Official Luthiers Forum!

HI Guys
Last Monday we had a storm. I had a surge protector on the puter and thought I was safe Well ...... you would think after loosing date on 2 other puters I would have learned to BACK UP. yeah right , well now I am totally fried out.
Though it may be too late for me , maybe I can help someone out there not go through this. Please if any one out there asked and still has a file on my bending machine and binding machie I would sure appririate a copy.
I mean I lost everything. That goodness I hard copy all my business transactions and sales. I hope you learn from my mistake and if you can help me I would be thankful.
Jim Hall of JR Guitars is coming in this weekend to help save my but but the hard drive is gone forever. The old puter now has a new hardrive and will be my server and backup. I have a new dell coming in this week . I also have a battery back up 2 rabbits feet and a voodoo doll.
All I can say is don't do what I did.
john hall
Hard Drive fryer
PS a 10 gig external hard drive also as redundancy thanks to jim I had to erase all the music I had there.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I too have learned this lesson the hard way...it sucks! My cad files at work get backed up every afternoon now automatically. There are several free software apps out there for this purpose. I use one called Cobian. works great!

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Jeremy Vonk

John,

I'm really sorry to hear about that. I can sympathize. It happened to me about 10 years ago. I will never be without a backup again. Some things, like the family digital photos are backed up on two different external hard drives.

There are places that can retrieve data from a hard drive. I've heard of data recovered from systems that were in fires and floods. They might not be cheap, but it might be worth it.

Hope you get at least some of your stuff back.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Well, John...that's probably where my order is...in the deep frier along with the french fries!
Anyhow, I just sent you a direct email re: that order. Let me know how you want to proceed for ease at your end.

Meanwhile, you might want to investigate the "Carbonite" back up system. It saves your files to an off-premise data storage facility. If the computer dies, you will need to reinstall your programs, but all you files can then be "brought back" from Carbonite. It backs up automatically during idle time on your pc.
It's about $49 a year, but having gone through a crash on my hard drive, it is cheap insurance.

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Hank Mauel

I tend to turn off my computer and pull the plug when a big storm comes through.

Sorry to hear that bad news, John. After preaching it at work for years, I finally got one of those USB drives and a Norton Backup utility. It is automatic, twice a week for my homeputer, and after the first back up goes quickly, because only files that have changed or are new since the last back up gets copied. Set me back about $200.

Good luck!!

Guys, there is a great product out there called Carbonite.com. For $50 a year, it keeps your computer backed up all of the time. I find it to be an awesome way to stay backed up. It is done over the internet, so it also qualifies as an off site backup. I also use a product called Synch.fsy, which is a file synchronizer. Every day at the end of the day, I synch my office computers with my notebook. The product reviews all of the files on each computer, and only updates the ones that have changed. This gives me an additional backup of all of my files. If I were to crash at work, I could work from my notebook and keep operational. It takes about 5 - 10 minutes to completely synch 80 gig hard drives. I really like Carbonite though, if you have DSL or Cable internet, it is really worth the price. I could get free months with referrals, but that is not my goal. The goal is for you to get backed up.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Carbonite looks really great. $50 a year for unlimited size? I just hope that my DSL provider won't charge me extra for the massive file transfers.......

The cost of external storage keeps coming down. I saw a 1Tb drive for less than $200 at Buy.com. I remember when I first got my IBM Model 70 with a 20 Mb drive and thought I would NEVER fill it up.......

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Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK

The initial backup, with Carbonite, takes a while, but once completed, it just keeps backing up the updated files while you work on your computer. I leave my systam on all the time, so it stays backed up.

I remember the days of 20 MB drives too. They were huge. Like you, I never thought I could fill on up. Now, it would only hold 7 photos.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

One word - MAC!

When you have a Mac you can subscribe to ".mac" which can be set-up to completely back-up your entire computer automatically and at any interval that you choose. It's $99 a year but also accessible from any other computer including PCs (primitive computers....... ).

In addition I have a Western Digital portable hard drive that works great too.

Very sorry this happened John.

Here comes the know it all, told you so Mac geek, oh from Macland.
One word - Time Machine
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
Hesh - not tried it yet?.
John I hope you get back what you need to operate, best of luck.
Norton Disk Utilities used to be my choice, does most things.

yours
Geordie

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some tunes on acoustic and guitar synth.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGeordieAdams
http://www.myspace.com/geordieadams

John

Sometimes (and I will stress sometimes) it is possible to replace the circuit board on your hard drive with on from an identical unit and it may fire up so that you can recover data.

I've found typically a 20-30% success rate doing this but it may be worth a try.

You should be able to find a commercial data recovery service that may be able to recover your data for you but they charge an arm and a leg (and usually a testicle) for their services.

Cheers

Bob

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

Geordie yes time machine is VERY cool!!!

Before you write off your hard drives and everything on them, check out http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139 You may be able to follow their how to's and pull your data out of the dead drives. It worked for me a few years ago - got all those baby pix of my daughter back.

I have, more than once, installed a new drive, put in the operating system, and retrieved the data from the old drive with it installed as a secondary drive. Sometimes just the boot section is trashed, and the data is still in place, and retrievable if you don't use the drive as the boot drive. Move the data over, and you are back in business.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Very sorry this happened to you John.

You mentioned a file on your bending machine and binding machine? Would you be talking about the papers that you send with them?
If so I think I have both of them (hard copies) and wouldn't mind typing them up or scanning them for you.

Let me know if this is what you're talking about and I'd be glad to help.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

Hey John,

I also wanted to mention that my Dad got some software called "recover lost data" and it worked for him to recover some pictures that he lost. I believe it's about $40 or $50 for the software. You would need to be able to connect your hard drive to a working computer, but it might be worth a try.

Good luck.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

Hi John,

You might want to consider hard disk drive (HDD) recovery service.
If the HDD platter(s) (disk which stores the data) is intact, there is a good chance of recovering 80% - 90% of the data.
I would presume that only the electronics are fried and not the disk platter.
What they would do is to replace the disk platter onto another new HDD's unit.

Just google for the service, there should be alot of providers around.
However, I think it doesn't come cheap.

Sen.

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Sen CL Goh
http://senguitar.blogspot.com

Can you cancel the Dell? I don't want to get into the tired Mac v. PC debate (is there really a debate?) . Once you go Mac you never go back. Ease of backup / cloning is just one of the reasons.

Working with video I deal with failed hard drives on a consistent basis. Probably 2-3 a year. For the most part its expected and planned for. Like everything else I do, backup and restore on a Mac is easier and more reliable. Shifting from PC to Mac I have lost 95% of the hours I used to bill for dealing with technical problems. Seriously. Do I miss the billable hours? No. Are Macs perfect? No. But if you use the computer a lot, the loss of aggravation is surely worth the price of admission.

Whatever you work with, BACK IT UP! HARD DRIVES FAIL!

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Gabriel Regalbuto
Carlsbad, California
Freedom 35!

No. Macs rule.

Just wish I could afford another. Had four so far, now I've got this stupid PC

I got the dell already. NO VISTA . I have a network now and have all my computers tied into a master that works as my server. All data is now stored in 2 locations that are in separate buildings.
This was one horrid nightmare. The hard drive while toasted is salvagabe but I don't think I will spend the amount of money the recovery people asked for. The info that I am most concerned about I can back out of the website.
Thanks again for all the input. I agree that the macs are the better machine but I had to stay with the PC for the networking

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Sorry for your loss John, I just sent you some of your info. I hope it helps.

For everyone else, if you ever lose your website or someone else's website has gone down, you may be able to view the old content at:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

This site actually archives alot of websites month to month, year to year.

Check out yahoo in 1996
http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/

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Chris Oliver
Infinity Luthiers
...in the shop.

live every minute...