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Reply 20 of 43, by Errius

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RAID isn't a backup. RAID protects you against a single drive failure is all. If multiple drives go down simultaneously or the controller itself malfunctions then you lose everything.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 21 of 43, by candle_86

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once i get what I can, I'm going to get it backed up ASAP.

I'm planning to buy 2 5tb Drives next month for backups going forward.

Reply 22 of 43, by clueless1

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It doesn't seem like the complexity of RAID is worth it anymore. Just get a quality drive (use BackBlaze drive reliability blogs as a starting point, at least to give an idea of which models to avoid) and run regular maintenance on it. DiskFresh can usually complete overnight, so schedule it to run in the evening. I like a two drive system. At home I use Macrium Reflect to take daily images to drive D: and I make sure DiskFresh runs on both C: and D: once a month or so.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
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Reply 23 of 43, by candle_86

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Well ideally what I want to do is use my spare celeron system to create a Raid 0+1 setup with 4 2tb drives as a file server with 2x 5tb ESATA bakcup drives, its been my goal for awhile. I just need to source a copy of Server 2008 R2 or newer, because I want a domain as well so I can enable roaming profiles.

Reply 25 of 43, by candle_86

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I've got what wasn't recoverable at least

Games Folders
Sid Meier's collection - Recovered (Colonization, Civ II MGE, Civil War collection)
Star Trek Collection - Partial (Acadmey, Command, Command II, Command OP, Kilgon Academey, New Worlds, Bridge Commander)
Star Wars Collection - Recovered (Xwing, Tie Fighter, TvX, Xwing Alliance, Rouge Squadron, Kotor, Kotor II)
Simpsons Hit and Run, Agile Warrior F111X

Recovered my entire Windows ISO Collection
Recovered my Driver's Collection
Recovered by Benchmarks Folder

also for the wife
Recovered our wedding photos and video 🤣 (she really only cared about this for some reason)

Reply 26 of 43, by clueless1

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Great! Glad you got your stuff back. 😀 The wedding stuff is a pretty big deal.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 29 of 43, by candle_86

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mrau wrote:
candle_86 wrote:

she really only cared about this for some reason)

women do that, they want to have sth to show off after divorcing you and making you poor like a teen

yea i said, i got some games, os's and drivers recovered, she said meh
I said i recovered some of the movies, she said meh

I said I recovered our wedding photo's and videos without any data loss, she said guess who gets something special tonight

I dunno why she isn't excited I recovered Windows 1.0, 1.01, and 1.03 i mean really thats big 🤣

Reply 30 of 43, by y2k se

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I've used GetDataBack from Runtime Software to recover some lost files from a failed hard drive a couple times.

Tualatin Celeron 1.4 + Powerleap PL-IP3/T, ASUS P2B, 512 MB RAM, GeForce 4 Ti 4200, Voodoo2 SLI, AWE64, 32GB IDE SSD, Dell 2001FP

Reply 31 of 43, by Private_Ops

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candle_86 wrote:
mrau wrote:
candle_86 wrote:

I said I recovered our wedding photo's and videos without any data loss, she said guess who gets something special tonight

I dunno why she isn't excited I recovered Windows 1.0, 1.01, and 1.03 i mean really thats big 🤣

🤣 🤣

Reply 32 of 43, by shamino

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It's good to hear that you got a lot of files off of it.
If there is still more that you're hoping to recover, and you get another drive large enough to hold it, then try cloning the whole disk using 'ddrescue'. It's generally available in linux distros, though I think it's usually an optional package and not something that gets installed by default. It might not be on bootable linux DVDs either, but once the live linux environment finishes booting, you can just "install" ddrescue into the ramdisk environment that the OS is running in.

As always with a low level disk utility like this, make sure you read some articles carefully about how to use it. It can be dangerous if misused.

It works similarly to the more common cloning utility 'dd', except ddrescue is designed for cases where the source drive is unreliable. In it's recommended usage, it can keep a log of which sectors it has and hasn't successfully copied so that it can resume/retry it's progress on a later boot. It also has some intelligence about using progressively smaller transfers when it runs into a trouble spot on the disk, in an effort to recover as much as possible. I think it might have options to limit the speed so as to avoid heating up the drive, but I don't remember for sure.
Needless to say, keep the source drive nice and cool as you have been doing, and avoid powering it up unless you're actually ready to run the clone operation.

Once you have a cloned image on a stable drive, even if it's not fully intact, you'll be in a more comfortable position to try other recovery methods like 'testdisk' and 'photorec' and whatever else is out there.

Reply 33 of 43, by computergeek92

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I recommend having not just a server with a raid to frequently backup to, but also backup your data to Blu-Ray data disk, DVD data discs, and spare hard drives stored away.

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http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html

Reply 34 of 43, by ynari

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Good job getting it back - did you really use LN2 to keep the drive cool enough to recover data?

I've gone for a RAID10 system at home (almost working) going to get round to backing up to an external drive, and tape too..

Reply 35 of 43, by candle_86

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ynari wrote:

Good job getting it back - did you really use LN2 to keep the drive cool enough to recover data?

I've gone for a RAID10 system at home (almost working) going to get round to backing up to an external drive, and tape too..

yes I did, I hit it with LN2 and then immeditly put it into an eSATA Dock on my work computer. I did this 3 times 🤣

Reply 36 of 43, by candle_86

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computergeek92 wrote:

I recommend having not just a server with a raid to frequently backup to, but also backup your data to Blu-Ray data disk, DVD data discs, and spare hard drives stored away.

I can't justify Bluray backup, just darned expensive.

What I'm going to be doing is an external eSATA or USB 3.0 backup drive, ill buy the cage and drive seperately so I don't pay an arm and a leg for it

Reply 37 of 43, by tincup

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USB3 drive docks are a pretty good choice - you can swap HDs in an out and use anything available - so very flexible. External drives are more limiting I find. I use a dock in combo with a second internal HD that is used just for backup - fastest solution for everyday backing up.

Reply 38 of 43, by PhilsComputerLab

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All my ComputerLab stuff is stored on a networked mirror array, two 4 TB USB 3 drives. I just use software Raid (Windows 10 Storage spaces), I never got the rage about hardware RAID / NAS. I back the array onto a 4 TB external Seagate drive every now and then and put it out in the storage room.

My main desktop, I use a SSD but have FileHistory enabled, also comes with Windows 10, which saved onto a platter drive.

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Reply 39 of 43, by candle_86

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tincup wrote:

USB3 drive docks are a pretty good choice - you can swap HDs in an out and use anything available - so very flexible. External drives are more limiting I find. I use a dock in combo with a second internal HD that is used just for backup - fastest solution for everyday backing up.

yes but a cage offeres better protection than a bare drive.

Honestly what I'd love to have is one of those drive cloneing stations like we have where i work.

I'd just clone my backups 🤣