Lost 10 Years Of Work Thanks To MS

[Javis]

Extremely sorry to read about this very unfortunate catastrophe you ran into, Gordon ! Damn!

Losing meticulously crafted work of that kind of magnitude could drive a person nuts! But i'm almost sure that's not going to happen this time around. Be it i won't be able to lend a hand myself ( i steer away 180 deg. from building my own rig... ), it would totally surprise me if somebody here would not come to literally rescue you and your lost data. Just keep the faith, my friend !

(mind you, i have a computershop next door, and sometime ago they managed to retrieve the most precious data on a broken drive for me. So being 'in the middle of nowhere' like you say does put it all in a different, much more difficult perspective of course. Just don't give up, and don't forget "all roads lead to Rome" , you know. Best of luck, Gordon ! )

cheers,
Jan

[Bjoern]

If the Media Creation Tool only deleted the original partition data table and wrote its data to a few sectors, you still have a chance with an off the shelf tool. If the formatting took a very long time, only a professional will be able to help.
Mind that, should the easy solution indeed recover the data, your original folder structure, filenames and maybe even filetypes will not be restored.


As for personal experience with the Media Creation Tool for Windows 10, it worked just as advertised.


Not sure what I would do if I lost all my files. Maybe shed a few tears, shrug, walk away and enjoy my new found freedom.

[gman5250]

Not sure what I would do if I lost all my files. Maybe shed a few tears, shrug, walk away and enjoy my new found freedom.

My first reaction was exactly that Bjoern.
Actually, my immediate reaction was to run up to town and purchase a bottle of Vodka. Then I looked at this new system and realized it would be a terrible waste if it were relegated to playing video games, which I don't do anyway.
The formatting didn't take long, so I'm inclined to have a go at retrieving my work.

The Media Tool did work exactly as advertised, it just worked exactly as advertised in the wrong place. lol

The problem with being a world class workaholic and notorious knucklehead, I lack the capacity to quit.

[TuFun]

With that kind of fortitude I believe you will succeed! Great men are made of stuff like that.

[Jafo]

With that kind of fortitude I believe you will succeed! Great men are made of stuff like that.

What doesn't kill you leaves you with a limp...

[gman5250]

What doesn't kill you leaves you with a limp...

Wallet...?

[gman5250]

Before I hit my rack.

I want to extend my deepest and most sincere thanks to everyone who has offered to help, either with donations or technical help to resolve this unfortunate occurrence. Gentlemen, and lady...you are the finest people I have the singular honor to call my friends.

I spent the day downloading Prepar3D in chunks. This is cattle country out here and most comms are conducted via smoke signals or reflective mirrors. Line speed is not a priority. That said, I spent the day researching my options and taking into consideration all of the comments that have been shared on this thread. I have digested, analyzed, studied, postulated, considered and pondered while watching the monotonous progress of the download bars. As the individual comments have come in I have become deeply appreciative of you all, individually and collectively.

I will keep the option open for a GoFundMe solution, if that solution proves to be the last option. Upon reading the available data, watching a handful of relatively informative videos, and considering the probabilities as they apply to the damaged device, I have arrived at a level of confidence...approximately 67%...in favor of retrieving the data in a controlled environment, that environment being my work space and on this very capable system. I know my work better than I know my self in many ways, which leads me to take on the task of retrieving my data bit by bit until I have organized it back in to a structure that is clean, efficient and well capable of dealing with the various tasks I ask of it.

The device is de-powered and isolated from the system since the event. I have a clean 5TB spinning drive ready to receive the data as I retrieve it and construct the new filing structure. My wife is behind my decision, on the codicil that I sleep a minimum of five hours a night, and that I do not attempt to do it all in one grand sweep. I have agreed to those conditions upon penalty of the wife clause. God forbid.

Tomorrow I will install Prepar3Dv4 and FSX on the new system and do a bit of flying in my aircraft and scenery packages that have graciously been expedited back to me from my close associates. After some flying and a day of quiet disassociation from this distraction, I will begin the process of reclaiming my energy and bringing my work back to life.

Thank you all, sincerely and with deepest respect.
Gordon

[Jafo]

Sounds like a plan...

[BendyFlyer]

Well GMan seems the Gods are agin you at the moment, what a run of bad luck. I could weep with you on it. ditto re support to get you going again if required. As an offgridder I can relate to all the other issues that crowd in on a major PC problem like this.

I have no technical support on this one other than to say recovery is possible but you need a PC forensic expert on this, I do know that even an erased disk can be resurrected in the right hands, various law enforcement government departments do it all the time, whether those skills are available to you in the market is another question. It may not be logically ordered but it can all be got back. I would look for someone who has done this sort of thing at the FBI or CIA you get my drift.

Good luck, yeah an Vodka out of the freezer is best! Cheers and all the best.

[scotth6]

Very sorry to hear of your troubles Gordon. They in fact sound like a catastrophe, and I am impressed by your demeanour and hope. I sincerely hope there is a painless solution for the retrieval of your lost data, and from the little I understand about PCs I assume there should at least be some solution. I will be happy to contribute to a fund raiser if the retrieval turns out to be expensive as I could not imagine the anguish of losing so much work which had not yet been completed and distributed.

I wish you the very best of luck!

[Dimus]

Gordon, I have been following this thread but not posted so far as I could not offer any meaningful assistance other than sympathy for this loss. I do not have any experience in retrieving data. I am really happy that you have the strength to face the problem and attempt the recovery in a systematic way. I'd be happy to assist if you need funding. Your work is inspiring.

[alain0568]

Hello Gordon,

I hope with all my heart that you will be able to recover all or part of your excellent work!
With the help of the community this seems on the right track!




Alain

[Craig Taylor]

Gordon, I have been following this thread but not posted so far as I could not offer any meaningful assistance other than sympathy for this loss. I do not have any experience in retrieving data. I am really happy that you have the strength to face the problem and attempt the recovery in a systematic way. I'd be happy to assist if you need funding. Your work is inspiring.

Same here. I really appreciate your work, and your fortitude to continue. Happy to contribute anything within my means (monetarily - not really a tech guy, unfortunately) to support your data recovery.

[Bjoern]

My first reaction was exactly that Bjoern.
Actually, my immediate reaction was to run up to town and purchase a bottle of Vodka.

Ah, the good old crinking (ccying+drinking).

The problem with being a world class workaholic and notorious knucklehead, I lack the capacity to quit.

*Sigh*
I know that too well.

[Penzoil3]

Hang in there. It will be worth it. You know you can't resist a challenge anyway...
Sue

[gman5250]

Here's the update after today's first run in the recovery software.

At first glance it looks like all of the bitmap art will be salvageable, but only in a massive lump with my work mixed in with every photo ever taken and my wife's art, which by the way, makes my work look entirely insignificant. There are no file names...just numbers. It's not good for the 3D Studio files, just lumps of mesh with no architecture at all. I can't even separate mesh elements. Looks like a total loss for the re-formatted back up disk.

I was hoping that the 3D Studio work would retain some syntax, but that does not appear to be the case. What is recovered is a very large file size that will not open, import or merge into Max. The preview shows an image, but that is a simple thumbnail, not a model.

All of my backed up purchases are, of course, available from the vendors but I spend 99.999% of my time flying the dev work. Bottom line, all of the scenery and aircraft modeling are grey goo. The original work I did for ORBX is a total loss, along with my five sceneries...KBIH, KMMH, KNFL, KRNO and KNZY North Island. If you count Tippela and Squamish it's seven.

That's lot of work...about 52,000 man hours by my math.

The only ray of hope is the system image I did back in September. I backed up the entire system using Acronis, so there may be intact data on the desktop there.

We had a fire here a couple of years ago. A power line blew down in 100 mph wind and the ensuing fire tore up a canyon, devastating an entire community in minutes. People were loading their horses and driving WFO down the single, winding mountain road in zero visibility to get out. Two days later, the community looked like a war zone. One member of that community was the local newspaper editor, who has been kind enough to grace me with an occasional byline. Ted fled his home as it was being consumed and returned to a single chimney surrounded by smoking ash. In that ash were accumulated twenty five years of printed articles, sources, stories and bylines that represented the sum total of his work. What remained was a sea of gray, smoldering fog punctuated by sculptures of iron pipe and ghostly silhouettes. Ted went on to rebuild his newspaper.

Life is a curious thing.

[Jafo]

Here's the update after today's first run in the recovery software.

The only ray or hope is the system image I did back in September. I backed up the entire system using Acronis, so there may be some intact data there.

The Acronis image is one file. It will have a first letter changed to OS-unreadable but will otherwise be intact and can be recovered by the Acronis rescue media.
The data will be intact...providing the work files were included in the first place. [the work was the drive backed].
With a functioning Acronis and C drive you should be also able to access the image via browsing....without going through the process of restoring the image.....and that is a far safer first step.
Copy/paste every folder you can locate into a separate drive - even before attempting an image restore...

[Priller]

The only ray of hope is the system image I did back in September. I backed up the entire system using Acronis, so there may be intact data on the desktop there.

Hey Gordon,

Check your mail please. The data in the image is intact and can be extracted seperately without having to install the whole image on some drive.

Cheers,

Priller

[gman5250]

I went in to the Acronis image file and searched the files. I had removed all of my development work files to the external storage device before I imaged the system. There are a few peripheral files on the desktop that would be helpful for the development work, but those are more or less useless if the dev work is gone.

Unfortunately, I had updated and condensed the sum total of my work to the backup disk anticipating the new build. The work would have been copied back on to the desktop when the new system/OS was active. I was vulnerable for a few minutes out of ten years. That's when the Windows Utility installed itself to the wrong drive. It's ironic, Windows is constantly telling me I don't have permission to move one file to another on my personal property, but it didn't ask me for permission to overwrite a lifetime.

I will contact Autodesk and Adobe to see if there is a solution for situations like this, but at this time the data appears to be irreparably damaged. I'll contact a few forensics specialists as well, but my optimism is fading to be completely honest. The long term ramifications, as they apply to my future are something I will need to deal with privately over the course of the next few months.

Again, I must thank you all for your concern and offers of support.

[Bjoern]

At first glance it looks like all of the bitmap art will be salvageable, but only in a massive lump with my work mixed in with every photo ever taken and my wife's art

That's a given. File names and such are stored in the partition table. You're only working with very raw data. If the recovery software doesn't know about a particular file format, things will be more complicated.

It's not good for the 3D Studio files, just lumps of mesh with no architecture at all. I can't even separate mesh elements.

That's odd, as MAX files are basically self-contained archives with a lot of additional metadata. Unless you mean the old 3DS format.

Are all the vertices and triangles bof the meshes in place?

[Mach3DS]

So sorry to hear of this Gordon!!! I know that you're resilient. You will overcome to victory my friend.

[Switchblade408]

I still have the model of the B-26K you sent me, if that helps any.

[Josh Patterson]

Spoken like a true gentleman Ed. I know you have also suffered a similar data loss if memory serves.

I would, under normal circumstances not accept help from friends, but I will give this option due consideration. Much of the work lost is intended to be freeware for our community, therefore a community effort to help restore the projects is quite honorable.

I'm wayyy out here in the south forty in Eastern Kalifornia, so finding a tech worthy of the task is unlikely anywhere close. The last time I used the local guy, it resulted in my first massive loss of data a few years back.

Considering we take what you put so much hard work into for nothing except a thank you assisting you financially with the file recovery the least we could do. The modeling community is doing the same for Paul Fisher after he lost his home and workshop in the Camp fire back in November. (As I found out when I tried to order his 1/32 F7U.) A lot of people giving a little bit can make a huge difference in someone's life! (Besides, I would like to see the F7F VC finished, as would quite a few others!)

[modelr]

Just found this thread, GMan. Really hard to imagine what I would have done if in your place. I follow all your posts and projects, when I get time to read these forums.

I am more than willing to help out if you go the GoFundMe route. Just a small way to "give back" to the freeware community. Was really looking forward to the F7F VC, as well as the B-26K in all it's glory. As for the scenery, when you announced KNZY North Island my ears really perked up, with San Diego being the place where I spent the first 25 years of my life, with working at KNZY for a year or two taking care of some of the landscaping, which was done by the company I worked for around 1973-75.


Good Luck.

[aeronca1]

I was really looking forward to the Buffalo. As such, I would be happy to contribute to a GoFundMe project.