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VIA6415

Canaidan Route Builter
Well if guys. My PC deleted my trainz drive on me and I lost everything, assists, routes mesh's everything 15 years worth of work gone. please don't ask me for missing kuids I no longer have them.

the recovery progress will be hard as this drive was my main stroge for trainz. if your missing something there's nothing I can do.
 
There are a couple of obscure files in windows that control access to the drive. Repairing these might bring you back.
 
I don't understand why Windows does that, but I had a laptop go south that way. Even the computer store could not recover it, and I did not want to pay $400 for disk recovery. Fortunately I had pretty much everything important backed up, including Trainz. But what I hated were the vague messages about being unable to read the drive, not one word on whether it was bad blocks and sectors or bad boot block or what the actual problem was. Just a vague error with no excuse I could determine. I have also lost USB drives this way. I do not appear to have any of your assets installed, but if I did I would sure be willing to zip them up and send them to you. Maybe others could do this...
 
https://www.easeus.com/

Data recovery software.

If the hardware isn't completely dead, you maybe able to use this to recover your files.

As with any data, always plan for the inevitable of losing it, therefore backup, backup, and backup. Programs can generally be reinstalled and recovered with few issues, however, data cannot, therefore you do what you can to protect your data from disaster, and the protection for your data is backing it up diligently. Depending upon how critical the data is, you may want to invest in an outside storage facility for your backup media, or even a backup cloud service.

Data recovery, outside of the inexpensive software listed above, is expensive. In the late 1990s, I used a hard drive recovery company to retrieve data from a failed hard disk. The data on the drive was critical for a project at the time, being a nearly complete book ready for output. The cost to recover the data was well over $1,000 USD in the late 1990s, and sadly the drive could not be recovered due to damage to the platters. The money was refunded, but the drive was still dead. We did, however, have a backup. It was an older backup, done the weekend before, but we had the backup. Due to the book being nearly completed, the author was hoping to recover it and output. She ended up redoing the last few chapters and this whole process delayed the book a month. (We were told right away, within days, that the drive was dead).

In 2010 a vice president at the company I worked for, needed his hard disk recovered due to some very important information on the drive. This was not normally done, but given the highly critical data on the drive, the device was sent out for repair. The minimum charge to recover the data was $680 based on the information given to the company. The drive was recovered and the cost was close to $3,000 due to the clean-room recovery necessary to recover the media. The bricked drive was returned to us, albeit, dead anyway and not under warranty.

I'm not sure if you want to go to this length for this kind of data, but if you do research hard disk recovery services. Sadly it's been too long for me to recall what company I contacted in both instances to tell you what it was.
 
There is something strange going on with Win10 - I lost media access to a main trainz storage HDD.
Windows 10 reported some fault with the drive and suggested a repair - which I went along with, but when I went to access the drive nothing (the drive still whirz up but does not show in File Manager - no clicking sounds etc).
Tried Easeus software no luck there either.

Has anyone else had a similar issue if so any more ideas re: fix

Pikin - what obscure windows files might need repair?
 
That's just what I was talking about, and you don't even get a decent idea of what the errors are. No excuse for it...
 
When a disk driver decides to enter retirement, no operative system can do anything.
Not Windows, not Linux, not IOS.
We are Windows users and we see our own environment, but users of other OS's will experience the same rage for the same reasons too.

There may be some very specialized tools able to dig deeper into the disk structure and try to save data, but they are really difficult to use and can finalize the disk breakup if used without knowledge.
There's a reason if recovery services have a very high price tag.

And there's a reason for big data munching enterprises to have redundant front-ends, multiple back-ends, and even a twin backup datacenter in a location hundreds of miles away.
Because sh*t happens, even with professional equipment, even in a professional software environment.

Blaming Windows for something "natural" isn't going to change the facts above...that is, sh*t happens.

P.S. - If you think Windows gives zero informations on a possible disk failure, better you don't look at a Linux report after a disk health scan...you would think that nothing is working right! And that's just because you don't really know how the logic of a disk drive works (I don't, too), and all those lines of text mean nothing to you (not to me as well.......). That's why I just do backups and don't worry about any SMART scan, other than a possible high temp inside the drives.


Luca
 
There is something strange going on with Win10 - I lost media access to a main trainz storage HDD.
Windows 10 reported some fault with the drive and suggested a repair - which I went along with, but when I went to access the drive nothing (the drive still whirz up but does not show in File Manager - no clicking sounds etc).
Tried Easeus software no luck there either.

Has anyone else had a similar issue if so any more ideas re: fix

Pikin - what obscure windows files might need repair?

That has nothing to do with Windows. The drive motor is working that's all, but the head actuator is probably dead or something else on the logic board died. This can be heard when the drive is accessed and it sounds like a clicking sound.

The issue we run into now is the overall quality of the disk hardware is not what it used to be unless you want to pay the price for it. A consumer-grade hard disk, not even talking about an SSD, is only $50 for a 2-TB drive. The drive comes with a 1-year warranty. An equivalent enterprise-quality hard drive of the same size costs $170, and comes with a 5-year warranty. Way back in the olden days, nearly all the drives came with a 5-year warranty and they lasted forever. I have some SCSI drives that are nearly 15 years old and still operate fine. They got their workout in the past as a RAID on a server and are now used as individual data drives on my Sun Ultra.

With data being a precious commodity and consumer-grade drives being piss poor, I recommend spending more and going for the better warranty and the better quality drives overall.

If you really want to see the details, get HD Sentinel www.hdsentinel.com . The software will run diagnostics and monitor your hard drive's lifespan and it's pretty accurate. If you see there's only a few hundred hours left on a drive, be prepared to back it up ASAP and look for a replacement. You don't want to wait until the end when the drive fails abruptly.
 
When a disk driver decides to enter retirement, no operative system can do anything.
Not Windows, not Linux, not IOS.
We are Windows users and we see our own environment, but users of other OS's will experience the same rage for the same reasons too.

There may be some very specialized tools able to dig deeper into the disk structure and try to save data, but they are really difficult to use and can finalize the disk breakup if used without knowledge.
There's a reason if recovery services have a very high price tag.

And there's a reason for big data munching enterprises to have redundant front-ends, multiple back-ends, and even a twin backup datacenter in a location hundreds of miles away.
Because sh*t happens, even with professional equipment, even in a professional software environment.

Blaming Windows for something "natural" isn't going to change the facts above...that is, sh*t happens.

P.S. - If you think Windows gives zero informations on a possible disk failure, better you don't look at a Linux report after a disk health scan...you would think that nothing is working right! And that's just because you don't really know how the logic of a disk drive works (I don't, too), and all those lines of text mean nothing to you (not to me as well.......). That's why I just do backups and don't worry about any SMART scan, other than a possible high temp inside the drives.


Luca

Absolutely!

The OS doesn't kill the hardware... I've run Solaris disk diagnostics and FSCK is pretty scary too!
 
I have a usb hard drive that has a lot of Trainz cdp's on it. After the last windows update in stopped working, or worked part of the time. Broke out a older computer and pluged in the drive and it works with no problems. Now using a fast drive to slowly move the files over to the computer I use now.

Rob
 
Thanks for the input guys. yeah, stuff breaks, and I do keep backups. It's the only way to go. MountE, I had a plugin USB drive by Seagate that Windows decided it could no longer read, and I could not get the data on it, but when I bought a digital local TV reciever that could save programs to a USB drive, I plugged it into that and it recorded a movie with no problem. You just never know, and it may not last....
 
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