Everything...is GONE!

[Vel]

Well that's what I'd do, I'd be waaaay too bored to redo the whole thing again.

[MillsJROSS]

I'd make a short game to get my mind off the loss. Not that I wouldn't continue with it...I'd just put it on hold. Sometimes it's nice to take a break from a game, even if no one but you see's what you made.

I'd try to get it recovered, but if it's too pricey, you're just out of luck. I don't back up my files like I should, I have an outdated backup of my game, but I think everyone just thinks everything is going to be okay. So if it makes you feel any better, I'm sure a few people will back-up their games now, which could potentialy stop this from happening to other people.

-MillsJROSS

[Hollister Man]

My suggestion is to find someone with a Dell laptop that trusts you, and ask them to allow you to try your HDD.  I would give it a try, but of course I don't have a Dell.    As the general consensus suggests, it is extreeemly unlikely that the data would be destroyed.  It is much more likely that a connector has been jarred, or possibly the drive heads are now out of calibration.  Of course, there could just be a missing sector on the boot area.

Have you tried removing the old drive and replacing it again?  That's sometimes enough to help it along.

[LGM]

You can usually connect one PC to the other quite easily.. With a serial port cable that can be bought at Best Buy. If there is a Best Buy or Circuit City or something around you, GO THERE and talk with a laptop specialist.. They can try a zillion things and one of them is bound to work.

I still can't believe after all this time you never backed up your game ONCE.. IDIOT!

[Mr Flibble]

I hate to say this, but not backing up files is really stupid. Even anything,like art-work, music, story....

When I lost my stuff, my back up only contained about 2 thirds of what I lost, but at least it was something.

Open up the laptop and see if can be fixed mechanically. HAve you tried that yet?

[shbaz]

You can usually connect one PC to the other quite easily.. With a serial port cable that can be bought at Best Buy. If there is a Best Buy or Circuit City or something around you, GO THERE and talk with a laptop specialist.. They can try a zillion things and one of them is bound to work.

So far as I know, you can only use the serial port when both computers are on (so that they network with each other).

I agree with everyone else, the guy on the phone doesn't know what he's talking about (I've called Dell support before  ). If you can get the HD to another Dell laptop with a CD burner, like someone else said, that looks to be your cheapest bet.

[shbaz]

Oh yeah, and if you get a new laptop, ANYTHING BUT DELL. Dude, you're not getting another Dell, are you?

[Raggit]

Oh yeah, and if you get a new laptop, ANYTHING BUT DELL. Dude, you're not getting another Dell, are you?

Are Dell laptops bad???  That's funny, because the old Dell desktop computer I got back in the late 1990s is still up and running fine.  Maybe it's just the laptops.

Man Terran, I feel so sorry for you! I can't imagine having something like that happen, I sure hope that you can get your files back! 

[Gfunkera]

For someone thats just lost all this data, you don't seem to care much, except to start it over? Listen to yourself, it would be foolish to let it all go. 

[TerranRich]

At this point, I was ready to re-design the graphics in my game. If I start over from scratch, the only thing I will have lost is the dialog I was working on.

But what else can I do? I've gotten quotes from several places, and they are charging anywhere from $500 to $1,200. Thruthfully, it's not worth that much money to me to start over agian. Who knows, mauybe starting over will improve the game. The only thing that really bums me out is the fact that I have to re-write the dialog for Chapters 1 and 2 of my game. I try to look at the bright sid eof things...maybe the game will be better the second time around.

And, just so you guys know, the laptop runs fine, it's just the hard drive that shit the bed. Even if I did know somebody eolse with a Dell laptop (which I do), it would do me no good, because the hard drive is f*cked, either way. I DO care about this, it's just that I've resigned myself to accept the fact that I do not have $1,000 to spend on recovering my game, no matter how important it may have been to me. Like I said, I could just start over and it won't be that big of a deal. I could even re-design the characters so that they do not all look like John Malkovich.

[Kinoko]

$1000 is a LOT. It's a REAL shame you lost your game, and believe me, I can only imagine how bad it must be to lose the whole thing (I recently lost -one- sprite I'd worked hard on thanks to a glitch in PSP, and I wanted to jump out of the window to end the pain), but like you said, that's a hell of a lot of money (and is that in US$?). Don't feel pressured to recover the data, especially as you seem less devastated about it than others here Like you said, restarting it might make it better! Best at this stage to just take a deep breath, and get started again (recovering or writing down as many important aspects as you can).

[Barbarian]

Don't give up yet. I've had hard-drive failures before, but was able to recover most data on them.
The most successful way I found was to: First disconnect your old hard drive. Now put a new hard drive into your system, format it, install windows, etc.. It's now your new Master drive. Okay, I'm not familiar about your laptop, but, I think most laptops nowadays has room or slots for 2 hard-drives? If this is the case, set the jumpers on your old hard-drive to a "Slave" setting, then reconnect to the ribbon. Now, cross-fingers, when you boot up again with your New hard drive set as the "Master", and the old hard drive set as the "Slave", and if the data is still mostly intact, then you may in fact be able to read the data off your old hard drive, and then copy it over to your new hard drive.

You could of course take it into one of these places that can try and recover your data for you, but they can be quite expensive too as you've found out.Ã,  There are also some emergency recovery utilities that sometime can be useful too, sometimes they work sometimes they don't. Depends on the state of the hard drive ultimately I guess. An example of such a utility:
http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
Ã,  Using a utility such as that, run the program from a floppy, then if it finds files/data you can read, you can perhaps copy it to a CD, or secondary HardDrive, or perhaps even a External USB PlugIn HardDrive.
Best of luck.

[BOYD1981]

installing a new hard drive and then adding another as slave isn't really that easy to do with a laptop

[shbaz]

Are Dell laptops bad???Ã,  That's funny, because the old Dell desktop computer I got back in the late 1990s is still up and running fine.Ã,  Maybe it's just the laptops.

Dell once made great computers with quality parts, but as they got more and more popular the quality went down and down. They started using the lowest bidder, rather than the highest quality part.

Laptops are especially hard to design (if you're looking to create long-term reliability) because making stronger casing to resist drops is unpopular (people want the laptop to be super-light) and the intense heat that is created inside that tiny space causes the PC board to expand and contract a lot, which weakens the bonded metal wires and solder joints (causing open circuits inside your computer). Laptops have an expected lifetime of ~2-3 years, counting in drops and hardware failure. If you're one who leaves his laptop on a lot (like my old roomate) then your laptop will likely see an early death because of overheating and stressing the components. The cheap Dell parts don't help any at all. While my roomate's computer failed because of his blatant retardation (I warned him about this several times) the other two laptops on my dorm floor failed for other reasons.. shoddy hardware. One was a hard drive that was making weird noises as it spun after its failure, and the other stopped turning on its fan for some reason. So far as I know this was not abuse, but just something that suddenly happened.

My advice is to get something Japanese. Those people are great and dedicated engineers. My Toshiba has worked flawlessly, as I'm sure most do (discounting retards who leave their computers on 24/7 for no reason). I actually didn't pick it out, my father did, but I've been happy with it as have my friends with Satellites.

[Hollister Man]

As you seem to NOT know, Shbaz, computers are actually better off in the long run if you do leave them on.  They don't get that power spike at boot repeatedly, they are less likely to get old-fashioned viruses, etc.  once a week is about good enough to restart.  Just gotta listen for the fans going bad, that can happen in a laptop more often than a regular PC.

Leaving you're computer on is less retarded than you think.  Every time I restart I have to go through a ritual of CTRL-ALT-DEL ing several processes that do bad things, and quick before they really take hold.  There's one that makes it impossible to CTRL-ALT-DEL if I wait too long.  So I just leave it on all the time.  Got 6 fans, if one went bad I wouldn't be too bad off.

Again TerranRich, sorry for the bad luck.  I've saved drives now and again, but theres a reason the big companies charge so much, because they can.  It is an art, to say the least.  For everyone else, ALWAYS KEEP A BACKUP: If you have not lost data, you will.

[BOYD1981]

i believe shbazjinkens was talking about leaving laptops on 24/7, i agree that leaving a desktop on 24/7 make sense, but i wouldn't leave a laptop on for that long, same as you're not really supposed to leave consoles on that long, the smaller space creates more heat and it's not so easy to add additional fans to a laptop, the simple solution is to just not use a laptop as your main pc and always keep a spare pc plus discs to keep backups on, a computer is a lot harder to lose and snap than a cd (and a laptop)...
if i were going to get a laptop as a main machine i'd get an Alienware, they use top-notch components (i almost did get an alienware laptop instead of a desktop, but then i saw sense)...

[shbaz]

I think it totally floated over your head that laptops aren't like desktops man. They have one fan, one tiny 1 inch fan, to keep the entire thing cool. I leave mine on hibernation or standby a lot but never on unless I'm using it.

It is also still arguable that leaving a desktop on all the time could be good. There is a reason that there are standby and hibernation modes, which solve some of the problems you're talking about. Other problems are probably to do with you not knowing the cause, rather than having anything to do with restarting. If you have to shut things down with ctrl+alt+del then your computer is slowed by all of the crap you are running and probably locks up when you open more than a few programs at once too. Defrag your hard drive in safe mode after deleting everything you don't want (recycle bin, temp internet files, old unused files). It'll make a huge difference, and it is important to do it in safe mode so that as many system files as possible will be defragged.

[LGM]

You must not know alot about computers if you just live to deal with the startup stuff..

You need a program called CodeStuff Starter. Run that and you can stop all those frickin' programs that plague you.

Then, you'll need to go on and grab a program called RegScrubXP Run this program once or twice (It's pretty self explanitory] It cleans all the gunk out of your registry. Makes your computer noticably faster most of the time.

Now for some Spyware detection. Get Ad Aware, if you haven't already.. Make sure it's updated all the way.. Then run that. Get rid of all your spyware and crapware.

Then, if you feel like being extra safe, get Spybot: Search & Destroy and run this a few times.. And you can hit the immunize button and prevent that shit from coming back.

Now would be a good time to restart.

Once things boot up again, you shouldn't have to close those programs anymore.

Then you'll want to get a nice little Gem called TuneXP Just follow the manual that comes with this and you can tweak the hell out of your system and make it run tons faster and shtuff. One of the cool features is re-organizing your boot files to make bootup time 3-5 times faster. It's great stuff.

If you wanna clean up the registry further, you can get EasyCleaner and use that. Again, self explanitory.

And for good measure, run RegScrubXP again.

Restart your big beast of a computer, and all should be 230823 times faster and better..

If not, consider reformatting.


(Note, all these programs are freeware. No pirating will be necessary. Of course, if you're one of those crackpots that think software you pay for is alwats better, than this HOWTO isn't for you.)

[shbaz]

What LGM said.. I didn't want to type all of that though. Defrag after you do all of that, in safe mode, as I said before and you will be doing fine.

[LGM]

Safe Mode isn't really necessary, is it?

Also, the Disk Cleaning Wizard is neat too.. It got rid of over 2 GB one time just by compressing old files