I'm homicidal - all FS planes lost!

[Toastmaker]

I had to take my computer in to the shop that built it because the boot process would not recognize the operating system (XP). Ok, so they said they would save my hard drives (three of them, "C", "E", and "F") and do a re-install.

They re-installed XP, I just brought the system back up and - - - -

MY "F" DRIVE IS MISSING !! It's not even there anymore - how can that be ?? It contained all my flight sims, hundreds of diagrams, documents AND. . . about 300 third-party aircraft for FS9 !!

Tomorrow morning, they are somehow going to find my "F" drive or there will be blood - seriously.

[Trans_23]

I can only imagine your anguish. Good luck on getting your stuff back. Do you still have the installers? There should be laws against this sort of thing.

[Daveroo]

oh my...id be beside myself....not good

[N2056]

In the immortal words of John "Bluto" Blutarski...
My advice to you is to start drinking heavily!

[Lionheart]

Welcome to my world.

Try being a Dev and losing your computer or hard drive 3 times in one year...


Now I have 'internal' HD's that I use as backups, stacked, in cases, with a socket drive for internal drives outside of the computer, and a nice little stack of flash drives.

Take no chances.

Just remember though that most sites have your records and can get you your software back. Flight1 is best for this. Even PayLoadz, if you do not change your email address, lol... arrgh.


The good side, is that this is a new beginning, clean start.

Take a deep breath and pretend you got a new sim....


Bill

[Moses03]

I sure hope you can recover your files!

[Toastmaker]

In the immortal words of John "Bluto" Blutarski...
My advice to you is to start drinking heavily!

This I'm thinking about. . .

[IVANOW]

3 seperate Hard Drives or 1 Hard Drive split into 3 Drives ?
If seperate , F Drive is not connected .
If 1 Hard Drive .
Click C Drive , Should be a file named system.sav .
Every file I thought I had lost were in this file .

[MCDesigns]

Opps, time for FSX now, LOL (kidding)

I had the same thing happen to me a few years back with CompUSA. Took my rig in for them to add some new hardware, was very explicit about disconnectioning my secondary drives, one of which had over 4000 songs on it. I get it back, start it up and the drive is clean, not a spec of data on it, they misread the order and ghosted over that drive. long story short, after breaking some items in their store and causing a huge scene, I was almost arrested., never been so angry.

[FengZ]

man, i hope they can find "F" drive

stuff like this can actually stop a game cold for me. I recently accidentally moved some files out of my Oblivion install, and so it stopped working. I spent about a month adding MODs and other stuff to it - making it a perfect game. I just didn't feel like re-doing it again....so....i uninstalled it. O well....

If i ever lost my FS9 install, i'll probably do the same. It took 2+ years to get it to where i like it....and i don't have the time nor energy to do it again

-feng

[Kiwikat]

Let em have it.

I'm sure the drive letter won't be the only "F" flying around.

I would absolutely demand money back and then some. If someone erased my FS drive, they wouldn't see the next day.

[Cactuskid]

If your F drive is missing, in other words does not show up when you click "My Computer", it could be something as simple as they forgot to plug it back into the mobo, or they did not seat the connector all the way in. If that's the case, then plug it back in, and when you start the computer again all should be well. I hope that's all it is. My system is set up similar to yours: C is the OS and maintainance programs, E is data storage, and F is flightsim. Good luck!

[harleyman]

Go to Control Panel...

Select Admin Tasks

Disk management

Look for the drive...They may have moved the sata connection and you need to initialize it again...


Or just plug it back in

[Snuffy]

Send Lawyers Guns and Money!

Sorry Toastie ... that's gotta be exasperating ...

[Kofschip]

Toast, First of all think of your own health, don't "blow a gasket." And with honey you can catch a lot more flies than with vinegar. Having said all this, I believe that everyone of us is willing to help you with supplying missing things that are not available anymore. I am for one. -- K.

[Lionheart]

If F drive was a seperate HD, then you probably do not have it plugged in right, or it is reading as a diff drive letter. Thats all.

If its in the HD, then it might have been overwritten. Just have to deal with that.



For those of you that have huge installations perfectly tuned to just how you like them, I MASSIVELY SUGGEST that today (not tomorrow) you go to a electronics store and get one of those external drives (even a small pocket drive, those little designer looking things that can fit in your pocket), and tonight, as you sleep, have those files being copied over to the backup HD unit.

DO THAT TODAY.....!


Why risk it..


An internal drive can cost as low as $50.00 USD. You can get them at many places. Here, Walmart even sells these little things. Then, just put it on a shelf and save it. Back up new things to it once in a while, or reload / resave FS to it so that you have it all updated often.

Do it...!


Bill

[Toastmaker]

Lionheart is quite right. Thanks for that suggestion and thanks all for the comments.

Now the "tech" that worked on it says that it was a partitioned drive and "some" files were corrupted with a virus. . . ??

So, does that mean the whole drive (or partition) had to be erased - I think not. . .

Also, is there not some form of data-recovery magic available out there ??

[Snuffy]

All the data is still there Toastie ... unless they did a low level format.

Otherwise all that happens with a format is that the file allocation tables (FAT) has the first letter of each entry of the drive erased and the drive then sees that space as empty.

AS Long as you don't overwrite that drive, your information should be easily recoverable. Do a search for File Allocation Table editing software and if you can recall the first letter in all the files you can recover the info.

Of course there is a disclaimer with this ... That's at least the way that it worked with DOS and all the early versions of Windows ... up to NT and beyond when you had a choice of using a FAT or a FAT32 or a NTFS.

Good Luck.

[Toastmaker]

Ok, now he tells me that there was a trojan/worm that was replicating itself so he had to reformat the drive to re-install XP. This was my "C" drive partitioned to include "F" drive (where everything of value was).

I'm beginning to exceed the scope of my computer knowledge base, so. . . any opinions as to whether it is recoverable or not ??

[Snuffy]

Don't quote me on this as I'm going by memory of the last time I tried this ... on windows 95 ...

Ummm I don't think you can "format" a partitioned drive without wiping the other partition(s) as well.

that being the case, the partition is gone ... an so is any semblence of the information it contained I'm afraid.

[Toastmaker]

Please. . . . I beg someone to say it ain't so. . . . .

[Henry]

Please. . . . I beg someone to say it ain't so. . . . .

I wish i could
thats why i hate partitions
its the same hard drive
just divided
i always have another drive
as a back up
so if my operating system goes foobar
i got every thing on another drive
it would be hard to recover a partition
after a format and reinstall
H

[NoNewMessages]

A reformat of a partition only deals with that partition, not any other partition on a single hard drive. If they somehow (?) got in and deleted the partions to make a single partition, then you're out of luck. XP has built in tools to structure and work with partitions and it may be that the partition that contains Drive F: isn't mounted and *may* be recoverable. But I question the wisdom and competency of the tech that you're working with.

[Bjoern]

Tomorrow morning, they are somehow going to find my "F" drive or there will be blood - seriously.

If they deleted the partition while reinstalling XP you're out of luck.

Please don't forget to call an ambulance beforehand to give that computer guy a fair chance And don't shove any Ram modules down any orafices. They might break and leave some nasty splinters behind.

Try being a Dev and losing your computer or hard drive 3 times in one year...

I haven't had a single HDD failure in six or seven years. How much bad luck do you need to have to have one within every four months? :isadizzy:

[Toastmaker]

It now appears that the drive partition was removed and then reformatted for the reinstall of XP-

No recourse.

Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions, though.