MikeSty

ATM I'm so incredibly pissed off at myself for being such an idiot. I was building a new comp for my family (which I'm plenty capable of doing), but the POS kept crashing. I eventually found out via memtestx86 that the RAM was bad. I returned it, and now I'm using some shitty RAM I dug up.

Initially I had installed XP on the mirroring SATA RAID i built. The install had issues (due to the flaky RAM), so I decided to install again. Bad, bad idea. I had an IDE HDD from the old family comp which has all of their shit on it.

Being the stubborn fool I am, I should have disconnected that IDE drive (like I did the first time around), JUST to make sure I didn't fuck up. I just left it connected, and I paid the price - I installed XP on that drive, wiping the partition and all.

However, I feel that there may be a little luck left. Knowing how shitty windows utilities are, maybe data recovery will be able to pick out what's left. If not, then I'll just have to kill myself. Plain and simple.

It was funny how the last few days I've been looking around on the comp for the other HDD. I tried everything, and it just now clicked that I was ON the IDE drive .... the RAID array was just sitting there, useless. So all of the hours I spent installing drivers, little firefox plugins, all sorts of nice stuff to make it nice for my family is down the drain for a second fucking time.

Any advise, hell, sympathy, would be appreciated. I think I'm going to go outside and throw some fastballs until my shoulder comes out of my socket.

cyrnel

I feel for you. It's easier to make this kind of error at home when not under "professional" pressure. Especially easy without your usual assortment of tools, utilities, parts. Small compromises or changes in routine build, bad things get worse, and soon I'm kicking myself in the ass with both feet.

If it helps at all take some consolation that most home users put less importance in their data disappearing than those of us who spend mucho time with computers. Of course, losing photos, financial data, or a serious gamer's saves might mean you're on dish-duty for quite some time.

I'd try GetDataBack or one of the other recovery utils. You may have written over important pieces but these filesystem forensic utils are pretty good about getting files that haven't been written over, even if their directory entries are toast. First thing though, pull the drive. Do the recovery on a box you know isn't going to access the drive. No chkdsk, no indexing, no nothing.

BTW, my last self-ass-kicking display was shortly after fighting an nForce SATA RAID setup so thank you very much for reminding me of that failure.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

MikeSty

Thank god they didn't have any financial data on it.... at least i don't think they did. It's mainly my little bro that I'm worried about - he's got all his music, pics, videos and crap like that on it :-/

I'll try GetDataBack then. However, what do you mean do the recovery on a box that isn't going to access the drive? I've already pulled it and I'm installing XP on the RAID array now. I'm gonna have to plug it back in and copy some of the install files over so I don't have to DL everything from the web. I have to leave in three and a half hours and I won't be back for a week!

I guess it's a fair punishment. I talked to my mom over the phone about it, and she didn't care. Then she reminded me why I'm doing this in the first place - she flicked the breaker on a surge protector that destroyed their eMachine in the first place It was either this or build a new eMachine. Without me, they would have been f'd anyway, so it doesn't matter.

cyrnel

Doesn't sound like you have lots of options given the time. Not for a low-level recovery with any safety. The recovery utilities can take a long time. For 40GB drive I'd give it an hour to scan, then another hour to copy the files you select.

I'd get the new stuff running and take the 40GB drive with me for recovery. You're back in a week. They'll live, and you get to think about what you're doing instead of running on adrenaline.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

MikeSty

Sounds like a plan - I'm schlepping my comp with me when I go to visit my old man. I've got a ton of work to do. I guess I'll have to do that.

A friend of mine reminded me of something dumb he did. He went to remove his heatsink (god only knows) and yanked the processor right out of the slot. He goes to build a new one and botches the BIOS install. ASUS is sending him a new chip for him to solder on

MikeSty

ROFL!!!!!!!! I just remembered long before I started building the comp, I ... obtained ... norton ghost and made a backup image of the drive! w00t for "being prepared" !!!

Ahhhhh, that makes this slice of microwaved pizza a whole hell of a lot better.

canuckguy

Doh, man that sucks, hope your able to save some of your brothers and families info. Try acouple of different programs as I have found that some find things that the others will not. I think most of us have been in your shoes, i remember doing a reinstall and for some reason the drive letters became jumped a to b, c to d, d to f..etc. so formatting c was not really c....grrrr

cyrnel

Alright! Of course now karma requires you to make an offering to the ...obtained... thing's temple. Guilt is a great sales tool.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195