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I 2nd Chris' after-the-fact suggestion. There are 3 free cloud storage utilities already (dropbox, onedrive and google drive) I was also able to pick up 100GB free from zoolz from the giveaway a day. All my Daz site products I have downloaded to my HD but not backed up on the cloud as Daz is nice enough to basically do that for all of us already. But all the others, I have in folders that are synced to those 4 storage places. (along with my library folder in my documents that has all my saved scenes and presets)
Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, etc. etc. They all have issues now and then with various models made on bad days/weeks/months. Right now I'm on a hate bender with Western Digital.
But for any of them a big clue is when they show up on NewEgg.com for a real bargain price! But these new 3 & 4 & 6! TB drives are a lot of eggs in one basket using state of the art, "atom notching" level of technology where just the ittsyist thing out of whack and the house of cards collapses. The answer is to not trust just one storage device and one copy of your data. Locking the barn door after the horse is stolen is always an epiphany moment. 
I'm sticking with proven 1GB and 2GB drives for the moment. But I have several 160MB, 320MB, 500MB and 750MB drives that are up to 10 years old (I test them now and then) that have duplicate data archived on them and are carefully stored in a cardboard box under my bed! 
Of course I could have a fire/earthquake/flood/tornado........ 
But even with all my caution I've still lost data. There's nothing worse than an "Oh, shit!" moment right after you press the "Enter" button and delete the wrong file!
Hi the reality is that there really is no such thing
as a set price for data recovery
Most places will try get whatever they think they can get from you
because they realize that by the time you come to them
you are usually in a state of desperation often times
making you literally bid on your own data.
Thank you!
Thanks guys. Yeah, I immediately repurposed several external drives to back up everything else still in my system. When finances permit, I am going to setup a Synology or other NAS solution. Or maybe an external RAID enclosure. I have 5 internal HDDs in my system because I do Video work and it takes up a whole lot of space. I would routinely move stuff around and try to duplicate important stuff from one drive to another.
The reason I am done with Seagate is that all 4 of my large internal drives (3TB/4TB) have failed. So every one of them was sent back to Seagate and replaced under Warranty and refurbished. Now those started failing and the Warranty is over. I was scrambling to move things and back things up as fast as possible, but not fast enough. I just started researching the most reliable drives and apparently Seagate are one of the worst now.
So does anyone know how to get in touch with Aeon Soul? I tried sending message through Deviant and also sent an email to an old address I had back when he was called AlfaSeed. There are a lot of products from RTNDA that I had and I have no clue who the PA is. Doubt I will be able to get any of that stuff back.
A couple of posts here mention losing family photos. I never trusted relying on digital storage for photos. Getting prints made up for pictures are really cheap.
Just got response from DAZ support. Anything that didn't come over already can't be gotten back. RTDNA officially gone. Ugh.
I'm sorry. This is why it's so improtant to back up. I know this and I still don't do it nearly enough. I should do it tonight but I'll probably forget.
ahh, sorry to hear this--it's terrible when that happens, and it feels even worse. :(
went through the same thing a few years back. i didn't mind losing the work so much, because i'd just started working with studio. but having all of my aeon soul stuff disappear into the void, that still stings.
best of luck with the recovery/rebuilding...
j
Some personal background and then a few observations.
I spent my last 10 years of employment as a Sysadmin, primarily doing backup and recovery and disaster recovery planning. I had things tuned to the point we could hit the D/R hotsite running and with one DVD and a (large) box of tapes we could recover our vital infrastructure in 20+ hours.
So - using the 'cloud' for backup. The 'cloud' is a fancy/sneaky way of saying "someone else's disk drives on a server you have no control over"; it can go away at any time. There were a number of people using Megaupload for legitimate backups and copies - who lost them when the FBI confiscated the servers for use as evidence against Kim Dotcom (not making this up - google it).
Disk drives fail, and no vendor is proof against this - get the longest warranty you can for drives specifying 24/7 usage - and make backups; preferably two backups. (IBM quit making their own drives around 12 years ago - they now use Western Digital and Seagate, but the drives are built ti IBM spec).
Any backup or backup process you have not verified in the last 3 months is a non-existent backup. You need to rename a directory and then restore the original and verify that the restore worked and the files are accessable, especially if the backup is a full drive or compressed backup.
For home use, I prefer a 'smart' copy utility - something like the 'syncback' line from 2BrightSparks. I currently have two 2 TB and two 1TB drives in my main system (not counting the OS drive) as well as two 1 TB and two 4 TB external USB drives. Once a week I create a system image backup of the OS drive, alternating between the external 1 TB drives. I then mirror data internally from the primary internal 1 TB and 2 TB drives to the secondary 1 TB and 2 TB drives. Then I run smart copies or mirrors with SyncBackPro of selected directories of the primary internals to the external 1 and 4 TB drives. And I also back up from my laptop and other two systems to the same externals - alternating on the weekly basis, so one pair is a week older than the other. And because SyncBack is a 'smart' copy, verification consists of browsing the backups and opening selected files. It takes me about 75 minutes to run the backups.
The last time I looked, my local Sam's Club had 2 TB drives for $89 and the 4 TB drives for $119 (or maybe $129; it's been a couple of weeks since I looked). As someone who once spent $1600 for a 676 MB internal drive I consider these prices incredibly cheap for the peace of mind the backups bring. And Windows 7 does not support making a system image on a drive larger than 3 TB - thus the external 1 TB drives.
Summary:
Backup or copy locally. To external USB drives. Start with one; add a second to do even week/odd week when you can afford it. Verify the backups/copies at least once a quarter. Add additional drives as needed or desired.
I have external drives hidden away that I back up my files to. My most important items such as my writing, photos, and my serial character master files are in offsite storage as well, in case the whole house goes boom. I've not had a drive fail (*knock on wood*) but I have had my house broken into and computer stolen. I lost months of work on the novel I was writing as I didn't realize it'd been so long since I'd backed it up. That was the end of it.
My backup drives are old and very full, so my husband is actually in the process of putting together a different system for us.
IMO, backing up should not require any thought or effort or remembering. You can configure it to do it automatically on a daily schedule, and you'll never even notice. You add or change a file on your computer, the software senses the change, and marks that file to be copied to the backup drive later that day. It doesn't encode it, it just copies or overwrites to the second drive. IMO it's vastly better than the backup methods everyone talks about. This nonsense about "incremental backups", where it saves the original file, then the modified file, then all subsequent revisions is insane. You end up running out of space because it never overwrites old versions. And they're all in some indecipherable code.
Lemme give an example...
I've been using computers since the 80's. I've built and owned MANY. And in all those years, I can't recall ANY computer component failing EXCEPT hard drives. They fail. It might not happen for a year or two or three, but chances are it will happen. Last year I had some strangeness with my HP desktop. Sometimes it would boot fine, other times "no bootable drive". And only rarely did I get an error. I tried everything, but nothing helped. And finally one day I couldn't boot. Period. It was dead.
But no problem, I had been doing backups to an external USB using some backup software. Well, the problem was that I started doing that years ago. And I didn't recall exactly what software I had used, or how often it was backing up, or even WHAT it was backing up. I looked on the USB, but it was encoded so I couldn't tell what was in there.
It was a waste. A total waste. And I suddenly realized all this junk about doing these incremental backup solutions and "disk images" and so on with fancy software was just nonsense. If your HDD dies, how are you supposed to run Macrium or Acronis or whatever backup software to restore your backup files?? It's a catch-22. It's insane.
Luckily I then learned about some free software that just automatically copies files on a regular schedule, so that you have two drives with identical stuff on them. Except for applications, but nowadays 90% of them are free and easily downloadable. But I didn't even need that since I had sync'ed my downloads folder. Just go down the list and install. And Windows 10 is locked to your motherboard, so just re-download and install and you're off and running and don't even need to enter a key.
The application I use for this is free, extremely light weight, easy to configure, and you never notice it's doing the backup except every evening around 8pm you get a little notice in the bottom right corner. It doesn't even slow down your PC, and it's often done in less than a minute. And the best part is IT DOESN'T ENCODE ALL YOUR FILES, AND IT OVERWRITES OLD VERSIONS THAT YOU DON'T NEED ANYWAY. Geez, if you need old versions just save the new version with a new name, like "xxxREV1" or something.
Never again will I use those backup applications you always hear about.
I'm so sorry I feel for you, I experienced something similar - a power failure that killed one of my drivers and brought a lot work down in hell with it.
These days I keep cloud backup of the most importat stuff, but you can never be sure, what if they suddenly decide to go out of business? I have 5 T at a place which has been reliable so far.
Tha't why you also keep the files on your pc. If the cloud storage shuts down, you still have the copies on your pc and just upload to a new cloud storage. If your PC fries, then redownload the files from your cloud storage when you get a new one.
It's very unlikely that both your PC and the cloud storage will dissapear at the same time.
yeah. With Dropbox (and similar services), both the cloud service and my computer would have to go belly up at exactly the same time for it to be a problem.
I am thrilled, since a lifetime of trying to keep hardware backups (and frequently failing) has taught me how much I loathe the process.
I just don't understand the benefit of cloud storage. Yeah, if your house gets robbed or blows up, then you still have your data. I've been around many decades, and never had a house that was robbed or blown up. It's insanely rare for most people. Yeah, there are exceptions, but I think too many people fall for the hype.
Just buy a backup hard drive. Don't trust some company that you don't know.
Keep this in mind...in this Equifax disaster, one of their servers in Argentina that was hacked had a username and password of "admin/admin". A company who holds people's credit history and credit card and SSN data.
Insane.
For me, it's just a simple "I don't need more computer crap lying around as I have too much of it already" LOL
I mean, there are concerns as with any backup method, but benefits of cloud storage are, I'm at home, I back up some files. I go to work and I can grab the latest file off of there. I'm on vacation and have to grab a file to send to a client, I can log into any computer and retrieve my latest version.
But yeah, none of that is a benefit over an on site hard drive for back up only purposes.
All I can say is sorry to hear this happened... Something like that happened to me a long time ago on a Mac and after that I never trusted any hardware... Now I have multiple backup hard drives, I actually have a separate unit I keep in my shop separate from the house in case something terrible happens to the house.
Every time I read these kind of posts it makes me more paranoid about losing valuable data... Especially family pictures.
Good luck.
Greetings,
Yes, clean-room data recovery does cost that much. Most people don't need it, so it's typically targetted at companies who need their data desperately for business-continuity purposes. The sequence of things I typically try goes: Software recovery, low-level recovery, replace the circuit board on the hard drive, and then a professional data recovery service. If I'm with a company, and we lose data, it's straight to the professional service, and clean room if we need it, because the first two steps can actually cause more damage if it's certain kinds of failures.
These days I use:
These things protect me from (respectively):
I have, in fact, had a house I was living in get broken into, and all the computers, TVs, video game systems, and other even more important things stolen. It was not this house, but I know the ache of losing years of development and tools.
I religiously commit and push my code to GitHub; mostly private repos. All my illustration and 3D content, scene files and renders are duplicated via Dropbox (and in fact also mirrored to my Windows box where I do my actual renders). My documents and writing is all stored in a directory that I share with the Synology NAS, and copied to Dropbox occasionally. And everything (except my Downloads folder and 3D content) gets backed up via Time Machine on a regular interval. My photos and videos from my phone are saved in Google Photos, as well as copied to my NAS. It would take me some time to recover in the face of a major disaster, but that's okay...most of my concern wouldn't be for my data in the short term anyway.
I'm not saying what I've constructed around my important data is what everyone should do, only that it works for me.
I'm a big fan of completely automatic and layered defense; have protections that you don't have to think about in place on-machine, in-house, and off-premises. Don't dis the Internet/'cloud'; it's the easiest way to do off-prem backups for 99% of the end-user population.
That all said, my process comes from having failed at one level or another, multiple times, over a great many years, so for the OP I definitely know your pain, and I'm so very sorry it happened to you. The scene files are the worst part of that, because they have your sweat and tears in them. The only thing I'd say to hopefully mitigate it is that the skills you picked up by making those scenes stays with you, and informs you, so they're not completely lost.
Best of luck with getting your stuff back up and running!
-- Morgan
This is what I use. It's called SyncToy, and it's from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=15155 (Probably not as often as I should, but still....)
The problem with cloud-based solutions (for me, at least) is the expense involved, as well as how time-consuming it can become. Not to mention the bandwidth required. My primary content libraries constitute a couple of million individual files, and consume over a terabyte of storage space. I am relentlessly aware that, if I ever lose that drive, for whatever reason, then I am seriously boned!
That's why I practice "defense in depth". I have several external USB drives, to which I back up my data (again, probably not as frequently as I should). I also have several external drives that are connected to my router, to which I archive my content packages -- in all, I have some 18 terabytes of storage, that I use for backups and archive repositories.
Also, all of the applications that I use (Windows, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, Poser, AutoSketch, etc.) are also archived (or originally obtained) on DVDs or CDs, so that, in the event that I do have to re-image a machine, I don't have to rely on downloads -- especially for the operating system.
It ain't paranoia when they really are out to get you!
I know ALL about that. Lost my desktop bout 5 years ago, and everything on it at the time. Luckily my friend Jon had backed up everything we had(we bought alot of stuff for each other), and I got a laptop. $200 Toshiba. The thing died after 5 or so months. Jon bought me another for christmas that year, and it lasted me 3 years, though I lost a drive. Then I took it to Geeksquad, who screwed it up worse, and over the next few months it died a slow death. I gave up completely. Then the bug bit me again, HARD, and last year I used my tax refund to get my high end Asus laptop, and I LOVE it. If I tried to do the stuff I've done on this sucker on ANY of my older computers I'dve killed them. My ONE big regret is that I had spent 6-8 MONTHS making the Voltron Lion force lions(combinable!) in Daz on the old laptop. But the drive they were on fried, and I lost them. :( WAAAY too much work to remake em now, especially since I am knee deep in a YT show I make, trying to get this Godzilla fancomic going, and spending time with my GF.
Greetings,
So...I disagree with a few of the other things said in that post (especially around versioning) but I definitely want to signal-boost this. One of the things about my backup operations is that none of them are proprietary format backups. Dropbox and my NAS just have the files themselves, so does Time Machine, and GitHub and Google Photos provide access to the files themselves, no matter how they store them internally. Yes, restoring a terabyte of content via the Internet would be a PITA, but I feel safer having an off-premises backup.
But the backup software that is sold, and Windows even shipped with at one point, is awful. The formats are not ones that you can read without installing the software again, and that may not be possible at some point in the future. I have a few tapes and large backup archives that were backed up with three different backup tools, but not the current version of any of them, and I'm fairly confident I can't get access to that data anymore. Plus, for the tapes, my only access to a tape drive is via a SCSI tape drive that no longer works with any computer I own because I don't have a SCSI adapter, and it's in a proprietary backup format, so I can't even restore it on a system that isn't running the original OS and application.
Don't do that.
I burn BluRay disks occasionally, with things that I know I'll want a physical copy of for around a decade. Beyond that, and the odds are I won't be able to find a blu-ray reader anymore, even on eBay 2027. Thinking in terms of the obsoleting of media, disk formats, and file formats is really, really difficult, but depending on how long you need your backups for, it might be necessary. USB sticks will be obsolete in 10 years, maybe less.
I've actually lost more of my creative work to media format shifts than disasters. I still have cassette tapes with programs I wrote as a kid, but I can't read them anymore because technology marches on.
You want your backups stored in the simplest possible format, that you're confident will be able to be read for around a year after the data is stored, and without any special tools. Don't use proprietary backup formats, and try to keep up with the times so you're not stuck trying to restore a backup on a system that no longer supports your backup application, media, or file formats...
-- Morgan
I remember reading that cds and dvds aren't very reliable, either.
http://cdm.link/2017/02/a-generation-of-cds-is-already-rotting-and-dying/
Just use a backup software like Image for DOS which runs from a CD or USB stick, or from the drive where you have your backups, independent of the system. Has worked fine for me several times when I needed to restore my system because of system corruption or disk crash. And even if I choose to encrypt the image I can browse all the files in it and restore any file I want with the backup software at any time.
And then when the backup drive fails when you need it you wish you had that cloud backup.
But why go to that trouble? Then you have to keep track of the CD or USB, make sure your computer HAS a CD drive (new ones use them less and less), and really will you remember the steps in 2 or 3 years? I just don't get why people do that.
Automatically copy to a hard drive every day. That's it. You're done.
So you'd rather pay money for cloud storage, and trust that the cloud company will still be there in a few years and your data won't be hacked, than trust that your hard drive will last?
Well instead of spending money on cloud storage why not just get a second backup HD? Isn't it much cheaper, if that's really a concern? Or just replace your HD each year.