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Author Topic: Evaporated files  (Read 1742 times)

PTTG??

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Evaporated files
« on: May 07, 2009, 10:54:08 am »
I recently lost two folders; one, a file containing a large quantity of 3D art and other files. Two, the heavily modded raws folder for DF.

So far, I haven't found any others.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that someone has taken or deleted them. When I find this person, I am not exaggerating when I say I will crowbar them like the headcrab they are.

Of course, it may be that these files where lost without human intervention.
If that's the case there may still be some way to regenerate them.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2009, 11:11:19 am by PTTG?? »
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Mephisto

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2009, 12:14:16 pm »
You could always try an undelete program. Whenever I do that I usually lose filenames, though.

Keep in mind that downloading and installing stuff raises the risk of overwriting what you're trying to save. If you've got a thumb drive and another computer, you could download it there and install to the thumb drive.
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PTTG??

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2009, 12:39:38 pm »
Thanks. Actually I have a few backups of these files (one benifit of reformatting every quarter).
I'm thinking of stepping that up to once a week for important stuff like work and DF, though...
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Yanlin

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2009, 12:55:53 pm »
Quote from: Mephisto on May 07, 2009, 12:14:16 pm
You could always try an undelete program. Whenever I do that I usually lose filenames, though.

Keep in mind that downloading and installing stuff raises the risk of overwriting what you're trying to save. If you've got a thumb drive and another computer, you could download it there and install to the thumb drive.

Not on modern computers. There is ZERO risk of stuff you're downloading overwriting your files. Unless you specifically tell it to.
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PTTG??

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2009, 01:19:04 pm »
He means after a file has been deleted.
Yeah, if you download something and it overwrites a file that's really there, you do have a problem.
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Yanlin

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2009, 03:16:09 pm »
Oh. Yes.
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Tormy

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2009, 06:34:45 am »
Quote from: PTTG?? on May 07, 2009, 10:54:08 am
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that someone has taken or deleted them.

Yeah, this is what happened probably...I never heard about any virus for example, which is "deleting folders".
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olemars

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #7 on: May 10, 2009, 11:54:31 am »
Faulty ram chips and/or hard drives can also cause files to disappear. If the files/folders in question are stuff you often access then this could be the culprit too. I'd suggest running chkdsk and a memtest.
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Tormy

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #8 on: May 11, 2009, 01:06:20 pm »
Quote from: olemars on May 10, 2009, 11:54:31 am
Faulty ram chips and/or hard drives can also cause files to disappear. If the files/folders in question are stuff you often access then this could be the culprit too. I'd suggest running chkdsk and a memtest.

Hard drive...maybe, but ram chips?  :o
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olemars

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Re: Evaporated files
« Reply #9 on: May 11, 2009, 01:56:09 pm »
Bad RAM can easily ruin a file system. When you read a file it is loaded into memory, and if you try to write that file back to disk while having faulty memory chips it's quite possible that file will be corrupted, or the system might even try to write to the wrong location and corrupt other files. It's the computer-equivalent of having a stroke, it can mess up pretty much anything.

This is why you want to fork out the extra dough for registered ECC memory in a file server. And I also happen to know this from experience...
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