Hard drive failed

Lost it all again. No backups. I was playing Sims 2 and decided to quit. Right after that Direct X 9 quit. Then my screen went blank and my monitor began to cycle through all of the possible channels it has (3) for an adequate signal. HDMI is fine, that's the good ol' 360. Digital is out, nothing connected. Analog is dead. I try several methods to get my computer to do a soft reset, but am left with a hard reset as my only option. Powers back up, starts loading windows, blue screen. Does the same shit over and over again until I try to diagnose the problem. PC doctor says it's error HD521-2W. Couldn't log in as an admin to fix it, I was continuously brought back to the loading Windows screen and then a BSOD. Had to make the decision to do a full system format and recovery. Starting from scratch again. Unfortunately I can't afford a new HD, so I guess I'm stuck with this one til it fails again. Can't get the old data from it. All of those reenacting pics with Joe...it sucks.

 

There are always solutions available.

 

You should have tried to install another windows copy on the same hard drive without modifying the file system.

As for backup, I had good results with GetDataBack for FAT32; there is an NTFS version as well. Perhaps you can still save your data.

On a side note, on my little home server I have two hard drives, one main and one backup, and at every night it automatically mirrors the main drive to the backup drive.

 

Well I guess that's good news. See, the machine is about 5 years old right now, so I mean...well, no computer these days is made to last forever.

 

NO COMPUTER WAS MADE TO LAST FOREVER BROSKI

 

The Ancients would disagree with you. See what I did there? I referred to Stargate cause I've chosen to be that guy in this thread.

 

Why didn't you just connect the hard drive to another computer (with working disk and OS) and try to copy the most important files?

 

Moral of the story: don't play Sims 2. Or any of the other Sims games. Or any videogames at all, for they are murder simulators. Just ask Jack Thompson.

 

Most important files? I learned my lesson the last time something happened to my computer, and prevented myself from ever putting things on my computer that I'd need. I can get the reenactment photos again, they're all digital. I can get my music again, I just have to take it out of my iPod. I didn't make any digital artwork or music on my machine since I had to reformat due to a virus or 3. I just miss my simulated people.

 

You have inspired me to reinstall sims 3.

 

Ship it down to Tasmania with a case of rum and I'll fix it pro-bono for you.

Best bet would have been to boot off of a live CD (some people are partial to Hirens, but I tend to prefer UBCD or homebrew WinPE/Linux setups) and run a HDD sector scanner / repairer utility. You will most certainly still want to do this, if you have a bad sector then as soon as data 'hits' that area there is a very good chance it'll corrupt again. Otherwise, chances are the HDD will work fine - if it starts to fail permenantly you'll get a butload of SMART warnings and some nice thrashing. I've only ever had a couple of HDD's fail in the manner you're describing; one of which was as a result of me yoinking the SATA connection out whilst it was still powered on, although ironically my encrypted volumegroup was untouched and I was successfully able to load and run linux for many moons afterwards despite Windows being completly cactus (format fixed this in the end). The other one was a brand new machine at work; and no attempt at reinstalling windows was succesful, neither were any recovery tools. So you're fine.

Those LiveCD's can also be used to copy data from one PC to another over a network, or from drive to drive (well Hirens can't do the former as easily... Because it's DOS). WinPE will also happily run chkdsk on your system or any other drive which can be used to repair some basic filesystem errors; you can also do this by launching "safe mode with command prompt" on recent versions of Windows and typing "chkdsk /F C:" as well.

Small chance it's a hardware component failure as well, wouldn't worry about it though. Not much you can do. If it's fucked then it's fucked and no number of attempted repair will fix it.

Try Recuva and GetDataBack for data recovery. SpinRite may be of interest to you as well.

Mind you, I think you would be far better off starting again and doing a LP of the Sims with various HoL members. Maybe then I could hate you enough not to write these ludicrously long posts.

 

I was going to do a LP originally but then I couldn't be bothered because the urge to turn Xiao's char into a cum dumpster was too tempting.

 

Recuva worked SO well, I'm finding games I never installed, as well as things lost when the hard drive failed. All in all, pretty damn cool.
I suppose I could make a town called The House of Lords, but I feel I'd be too concerned with preserving all of your characters' personalities to really enjoy the game. Too much micromanagement.
But, I did enjoy making a man named Edward Cullen, turning him into a vampire, and then trapping him in a fenced-in yard, saying, "Sparkle now, you pedophile."
My play-style in the sims involves as much autonomy as possible, which is hard, considering in The Sims 2 they don't learn from repetition. No matter how much I try, I can't keep them from eating spoiled food.

 

Spoiled food, the forbidden fruit.

 

My boyfriend says that there are services that can scrape together your harddrive for around $1000. He had to do that once and managed to safe the last remaining photographs of his beloved granddad.

PS: I'm itching to play the original Sims again, but I haven't even touched 3. Dare I?

 

The original will always be the best in my heart. The day I skipped work and seduced Bella Goth, poor Mortimer had no clue! 3 is pretty fun, never played 2 but I have been told all the good features are in 3 and besides you can drive your car and go to places in town!