Bugger, and other rude words.

I'm sat at my computer at oooooh about 4am with another bout of insomnia trying to occupy my idle time.

So I bite the bullet, pull out the sheath of bills I have to pay this month and start the painful process of carving large chunks out of my meagre sick-pay money and giving them to the strangers that send me bits of paper once a month. Its a subtle game of making 2 fit into 1 and trying work out how many packets of noodles I can buy with the change.

So once that painful experience is done, I glance at the desktop of my PC and think to myself, "I really should get these files put away somewhere and back them up" and decide tomorrow morning would be a good time to do it when my minds a bit clearer.

So as I lazily trudge off to prep a warm glass of milk, my mine wandering to dreaming thoughts of one day having a job again and being able to buy things like external drives and DVD writers to save all my work to Mr. Bob Fate and Harry. Coinkydink decide to knock at my door and strange noises start coming from my PC.

Funny how time stands still and your staring at the little green hard disk light on your PC that WONT GO OUT and the faint *whirrrrrrr* *click* *whirrrrrrrr* *click* of and IBM hard disk frantically clutching at its side in the throws of a major stroke.

Well fsck-a-doodle do... He's dead Jim.

Of all the drives in my system to fail, it had to be the youngest one, my slave drive, with ALL MY BLOODY SOURCE FILES ON IT.

I will now present the last hour of my life through the medium of emoticons:

:confused: :eek: :mad: :(

Well what can I say. If you've got anything I've ever made you better bloodywell hang onto it cuz it aint there any more. It's all fscking gone. The source code to HLMV, GUIStudioMDL, The Airborne models (and the new ones with animated faces), all the 1.2 models and sources, all the original layered texture files and about a billion other WIP's for myself and other people.

I've tried the usual tricks but this drive is as dead as a do-do. Trust me, I know. I used to do PC hardware for a living. I've even tried swapping the logic board from another drive I have of the exact time model and type and its not responding at all. Current diagnostic is the bearing in the motors gone and from the sound of it it a) cant spin the motor, and when the bearing failed the disk platters went off level and the heads have crashed onto the media.

Ah well... at the moment Im in that quiet patch before this all sinks in because I've got totally unreplaceable stuff on that drive and Im in no way able to afford a replacement. At the moment I'm posting this from an old 500Mb IDE drive I found in a box with Windows 95 installed on it. Weeeeeee feel the speed.

So errr, yeah. If you dont hear from me for a while I've thrown myself of something high.

Arse

- Jed

Oh my lord:eek:

Well I'd say that's a fairly convincing reason for why you gotta get gone for awhile. So I'm guessing removing the platters themselves and reading them with a whole new set of heads and drive motors is outta the question?

Originally posted by Cheeto
Well I'd say that's a fairly convincing reason for why you gotta get gone for awhile. So I'm guessing removing the platters themselves and reading them with a whole new set of heads and drive motors is outta the question?

And you'll be paying for said service?

Nah, Im 99% sure the mechanicals have gone for good. Its vibrating like hell and cant maintain rotation speed and I can his the *tschhhh* of the heads glancing off the platters as they try and spin up.

- Jed

Well as I recall, the platters are protected by a liquid layer, so while everything else about the drive may be fu><0red, you could be able to take the platters out and have them read that way. Maybe offer to work it off with whatever place does it.

damn that really sucks =\

wish there was a way to help

Poor guy its OK

What ever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Hopefully you get back on your feet :D I had a similar experience with my old crappy computer.

RIP JEd's puter :(


RIP Jed's work :(


well at least its not hte end of the world yet, eh?

(hears explosions)

We need a Save Jed's Work fund. If i had a CC I would give.

Well, stop trying to get the HDD to work and put it away for a bit. And when you get some money, you can try and recover the files.

But on the other hand, you can start from scratch again instead of trying to improve on your older material.

Sometimes it really is a good idea to just start fresh, from scratch. You know, maybe develop a new and/or better style.

Im so sorry for you man ;/ ...
First trigger and now you, that's really suck !

Anyway... Do not throw that HDD away ! there are labs to recover them, sometimes they can save everything... i know it costs and how you talk about getting a job but who knows? just don't throw it away... you can also try connecting it to a diffrent computer, it might work... i once had a floppy drive that just stoped working and he couldn't read, i took it into this computer and it works fine for more than a year now... give it a try !

Oh what a ****er..:(.

I'm really sorry to hear that Jed, i'm sure you will bounce back though, keep your chin up mate.

Well I've slept on it a while and tried it again and so its been sat turned off at room temperature for a good couple of hours and it still sounds pretty sick.

I'm aware of disk recovery companies - I have used one before at work to get data off of a crashed server for a client but in this case, the files I've lost have little or no value. O.k. I know HLMV is useful to us all but it doesn't generate me any kind of income (like all my other downloads) so spending money to get it back is pointless really.

Anyway the biggest problem at the moment is getting a new disk, thats what I need to solve right now and get my system working again. Im just annoyed because without the orginal stuff I don't have much I can show by way of a portfolio to potential employers - its always nice to demo your source files and show techniques rather than the finished prouct.

Well Im off for anyway, sort of got web access via and old disk running win95 (its only about 500Mb) but I may as well take this as a sign i'm meant to get out more this summer.

Cya when I cya. :rolleyes:

- Jed

Really bad news.

Well, I am superised that you used IBM drive, well known as DeathStar, while being hardware specialist. It had to fail sooner or later. What exact model you had ?
As a desperate procedure you could open it and try to replace heads arm or motor. I've heard that some people manage to recover some data (altough all hardware will become complete trash after this.
Alternatively let HDD rest some more and try again. This way I was able to recover all data from few bad drives I've had.

Oh man i wish i had a spare drive, i would mail it out to you if i had. Maybe someone on the forums might have a spare one kicking around and send it out to you. At least that way it would give you a start till you could save the pennys to buy one.

Come on folks, can anyone help Jed out here....

That completely sucks!!!! Hold on to that drive I am going to ring up a few friends and see if I can't find some help out there. Of there is anything that you need at all DSSG is willing to help out (not sure if we can really do anything, but if you can think of anything).

-Speed Bean

aww, poor jed. mate, thats proper harsh.

hopefully you can sort it all out by any means possible, gl.

btw. i have to say, i do like the way that you presented the death of your hard drive ;)

oh my, :(

I feel for you Jed. I had my 80 gig external drive die on me with all my music, videos, and assorted gaming files on it. Let it sit a few more days and then give it another whirl. I managed to recover about 75% of my stuff when I did that. If that doesnt work however......hmmmmm..........Let me scrounge around my friends computer shop that he owns. I might be able to dig up a decent drive for you at less than wholesale or if I'm lucky an older but still good one for free that he doesnt need. Drop me an Email at LtJoeAnderson@aol.com and I'll see what I can do.

Anderson

I could probably seperate with the slave drive in my old Dell that I don't use any more. I could transfer anything important off it (which I don't think there is. It only had games on it, and those games are now on my new computer.)

It is a 7200rpm 40gig Maxtor drive. I am not sure how I would do shipping or anything, but we could talk.

Damn shame!

I don't know if theres anyway you could get stuff off a DVD-R but If you want, PM me and I can whack 4.7Gb of stuff onto one if you need it badly.

as far as i know i have a 20gig western digital sittin at home

im at school right now, but im out in 2 weeks and im sure i could send it


that is if it still works with the 4 inches of dust on it

Thanks for the kinds offers guys but to be honest its a bit impractical to send me a drive. The cost of doing that would be more than a new drive anyway and its best to buy a new one and get the warranty.

I was aware of problems with IBM Deskstar drives - we'd had a lot go wrong before but I'd always had a positive experience of returning them to IBM and getting replacement drives back. The drive that failed has been trouble free - I run IBM Disktool once a month on my drives and fresh format every 6 so nothing came up.

Its just one of those unpredictable catastrophic failures that comes up from time to time and theres nothing you can do about it.

Anyway, the drives sealed up in anti-static bags and padding and stuck in the cupboard for now. I've seen some cheap 80Gb Serial ATA drives, just need to scrimp and save a bit to get one.

Sure as hell when I do have some money Im buying a DVD burner for backing up!

- Jed

My Iomega DVD+-RW cost me £100 and I got them to fit it too for added insurance that if It breaks its their fault.

I love it, 4.7Gb of data backed up in ~ 30mins, permanantly.

Make sure you get a +-RW so you can burn both DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW as different computers can only play certain ones, DVD players only play certain ones, and the cost varies between them, DVD-R's are good for Data and DVD+R's I use for movies/audio.

Really sorry to hear about yer trubs, Jed m8.

I hope you get back to some sort of normality ASAP.

PC's, eh?......Who'd 'ave 'em??!!

Luckily, HD's are dirt cheap atm, as are DVD burners. The place I buy all my stuff from, about a mile away from me, are flogging Pioneer A107 8xspeed DVDR's for £70, and 80Gb HD's for £45.

Poles never give up!
(even those born in England and now living in Sweden!)

Let us know how we can help to get you back on your feet.
How much would data recovery cost?

You know where to find us...

Data recovery is very expensive, but if the MSA community all chipped in a bit each, I'm sure we could get Jed's stuff back, with a little effort?

I'm up for it, who else is?

We could sort something out via PayPal or suchlike?

id throw $5

Yeah i think I could give $5:D

Jed, it might cost more to have a drive shipped to you from one of us, but here's the nice thing: it's FREE for you. :) So you'd be able to have a good drive up and running short term while you search for one with a warranty. Besides, incase you haven't noticed, there's quite a lot of blokes here who want to donate money to get your data back. If about 20 of us donate 5 bucks or more, I'm pretty sure we could pay for it, or most of it. So save the drive, get the freebie(s) from us, and then let us see how much we can raise. Hell, on the last boards, we started a fund to send cases of Mountain Dew to Mr. Orange (a mod) in Sweden. :D

LOL. Thanks for the offers guys. I'll leave it up to you but I cant offer much except thanks. If anyone wants to chip in a dollar or something then you can use my paypal account.

I managed to sell my guitar to a friend and another friend offered to by my SLR camera off me so that combined with the $50 in my paypal account I should be able to get a new hard disk by the end of the week.

Then its just he slow process of re-building stuff. :rolleyes: HLMV "Phoenix" edition anyone?

- Jed

If anything, this may prompt more people to donate to your paypal account. Which is always good!

i wish i could but im broke as **** =/

it really sucks that you lost those animated faces, and all your other stuff

Damn, Jed. That burns.

I'm sorry. I've been through that a couple times.

But I see what you're saying about needing to get out more and I don't want to be all greedy and ignore it. Maybe you've been sitting around long enough, 'ey? You get energy by investing energy, so getting out and moving around might help that insomnia. I hear total exhaustion under the right circumstances might help.

Whatever you decide to do, you've got my full emotional support. I appreciate everything you've given all of us, but your health and happiness come first.

Get a job, get yourself sorted out.

Like you said; fate came knocking. I'd love to see what other brilliant things you could come up with, but you'd be better off making a profit off them, right?

If you decide to move on, I'll look forward to updates on your situation and lots of happiness for a long future.

Otherwise, I'll hope for you to kick Marzy into finishing that Lewis.