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"It's Gone, all gone!" Topic


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45thdiv22 May 2015 1:25 p.m. PST

I have been going back to school to learn a new computer skill. The new pc was acting up and I had the helpful folks on the phone working to get the operating system, you know, the one named like the thing you look out of.

The issue I was having is a slow down of the system. What took 5 minutes to compile, now took an hour and a half. Not a good thing for a system only four months old.

After playing around, the folks on the phone said they would need to reinstall the operating system. Well, they never sent me the disks so the had to over night them to me.

Once I had the disks they walked me through the steps. I made sure I backed up everything like my projects to the second hard drive. The operating system runs from the C drive like normal.

I do some programing but nothing to do with how operating systems work, it is just not my interest. So the guy is removing partitions and having a grand old time. He tells me that it will take 2 hours, so he would not keep me on the phone. When he was done he would send me an email.

He did. Everything was set back to factory. Including the second hard drive. My second drive was reformatted. The one I backed up all my projects to. Four months of work gone. What was the purpose of a seperate hard drive if the operating system allows such an easy access to removing the data?

Yes, I left the guy to finish up his work and came back the following day but in my mind the data was backed up.

I could remove that hard drive and take it with me.

So, now I sit here downloading all of my software and installing it all over again. I miss the days when you were sent disks for all the sortware you bought. But, that is not the way of the future.

As soon as this is done, I will get to start all of my project work all over again. And it will take me all weekend to download and install all of the programs and their data files.

I put gaming on hold for this. What was I thinking? Seriously, it will be okay. Just a lot of time wasted to go back to where I was in January.

Well mild rant over. I will be backing up the application installation software to DVDs. That way I don't need to down load it in the future.

It just sucks though, the wasted time that is.

Matthew

Who asked this joker22 May 2015 1:46 p.m. PST

If it was just software and time, I sort of understand. While you could have popped out the 2nd drive, likely the software would not have worked right with the new install since all the registry crap Windows is so famous for would have been gone. OTOH, if you lost actual data, you are allowed to get a heavy object and beat the technician within an inch of his life!

45thdiv22 May 2015 2:37 p.m. PST

Yes, I would love to beat the technician. I lost all of the projects I worked on with the software I am downloading and installing now.

The only good thing is I will not have such a high learning curve to get back up to speed.

cloudcaptain22 May 2015 3:02 p.m. PST

I feel you. Once you have the machine the way you want it… Download a copy of Macrium reflect free. Use it to make an image of your machine to external drive. Burn a rescue CD as per its instructions. That way you can always come back to that point in time if need be. Keep your data backed up occasionally. Recovery time will be minimal.

napthyme22 May 2015 3:28 p.m. PST

I always just unplug any extra drives just to be sure before doing a fresh install.

45thdiv22 May 2015 4:26 p.m. PST

All good comments and I will be following up on the extra back up disk. And i will remember to unplug the back up drives if i ever have to do something like this in the future.

GarrisonMiniatures23 May 2015 3:23 a.m. PST

External drives for backup… safe haven in case of, for example, a virus taking everything out… hard lesson and really feel for you…

Ed Mohrmann Supporting Member of TMP23 May 2015 12:07 p.m. PST

GarrisonMiniatures' point is well-made. I use a
2 Tb external HD and merely unplug it when there is
sysmaint to do.

Mad Mecha Guy24 May 2015 1:50 p.m. PST

There are free programs that can recover data from formatted drives, you might be able to get some data back.

link

Always best to remove other hdds when installing windows as uses other drive as temporary storage area.

45thdiv24 May 2015 2:23 p.m. PST

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I just finished intalling the last of the initial program data so i amd ready to start. I will be heading out to get an external hard drive so that i can mirror the c drive with all the programs installed and then all of my work will be backed up as well.

Of course my network card is dropping connection now and i will need to look into that, but not untill everything i have done up to now is backed up.

Matthew

Mako1125 May 2015 5:25 p.m. PST

Sorry to hear that.

As mentioned above, I'd really try to recover the data, or get some one to help with that, before starting over from scratch again.

I suspect at least some of it should be recoverable.

Eclectic Wave26 May 2015 11:45 a.m. PST

The Tech was out of bounds the moment he started doing anything with partitions. There is NO REASON that he should be messing with partitions during a OS reload. NONE.

Your IT tech did things that guarantied you data loss.

That having been said, you can get 128 gig Thumb drives for less then $100. USD They are perfect for data backup.

Mad Mecha Guy26 May 2015 11:57 p.m. PST

The tech probably did not touch the other hard drive, when installing windows it tends to uses any other hard drive as temp storage during installing and will affect the formatting of other drive. As commented in post above it may be possible to recover the data using free or cheap recovery data programs.
Formatting a hard drive does not necessarily remove all the data only removes the file structure format.

it is worth a try at recovering the data.

regards.

Weasel27 May 2015 11:48 p.m. PST

Messing with partitions is like taming griffins:
Ill advised and you always lose something.

For absolutely vital stuff, I keep detached, offline storage as well as cloud storage.
(none of it is terribly secret but it's stuff I'd be in a sore spot if I lost).

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