I won't have time to post anything today before work as I just ran into another hard drive issue.
Looks like the catalogue file of my main magazine drive has become corrupted and a doesn't mount anymore.
Can't repair it with the programs I've got that usually do work, but I'm able to get the data off of it with DrillDisk.
I also have 2 backups, so I ordered a new HDD and will start putting everything together again and manually check it all for losses.
@OutofPrintArchive I'm sure you've had lots of unsoliticed advice, so I'm just going to quickly wish you luck, and recommend ddrescue and ddrescueview as a gui for it.
I've used its ability to gradually carry out multiple passes of near-dead storage devices and media incredibly useful.
If you don't have a Linux system, there's apparently a (commercial but cheap) port with a GUI for Windows 7 - https://www.hamishmb.com/ddrescue-gui/ - I can't personally speak to its effectiveness
@HauntedOwlbear
Ah. Thanks for that.
In the past I’ve had a lot of success with DrillDisk and if it’s not that bad, even with the regular disk thingy that I’m forgetting the name of right now.
I’m on a Mac though, so the solutions are a bit limited.
I’ve got DiskWarrior as well but so far nothing even sees the disk. Mounted or not. It’s like it doesn’t exist. And the sounds it makes are not encouraging either.
@HauntedOwlbear
I was able to mount it once more but it disconnected soon after and crashed finder alongside it.
Gonna keep trying as there’s a lot of stuff on there that I doubt I’ll be able to find anymore due to sites disappearing and files being removed.
Looks like I found the reason why my drive corrupted...
I had a second 4TB drive hooked up that was actually failing, so as it did, it corrupted the file system on the other one.
It didn't even do anything at one point and wasn't even discoverable in Dril Disk.
This is the drive with thousands of magazines from all over the world that I collected over the past 15 years...
Got it to boot once, and now I'm hoping I can back it up in time before it completely dies. :blobcatscared:
Looks like this one is completely screwed.
I was renaming images and in the middle of doing so, one suddenly reverted to the original name and then just kept trying to load a preview.
finder completely froze and I can't even see the drive in any recovery app anymore.
So it looks like a hardware failure on this one.
I can't even begin to imagine everything I've lost here.
@COMPU73E@OutofPrintArchive ideally raid 10 (striped and mirrored). Eg use 4 HDDs of 1TB each. You get 2TB of space but that is mirrored so if one drive fails you just replace that and don’t lose any data.
@COMPU73E@OutofPrintArchive obviously this doesn’t help you now, I appreciate that! Sorry you’re having issues again. But this should future proof your data
I have a double manual backup of my 4TB work disk with all my own magazines on there. Both the jpg files and the original TIF ones that go up to 5GB or so for a single magazine. So I'm safe there.
I was in the middle of organising all my downloaded magazines from over the years, filling in the gaps and things like that.
I was planning on doing a full backup when that was finished, but obviously this was a dumb idea to wait that long.
@OutofPrintArchive@matt yeah but with a decent RAID setup you haven't got to bother doing manual backups, it all happens automatically, and if a drive fails (which they will) you just hotswap out the bad drive and it rebuilds
@matt@COMPU73E the one issue is that it quickly becomes very expensive.
Having to buy multiple 4TB drives for just one of the many I have…
If it was just a couple of TBs, it would be a smaller issue.
@matt@COMPU73E I have a system for that. As I work on something and complete a folder on my laptop SSD I copy it to the external drive as well as the backups for it. That only takes a couple of minutes.
I tend to not work directly off of external drives as it increases the risk of wear and tear as well as corruption problems.
Yeah, I can now confirm that it's a hardware failure and not just a database error or just some corrupted sectors.
So I've lost a ton of stuff, a lot of which I can't remember what was on there so it'll be incredibly hard to find again.
At least it doesn't affect the site much at all.
I did lose my upload folder of all my magazines that help me keep track of which articles I've posted.
So I have no idea which to skip now.
So I'll probably post things once in a while that I did already...
I just kept putting off creating a backup since there were so many magazines that still needed to be organised and I have so little time as it is.
So it's really my own fault for not having a backup plan.
Again, all of the site stuff and magazines is fine.
It's just a ton of stuff I gathered over the past 15 years from all corners of the internet.
Thousands and thousands of international magazines.
@chris
I've tried 2 laptops, my media box and even my Xbox to see if it gets recognised.
Nothing works.
Gonna try some more tomorrow as I have to run off to work for about 9 hours as I'm going to be late.
I did order a new drive, but it won't arrive until later tonight and I'm off to work in about an hour.
So I'm thinking of just leaving my laptop running in case I can't get the drive to mount later on. Just to try and be sure.
It's the one I'm using to post all the articles here as well, and keep track of what I've posted already. Not to mention name all the pages so I can find specific articles.
It would be such a mess if I lost all that.
I have had a couple of really close calls where I nearly lost everything, so I've become super cautious for occasions just like this one.
I have 3 different 4TB drives, each a copy of the other, more or less.
It's just that the main drive I use day in and day out has failed.
So there were some things I'm working on right now that the other two were missing, but those folders are still on my laptop.
@COMPU73E@UKFilmNerd
I’ve looked into that. But I’m only using these drives when I have either finished scanning or editing a full folder. Otherwise I work directly from my laptop SSD.
Otherwise they would be active at all times and break down even quicker.
So I just manually copy finished folders over to the 3 drives.
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