HD Crashed, and what I did to retrieved Trainz files!

ish6

Since 2001
Hello All --

It's been like 5 years, and I am guessing that everyone of you have gone through this at least once a few years! You get up to drink your coffee, eat your toast, and turn on the PC to find a beautiful bluesky screen telling you that you're screw! LOL --- Your eyes popping out, and you're wondering, why me? LOL ... That universal question. :'(

So HD crashed -- granted, HD has treated me great, performed great for many years! But it's days where number... And to make a long story short had to replace battery on the motherboard too since this pc is 4 years old! But there is life at the end of the tunnel ...

Found the three-recovery disks that I made of this pc from 5 years ago; So, I got a new-faster HD, and used the recovery disks to re-installed windows 7, and all of the features that the acer pc came from, so pc is now as if I bought 5 years ago ... completely fresh and new!

As for the tons of trainz files, good news in that front!
This is what I did -- I have an external hard drive port, and I plugged that crashed hard drive in that, and then plugged that to the recently brand new computer!, etc ... Lucky for me all of the files, I mean everything is still there ... I got access to those files, and now able to transfer those files to my external back up drives! Usually I would have done this before any crash, but I am not into trainz these days, so I get lazy ... you guys know how that feels!

Anyhow, yes, back-up is essential; However, if your hard drives crash get yourself one of these external hard drive ports, and plug it in to see what happens ... Although the OS is damaged there's still that change to get your files out before discarding the hard drive!

Well, that's my pc trainz story guys!
Have a great day all!!
Ish

BTW -- Anyone has any interesting stories like this .... etc
 
I think you likely appreciate you were lucky as you could have lost the lot but I'm very pleased for you that you are again up and running and enjoying Trainz.

I export my creations in the form of a single .CDP file from CM - My Content which only takes a couple of minutes to a USB external drive every few days but a USB stick, network drive or free cloud storage would be equally suitable. Every month I create a drive image of my important hard-drive partitions using AOMEI Backupper (there are many other similar free programs) so as not to have to go through the process of re-installing Windows from scratch although I do tend to install Windows, Trainz and keep personal data on different partitions to reduce the chance of data loss from OS failure.

Many of the common Linux distributions can be run directly from a DVD or USB stick and are very handy for recovering data from HDD which have developed a mind of there own.

Microsoft has stated that its free upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and 8.x will finish on the 29th July 2016. Peter
 
Backup! backup! Yes double redundancy is a must for a Trainz fanatic - I have an external HD like Ish6 plus the luxury of a QNAP (4 HD's) and it is set to auto-backup to them - never lost a thing to date - hardest part has been remembering where and in which folder I have put stuff, but over time even that has become easier with a systematic method of naming/dating folders etc.

Bad idea is to partition a drive and using the 2nd partition or 3rd or 4th etc as a backup - if the disk fails the disk fails!

I have so many USB drives that I stopped using them as well - they do fail or fall behind the desk etc never to be seen again.

Cloud storage is fine for swapping or downloading storage but I shudder to think what would happen if the company folds and you lose the lot if all your precious content collected over years went up in digital smoke!

All routes and sessions saved as a CDP on a stick - locked in your fire proof safe is a great idea if everything fails you could reload the routes/sessions and then spend the next year finding all those missing assets and dependancies....real fun that!

Everyone has their own methods - but always good to see what others are doing to keep safe their precious pet hobby.
 
This is what I did -- I have an external hard drive port, and I plugged that crashed hard drive in that, and then plugged that to the recently brand new computer!, etc ... Lucky for me all of the files, I mean everything is still there ... I got access to those files, and now able to transfer those files to my external back up drives!

That worked because of the particular type of crash that occurred. I'm guessing that the drive that crashed was your boot drive, and the problem was a corrupted boot sector, or corrupted Windows installation.

That means that the PC would not boot or the OS would not start when that drive was used as a boot drive, but the drive was otherwise OK. So when it was plugged into the external drive port, you were able to read it. It's possible that there were parts of the drive you couldn't read, or would read very slowly because of errors. Whatever, having it as a second drive meant that you could start the PC and access the parts you wanted.

In many cases. a hard drive 'crash' would make the drive completely unreadable, or only readable using specialized software (and probably a lot of work).

Accessing the drive by attaching it that external port was absolutely the correct thing to try, but the fact that it worked was due to the particular type of problem that you experienced. In many other cases it would not have worked.
 
RX for ailing Hard Drives

I've played with computers since the 1970, Radio Shack TI99 if I recall, whopping 6 MHZ, and don't ask about the hard drive size, egads, anyway glad you got your stuff is up and running. Now go get a drink, have a steak, lord knows you earned!

For me, I keep some of my old computers and drives for bk-ups, along with External Hard 2Terabyte, and just started using the Cloud few months ago, but your comment about if Company goes BK is well founded, or huge natural disaster Earthquake, Tornado, Volvano, Mother Nature never sleeps, although some people just think she does.

I spread out my risk for recovery using Cloud, HD, and even USB Thumb Drives..........

Would suggest one thing for hard drives as health quality assurance,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_programmer)

and his program called Spin Rite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite


Granted there are other recovery methods and software available, but I think this is one is simplistic and good chance for recovery.

It may be invaluable if you trying to nurse a sick or unreliable HD to get your files off of it after a crash......Or just to see how your Drive is running.
 
Hello Guys --

All of your posts are very valuable, and insightful!

Like Dan said, OS crashed, so it wasn't really a HD complete failure, so was able to retrieve what I needed!

Blue, thanks for the links -- And Butler, same here, got plenty of external HD's, flash drives to back up stuff -- Just got lazy since not into trainz these days! My gigantic traction tram kit got saved, so no sweat there!

So, again, thank you all four of your for your stories!

Ish
 
Hello Guys --

All of your posts are very valuable, and insightful!

Like Dan said, OS crashed, so it wasn't really a HD complete failure, so was able to retrieve what I needed!

Blue, thanks for the links -- And Butler, same here, got plenty of external HD's, flash drives to back up stuff -- Just got lazy since not igablento trainz these days! My gigantic traction tram kit got saved, so no sweat there!

So, again, thank you all four of your for your stories!

Ish

We all get Lazy, life is far from perfect and so r we..........I'm really happy your Traction Route was salvageable.......Been there and done that with my IPAD2 in the past, lost a months of work, fortunately I had saved the route on Uploads to DLS.........Cheers
 
You are very lucky, Ish!

I lost a lot of stuff in a sudden crash due to a buggered power supply which surged and took out all components in my PC. My boot drive was bricked and my data drive appeared to work. I plugged the drive into my brother's PC, started to copy and a message came up that it would take 1,000s of hours and a day. I went to bed and after my toast, eggs, and coffee, went down to see where things were at. The PC had a BSOD - that blue sky color with lots of white numbers on it! To my shock and horror, the drive that was copying the night before was now empty. The directories really weren't there - just a cached image I think.

So yes, I repeat the backup mantra and then backup the backups! I learned the hard way on that one too with a backup drive becoming Write-only a few weeks ago. I was lucky though and was able to retrieve my data off of that one before it totally died, which it did a few hours later.

John
 
JCitron,

Do you by any chance still have that old drive?

Not anymore. I saved it for about 6 years before I decided it was time to remove the magnets and use them for something else.

If you are wondering about data recovery, I looked into it and it was too expensive though it didn't cost me anything for the company to tell me if it could be recovered or not except for the postage to and from California. A bad drive can cost as little as $300 or into the $1,000s. This was closer to the $1,000s because the controller and circuitry was complete blown out. There was even a burned chip on the drive. Even today I don't know how the drive sort of worked initially, and after it had died I tried swapping out a controller from another drive, but of course that wouldn't work because the ROM on the drive didn't detect the layout even though the drives were identical.

That's why I preach the backup and backup of backups... :)

John
 
You are very lucky, Ish!

I lost a lot of stuff in a sudden crash due to a buggered power supply which surged and took out all components in my PC. My boot drive was bricked and my data drive appeared to work. I plugged the drive into my brother's PC, started to copy and a message came up that it would take 1,000s of hours and a day. I went to bed and after my toast, eggs, and coffee, went down to see where things were at. The PC had a BSOD - that blue sky color with lots of white numbers on it! To my shock and horror, the drive that was copying the night before was now empty. The directories really weren't there - just a cached image I think.

So yes, I repeat the backup mantra and then backup the backups! I learned the hard way on that one too with a backup drive becoming Write-only a few weeks ago. I was lucky though and was able to retrieve my data off of that one before it totally died, which it did a few hours later.

John

Hello John --

Normally, I have always had two hard drives installed, as one being the slave; And what I have done is create a folder on the slave hd, call it "Trainz Stuff", and then create a short cut of that folder onto the desktop (main hard drive)! So, if something happens to the primary hard drive, I still have all of the info on the slave hard drive. The same goes for programs, except that sometimes installing windows, the programs on the slave HD might not work due to registry issues -- But these are minors!

In this new case I just got lazy, and I had tons of trainz contents on the desktop on the primary hard drive, but like you said, and my wife agrees here at home, I got lucky that all wasn't lost!

I don't do much on the pc except trainz stuff, and since I am not into trainz these days due to losing my trainz-mojo, I am basically now reading moive, news sites and trainz forum!

Ish
 
Chucking a dead drive in the fridge for a couple of hours sometimes works, as does replacing the pcb with an identical one from a working drive, or if you can identify a chip on the PCB that is overheating clamp a heat sink of some kind on it, that often works again long enough to recover stuff off the drive. Worked on that faulty batch of 300,000 Fujitsu drives by heat sinking the cirrus logic chip on the PCB, I recovered a couple of the things....
Incidentally Linux will often read a drive that isn't detected by the bios as Linux drivers can access the hardware direct.

All things I've done over the years for people who don't back up!

Edit: Not forgetting there is also a diode that gets blown when idiots wire up the DC the wrong way round, it does happen!
 
Chucking a dead drive in the fridge for a couple of hours sometimes works, as does replacing the pcb with an identical one from a working drive, or if you can identify a chip on the PCB that is overheating clamp a heat sink of some kind on it, that often works again long enough to recover stuff off the drive. Worked on that faulty batch of 300,000 Fujitsu drives by heat sinking the cirrus logic chip on the PCB, I recovered a couple of the things....
Incidentally Linux will often read a drive that isn't detected by the bios as Linux drivers can access the hardware direct.

All things I've done over the years for people who don't back up!

Edit: Not forgetting there is also a diode that gets blown when idiots wire up the DC the wrong way round, it does happen!

I've done the same in the past too and it has saved more than a few bits of data for my desktop users where I worked.

The Fujitsu drives sound like the former Hitachi, aka IBM Death Star drives. I had an ongoing RMA replacement program setup with Hitachi to replace caseloads of dead drives. These drives were used in RIPs for image systems, and the drives would die onsite at a print shop in the field. When we would get a full box to mail back, I'd email our direct support rep and he'd send me the paperwork for the return.

On a more train related incident, we lost one of the drive RMA returns due to a derailed freight in California. We received a check from the insurance company for about $8,000 USD from the Union Pacific Railroad where the derailment occurred.


@Ish6 --- Taking breaks from Trainz (any version) is a good thing. It helps get the creative juices going again.

John
 
Chucking a dead drive in the fridge for a couple of hours sometimes works, as does replacing the pcb with an identical one from a working drive, or if you can identify a chip on the PCB that is overheating clamp a heat sink of some kind on it, that often works again long enough to recover stuff off the drive. Worked on that faulty batch of 300,000 Fujitsu drives by heat sinking the cirrus logic chip on the PCB, I recovered a couple of the things....
Incidentally Linux will often read a drive that isn't detected by the bios as Linux drivers can access the hardware direct.

All things I've done over the years for people who don't back up!

Edit: Not forgetting there is also a diode that gets blown when idiots wire up the DC the wrong way round, it does happen!

Hello Malc, sir ...

That's quite interesting approach, sir! :wave:
Thanks for sharing -- I learn something new today!!!

Take Care
Ish
 
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