your DVD for Dusk. I don't know what DVDs you are using but I have started using M disks which state they are good for 100o years, may not of course, but they should last my lifetime. Downsides are they need a compatible drive to be written, but can be read by all DVD drives as far as I can tell, and they are fairly expensive. I have had DVDs in the past which seem to deteriorate over time and are very choosy on which drives will read them, if at all.

 

[tiggersprings]

Another problem is that if a Vendor had their OWN website, I'd buy directly from them so they could get a bigger slice of the money pie. DAZ has brought them and consequently killed their websites so I can't download directly from them. I'd always rather go to the vendor if possible but lately I can't take that chance!

I'm glad most vendors have been good to you. I guess I'm just going to write some stuff of as loses, for the vendors that aren't returning my messages.

That's not saying a few vendors haven't been outstandingly helpful and understanding. A few have been really awesome with helping recover bonuses, bogos, and so on. Luckily, I never got to into the "off the books" bogo sales at Rendo, I think I did one of Powerage's and one of Silver's--and once, way, way back, one of Anniebel's--(I actually found those items and didn't have to bother them).

Yeah, disappearing indie stores is a problem. Not that there are many left, but I don't shop at smaller stores any more. It's basically Rendo, Daz, Hivewire (I don't have much from here yet, some of my shopping is done by gift certificates and they don't have those here), and very occasional CP for me (but I won't pay the download fee). I've looked at Poser Addicts a few times over the last few months, but the site is static and I'm not sure it's safe to shop there. The same goes for qraffx's site, as well...

Honorable Mention. Idelacio is just so cool! He linked me up right away. A vendor you may not have heard of but made the coolest stuff.

I have the retro outfit for A3 as an RDNA purchase as "oshikai."

Downloading manually is a right royal pain but I always do it that way, it saves a bunch of time searching for stuff and makes back ups easier, like your DVD for Dusk. I don't know what DVDs you are using but I have started using M disks which state they are good for 100o years, may not of course, but they should last my lifetime. Downsides are they need a compatible drive to be written, but can be read by all DVD drives as far as I can tell, and they are fairly expensive. I have had DVDs in the past which seem to deteriorate over time and are very choosy on which drives will read them, if at all.

Yes, that's why I want to manually download: so I can carefully label things that "go together" so they'll be grouped together in a very large directory. Of course, quite a bit of my Daz order history will be skipped, since it's DS-only stuff that will never get used, unless Poser compatibility is added later. I have noticed some items in Daz's store have quietly had Poser-compatibility added, DM's blocks set, for instance. So, I usually just bite the bullet and pick up the free, DS-only stuff, "just in case." LOL

Ummm... For discs, I usually stick to Ridata or Verbatim. Occasionally, if forced to shop locally, I'll go with Sony or TDK because they're easier to find here... But, I usually stick with the former.

 

[quietrob]

I'm glad most vendors have been good to you. I guess I'm just going to write some stuff of as loses, for the vendors that aren't returning my messages.

That's not saying a few vendors haven't been outstandingly helpful and understanding. A few have been really awesome with helping recover bonuses, bogos, and so on. Luckily, I never got to into the "off the books" bogo sales at Rendo, I think I did one of Powerage's and one of Silver's--and once, way, way back, one of Anniebel's--(I actually found those items and didn't have to bother them).

Yeah, disappearing indie stores is a problem. Not that there are many left, but I don't shop at smaller stores any more. It's basically Rendo, Daz, Hivewire (I don't have much from here yet, some of my shopping is done by gift certificates and they don't have those here), and very occasional CP for me (but I won't pay the download fee). I've looked at Poser Addicts a few times over the last few months, but the site is static and I'm not sure it's safe to shop there. The same goes for qraffx's site, as well...



I have the retro outfit for A3 as an RDNA purchase as "oshikai."



Yes, that's why I want to manually download: so I can carefully label things that "go together" so they'll be grouped together in a very large directory. Of course, quite a bit of my Daz order history will be skipped, since it's DS-only stuff that will never get used, unless Poser compatibility is added later. I have noticed some items in Daz's store have quietly had Poser-compatibility added, DM's blocks set, for instance. So, I usually just bite the bullet and pick up the free, DS-only stuff, "just in case." LOL

Ummm... For discs, I usually stick to Ridata or Verbatim. Occasionally, if forced to shop locally, I'll go with Sony or TDK because they're easier to find here... But, I usually stick with the former.

I stick to flash drives now. Labeling each is bit harder but I've had DVD cd compatibility issues too. I also think you get slightly higher more bang for your buck vs quality DVDs. Storing each one isn't difficult. The best solution may be the extra external hard drive for backup/storage purposes however, Drives fail. At the worst possible times and also are susceptible to file ownership issues if you change computers (Hence the name and intent of this thread). Without my little hack file, retrieving files from an old external drive could've been a nightmare. If you have a "can't copy file" due to ownership issues let me know and I'll hook you up.

 

[tiggersprings]

Last year, I had a new flash drive kick the bucket on my just after I had finished manually downloading all my RDNA purchases to it. So I don't trust them very much, either. It wasn't even a re-used one that had been sitting around forever and I had deleted data from before doing so, either. It was also a well-known name brand.

Yesterday, I did some patching on Koshini's runtime. I had a handful of RDNA transfers from Daz that I somehow overlooked installing, as well as a couple of newer ones (recent PC+ sales). So much fun digging those out of the "content" folder on top of doing my normal unzip, re-organize, check for errors, document, and rezip routine. This is all getting very old. And at best guess, I'd say I have several years of runtime data reconstruction to look forward to, at the rate I'm currently moving forward.

 

[Hornet3d]

Last year, I had a new flash drive kick the bucket on my just after I had finished manually downloading all my RDNA purchases to it. So I don't trust them very much, either. It wasn't even a re-used one that had been sitting around forever and I had deleted data from before doing so, either. It was also a well-known name brand.

Yesterday, I did some patching on Koshini's runtime. I had a handful of RDNA transfers from Daz that I somehow overlooked installing, as well as a couple of newer ones (recent PC+ sales). So much fun digging those out of the "content" folder on top of doing my normal unzip, re-organize, check for errors, document, and rezip routine. This is all getting very old. And at best guess, I'd say I have several years of runtime data reconstruction to look forward to, at the rate I'm currently moving forward.

While I use flash drives I would not trust them to be the only backup medium for the very reason you give, they fail without warning. Conventional hard drives sometimes give signs when they are getting towards the end of their life, not always but quite often. Flash drives rarely if ever do, one moment they are there and the next, nothing. With DVDs you can sometimes recover some data but with flash drives it tends to be all or nothing, they have their place but I wouldn't want to be over reliant.

 

[tiggersprings]

While I use flash drives I would not trust them to be the only backup medium for the very reason you give, they fail without warning. Conventional hard drives sometimes give signs when they are getting towards the end of their life, not always but quite often. Flash drives rarely if ever do, one moment they are there and the next, nothing. With DVDs you can sometimes recover some data but with flash drives it tends to be all or nothing, they have their place but I wouldn't want to be over reliant.

Yep. Found that out the hard way and had to download my RDNA purchases all over again last year. That was stressful because in early 2016, the old computer acted up and it took me until August to get fully back "online" with this computer. When I downloaded again, I downloaded once manually and once with TaoSoft's downloader, though. Because I got really paranoid. So my "archive" of RDNA stuff is actually almost double what it would have been. However, it was worth it, because I found one product when I was going through things that I overlooked downloading manually some how.

 

[quietrob]

It took me a second to realize it. tiggersprings, thank you for the great freebies. I especially like your hair fits for the cutie pie cap and your support of the "off" figures. I like to mix up my figures and you've made it so much easier. Again, my thanks.

At this point the only things from RDNA that I'm missing is my sixius1 downloads. Sixius1 is really busy right now but I'm sure he'll get back to me. At least he responded and we chatted about more than reviving my downloads. He seems like a really good guy. He was one of those vendors that I bought from his website as well. Oh and @Ghostman. His drones are also missing. They were archived on that dying drive. I wisely backed up my Alfaseed stuff in more than one location but I still lost my conversions. You know they aren't really lost. But getting them from that dying hard drive is just like getting a root canal. It just hurts.

I see ghostman is selling here at the hive. I still have the reciepts for that purchase...hmmm...

 

[quietrob]

Downloading manually is a right royal pain but I always do it that way, it saves a bunch of time searching for stuff and makes back ups easier, like your DVD for Dusk. I don't know what DVDs you are using but I have started using M disks which state they are good for 100o years, may not of course, but they should last my lifetime. Downsides are they need a compatible drive to be written, but can be read by all DVD drives as far as I can tell, and they are fairly expensive. I have had DVDs in the past which seem to deteriorate over time and are very choosy on which drives will read them, if at all.

A thousand years! I can see you creating a time capsule and your descendants saying, "I was looking for those files."

 

[tiggersprings]

It took me a second to realize it. tiggersprings, thank you for the great freebies. I especially like your hair fits for the cutie pie cap and your support of the "off" figures. I like to mix up my figures and you've made it so much easier. Again, my thanks.

You're very welcome. I'm really glad you find the freebies useful. Cutie Pie Cap is one of my favorite sets, as you can imagine. LOL

At this point the only things from RDNA that I'm missing is my sixius1 downloads. Sixius1 is really busy right now but I'm sure he'll get back to me. At least he responded and we chatted about more than reviving my downloads. He seems like a really good guy. He was one of those vendors that I bought from his website as well. Oh and @Ghostman. His drones are also missing. They were archived on that dying drive. I wisely backed up my Alfaseed stuff in more than one location but I still lost my conversions. You know they aren't really lost. But getting them from that dying hard drive is just like getting a root canal. It just hurts.

Yes, Sixus' Les seems very nice. I really love the tutorial on the Poser morph brush they released, and I left a comment over at DA to that effect. He was very nice about it, even though my example of what I learned was smashing a toon rabbit in a dress and fixing the poke-through with the knowledge from the tutorial. Of course, Sixus1 has released some cool, offbeat toon stuff over the years (some of which I do own). When I was pretty new to Poserverse, I got in a hurry placing an order at an older version of the web site store and duplicated an item I had purchased and Rebekah was very nice about helping me out with the situation. They seem like quite the couple!

Yep, I know the loss of data hurts. I've lost the use of a couple of my older products because Poser Pro 2014 and this computer seem to conspire to break some of my favorite older purchases. That's aside from the few crash losses. I'm afraid a lot of things--especially limited time freebies and stuff--are just gone...

 

[quietrob]

Hard Drive retrieval update. Ghostman just came through with some much needed models that were lost in the hard drive crash.

Much love going out to the Ghost!!

@tiggersprings Yo Yo Yo! Sixius (Les) has a DA account?

 

[tiggersprings]

Hard Drive retrieval update. Ghostman just came through with some much needed models that were lost in the hard drive crash.

Much love going out to the Ghost!!

How awesome of Ghostman.

@tiggersprings Yo Yo Yo! Sixius (Les) has a DA account?

Yep.

Sixus1 on DeviantArt