Fried my computer...lost all BMAX stuff

Yeah...i'm one of those who always "plans" on backing up everything but didn't. I had my 200gig external HD sitting and waiting but of course my lazy ass didn't bother to simply just drag and drop my important stuff in the HD.

So a lightning storm hit the other day out of nowhere and cause a brown out in my building complex...next thing i knew....a sharp screeching sound came from my computer and then smoke everywhere.

So my computer is fried...and just when I was about to start my next BMAX project....lost everything.....

A 'brown out', you say?

<insert obligatory toilet joke here>

That's horrible sorry to hear it.

Well, look on the bright-side - sometimes you can back-up, and continue to back-up, then find your back-up doesn't work.

Computers can be cruel.

I keep mine chained to the desks ever since I caught them scavaging through the fridge at 3.am - it's worse if you have more than one computer as they develop a 'pack' mentality.

that sucks... :(

I managed to wipe my fiancee's external HD, including all her pictures of several years along with many documents, the other day..
Well, to be honest, it wasn't me, but rather the recovery program on the CD which cam with my ASUS laptop.
The external HD was connected to one of the USB ports, so the recovery program decided to format it and install some temporary recovery data on it instead..
Of course my fiancee ran out crying, and took a long bike ride.. :(
I tried to use some data recovery programs, but no-one had any luck of finding anything..
So, I guess I'll be sending the disk to a data rescue/recovery company.. I contacted them, and they said it will set me back between 160 and 1150 US$, depending on how much work it is..
oh well.. I'd better just pay up.. :p

the above story was just to show you that you're not alone!! :p hehe

...and people can be kinda dumb/lazy/forgetful (delete as applicable).

Bad news indeed - I'm so paranoid about loosing my source files that I back up constantly to as many devices as I can - mainly an external 400gb usb - but also to various usb memory sticks I have lying around - I also backup stuff to the web just in case the house burns down !
Scheduled tasks can help !

LarsG: Try GetBack NTFS (or Fat32). I used this on a drive that was formated and it worked. Every important file retrieved. It's license is $40 or something. I totally recommend it. Try the free demo first. Plug the drive into another PC with the GetBack installed and then scan the drive.

wow... rough stuff... sorry to hear that Neuro...

the gods can be cruel sometimes... don't depend on em all the time... disconnect from the grid if electrical storms are in the area... telephone and cable wires too...

... although, if they want you, they will get you.


good luck recovering all the stuff... the drive may still be in good enough shape... hopefully...

--Mike

I ain't got nothin' to backup! :/

Neuro,

My heart goes out to you man! Thats unlucky and sad.

The lightning has been viscious this time around, my brother-in-law's parent's house was completely blown out. Every electrical item was damaged, the whole huse has to be re-wired and it will take months and cost a lot to fix.

My Mother in law and Sister in law were in an unrelated incident almost toasted too. They were standing by the cooker and as the both moved away from the cooker a bolt of lighnint came in through th window and hit the cooker, sending those metal things on which the pans sit flew off in all directions, and apparently the cooker was red hot for a while.

IPete2.

Thanks for the response folks....I'm running off my work's laptop right now. I did happen to have the common sense to buy the warranty for my desktop...so they're going through it right now. Hopefully the HD is not fried also...even though it appeared to be smoking too.



Lol.. Yah, i think thats the right term when the electricity goes to half-power......my surge "protector" apparently didnt protect through a brown-out and caused the shortaged and resulted frying... But I got myself an UPS unit...so next time i'd be ready.



Holy crap....hope they're ok! What are the odds of that?

I back up every single day! I'd be really mad if I'd lost even a days worth of work. I'm afraid there's no excuse really in not backing up your work. Even backing up your source on floppy disk would be enough and easy to do.

I have been meaning to backup for about 4 month now. I have a 80 GB hard drive sitting there. All i need to do is connect it up. But, i won't and i'll probably lose everything i have :o)

It's a bit late for Neuro, but my backup reigm works like this. I have Norton Save & Restore installed, and every two hours it backs up all my .bb and .bmx files (and whatever .db* files I might have, but we won't talk about that). I don't have to think about it; it just happens to my external HD (or USB key).

Additionally, once a week it takes a complete image of the hard disk and stores it away.

It works well, because, other than connecting the external HD to the laptop each day, I don't have to do anything.

I use this tool for all my backup:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/SyncBack.html

Fantastic can I have the job of rewiring their house, I would love to takes months to rewire a house, currently an average house takes us 4 days to 2 weeks for a huge house.

The surge protector wouldn't protect against brown outs because thats not a surge its a dip, I can't imagine any way that a brown out would actually fry your machine, even if there was a massive spike after the brown out which is likely, the surge protector would have caught it.

anyway this is the universe teaching you a lesson, backup now because tomorrow is too late.

Yeah well, erm....

I got hit by a meteor bigger than Belgium once, my shoes fell off and everything and I needed a 100% skin graft. But I'm alright now.

:/

phew, I'm glad you got over that GFK, were your shoes a right off, could you claim on your insurance, or was it act of God?

I've still got the mental scars of losing an adventure game I was writing on the Speccy back in the day. I re-saved the loader program at the start of the tape and accidentally recorded over the start of the main program. I was devastated and would have prefered to have been hit by a meteor, at the time. :/

Now that I think about it, the brown-out may have short circuited it instead of frying it...either way, the computer was smoking like crazy all over and was quite a smokey sight to see. Still no word from the repair shop though....

Yah, the simple process of dragging and dropping into the backup drive takes only a couple of secs. No excuse why i didn't....aside from sheer laziness and the belief that it can never happen to me. I learned my lesson....

..here in japan, folks trying to catch storm lightning, and instead of fried some equipment, bunch of brave engineers was fried..but hey, they not upset, they said its question of national pride, so fried brave engineers is heroes..so, to make things more fun, there is next team of brave engineers..i am wondering how many of them will be fried..so, its not bad as its looking..

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This may sound mean, but the way you said that made me fall out of my chair.....