Data Transfer mission impossible ? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

boink · 08-10-2008, 06:04 PM

ok, here's the situation.
OLD NT4 sp6 dual P3 650 dual scsi drives with one partitioned for C and D and the other not partitioned. raid config.
512 ram full tower computer

dead CD drive dead floppy drive.

taken to pro for data transfer to external hdd and then have recycled.

the tecs first took apart the rig to get the drives out and the rest went to recycle binns. (about a week ago)

the tech guy said upon looking at the contents of the drives, there was no file structure.
he did the transfer and I got the external drive home and the data is fubar. .jpg's are "shredded" and mp3's skip in winamp, media player won't read them at all.

all folder and file names lost. I know the last time I booted up this comp all files were there and readable. it never crashed or lost files in a big way. one or two if I hadn't done a defrag in a while.

now, I didn't think to tell them it was a raid setup. honestly I figured they'd determine exactly what they were dealing with before they ripped into it. I get the feeling the system was highly dependant on these actual components to successfully read the data.

they are willing to continue working on it. so far I paid $130 for the external drive and labor for data transfer. weather they are successful or not I'll at least get the drives back for further attempts. maybe buy and old NT system and see if I can hook it all up ? I have my old OS on the original floppies

so, in this situation what would be the best direction to proceed ?

there is stuff on there I'd like to keep. old download links are gone for alot of the music (not stuff I can buy on CD or get any other way that I know of) the pics I want to keep are similarly hard or impossible to get again. if it was just pr0n I wouldn't care really cause there's no end to that.

thanks for any suggestions

boink · 08-11-2008, 04:22 PM

well...looks like I got lucky here. they found my case w/ all it's guts intact. installed the drives back into it and the ol NT box booted up as usual all files intact.

gonna install a DVD burner to extract the files or barring DVD in an NT machine, a CD burner. whichever works.

soooo, nevermind

xepherys · 08-11-2008, 04:45 PM

Lucky man! I would NEVER bring them work again, though. They should've booted the system as it was (broken) before doing a data xfer and determined what Filesystem was on the drives as well as things like software or hardware RAID configurations. All of those are ultimately important to the task. Part of the problem may have also been NTFS. If they were NTFS drives, the data wouldn't RAW transfer off it anyways. That's part of the security of NTFS over FAT32.

They don't sound like they're really on top of things there. Sooo... like I said, lucky man!

boink · 08-11-2008, 06:17 PM

yep, lesson learned on my part. my loss would have been a collection of mp3's that I don't think are available on CD at a store. and I know download links are long gone for those. many pics or rare things I collect off ebay...that's about it really. the pr0n was not important.

overall not worthy of a serious recovery effort ($$) but dang it'd suck loosing it.

in the end we installed an extra IDE drive into the comp and saved it all to that. then offloaded it to an external usb drive I can use with the new XP system.

08-10-2008, 06:04 PM	#1 (permalink)
boink Addict Location: Seattle	Data Transfer mission impossible ? ok, here's the situation. OLD NT4 sp6 dual P3 650 dual scsi drives with one partitioned for C and D and the other not partitioned. raid config. 512 ram full tower computer dead CD drive dead floppy drive. taken to pro for data transfer to external hdd and then have recycled. the tecs first took apart the rig to get the drives out and the rest went to recycle binns. (about a week ago) the tech guy said upon looking at the contents of the drives, there was no file structure. he did the transfer and I got the external drive home and the data is fubar. .jpg's are "shredded" and mp3's skip in winamp, media player won't read them at all. all folder and file names lost. I know the last time I booted up this comp all files were there and readable. it never crashed or lost files in a big way. one or two if I hadn't done a defrag in a while. now, I didn't think to tell them it was a raid setup. honestly I figured they'd determine exactly what they were dealing with before they ripped into it. I get the feeling the system was highly dependant on these actual components to successfully read the data. they are willing to continue working on it. so far I paid $130 for the external drive and labor for data transfer. weather they are successful or not I'll at least get the drives back for further attempts. maybe buy and old NT system and see if I can hook it all up ? I have my old OS on the original floppies so, in this situation what would be the best direction to proceed ? there is stuff on there I'd like to keep. old download links are gone for alot of the music (not stuff I can buy on CD or get any other way that I know of) the pics I want to keep are similarly hard or impossible to get again. if it was just pr0n I wouldn't care really cause there's no end to that. thanks for any suggestions __________________ when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way. Last edited by boink; 08-10-2008 at 06:06 PM..

08-11-2008, 04:22 PM	#2 (permalink)
boink Addict Location: Seattle	well...looks like I got lucky here. they found my case w/ all it's guts intact. installed the drives back into it and the ol NT box booted up as usual all files intact. gonna install a DVD burner to extract the files or barring DVD in an NT machine, a CD burner. whichever works. soooo, nevermind __________________ when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.

08-11-2008, 04:45 PM	#3 (permalink)
xepherys <3 TFP Location: 17TLH2445607250	Lucky man! I would NEVER bring them work again, though. They should've booted the system as it was (broken) before doing a data xfer and determined what Filesystem was on the drives as well as things like software or hardware RAID configurations. All of those are ultimately important to the task. Part of the problem may have also been NTFS. If they were NTFS drives, the data wouldn't RAW transfer off it anyways. That's part of the security of NTFS over FAT32. They don't sound like they're really on top of things there. Sooo... like I said, lucky man! __________________ The prospect of achieving a peace agreement with the extremist group of MILF is almost impossible... -- Emmanuel Pinol, Governor of Cotobato My Homepage

08-11-2008, 06:17 PM	#4 (permalink)
boink Addict Location: Seattle	yep, lesson learned on my part. my loss would have been a collection of mp3's that I don't think are available on CD at a store. and I know download links are long gone for those. many pics or rare things I collect off ebay...that's about it really. the pr0n was not important. overall not worthy of a serious recovery effort ($$) but dang it'd suck loosing it. in the end we installed an extra IDE drive into the comp and saved it all to that. then offloaded it to an external usb drive I can use with the new XP system. __________________ when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way. Last edited by boink; 08-16-2008 at 11:26 PM..