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Whats the most amount of work you've lost in a crash etc ....

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#1

I know I’m not alone in what happened to be today, and thought it would be intersting to find out what is the most ammount of work you’ve lost in a crash or due to a virus (or stroke of idiocy lol)? Today I had to do a format due to a particulalry bad virus, swearing I backed everything up I got on with it and after re-installing windows from a clean install and all the programs I found out one thing…I’ve lost all the models and renders I’ve done in the last 3 months in Maya! (Thankfully the Zbrush models are safe, but not the renders Phew!)

yeah it was stupid of me not to have further back-ups and normally it’s something I’m big about. I’m sure though that I’m not alone, so lets here your stories!

Wayne…

#2

Can’t happen to me. My Backup Prog I am using (Danz) is asking me twice a day when I did not backup my last incremental the day before. And an incremental backup takes only a few secs if I did not install tons of progs that day. The most I lost was 20 minutes of work. And the last time that happened was using Modo.
Save often and the day is your friend!
Lemo

#3

I bought a Maxtor external hdd for this… it backups automatically everyday around 10 :slight_smile:

Also if you have problem with virusses… try Nod32 best scanner there is and takes almost no resources compared to norton etc…

#4

Will answer your question backwards.
The most devastating format was about a year ago.
Model, updates, software plugins, names, addresses, etc.
Now a few things.

  1. This was perhaps the fourth biggest format I have ever been involved in.
  2. I have always ( stress always) come back from a format better than
    when I started. Can’t convince you of this but it is true.
    I have told people at different times for different problems to deliberately
    format their machine, they were that bad.
  3. In every textbook,in every software program you are told to backup the
    work. In programs like Maya ( which I believe you have) you know why,more than others might.10 to 20 hours on a scene, render in Mental Ray and …
    and…and…
    Worse if you are doing it for money and on a deadline:cry:
    Still I do not listen nor do I do it.

But have one suggestion in general. Hopefully you have a dvd or cd writer.

Save there when closing as well as hard drive.

Once a week, same time, same day, go into the computer, run the anti virus.
disc defragmenter, disc cleaner etc.Think of it as a housekeeping chore
At that time think of the files, if you were to lose everything at that point , what would you regret losing the most. Back this up, This will come to a total
of less than one hour.
How long did the format take you?

My sypathies,but take heart in the fact you will be better than you were.

By the way, I understand you will probably blow this off with the comment
“yeah !!! sure !!!”.

I did too, after the third format.

#5

Actually there’s been some damn fine advice given. To answer the last question the format itself took about 20 mins and the install from blank formatted HD to installed ‘main’ programs I use (Maya Photoshop Zbrush etc) took only a about 4 hours. What really put the cart amongst the horses was that I couldn’t find my copy of maya 6.5, as I’ve been having so much trouble with 7 I thought I’d ‘roll back’ to a version thats always been pretty stable to me.

Actually I’ll look up NOD32 you mentioned as I’ve been after a low footprint firewall and antivirus for a time now. Currently I’m using Mcafee (Kapasky was worse than useless!) In all my years I’ve never had an up to date antivirus actaully detect a virus, it does make me wonder at times why I bother to run the damn things if they don’t stop them. mind you bearing in mind the virus I could get not running one its a price worth paying.

Once upon a time I used to religously do back ups, defrags, ghost images (20 mins to fully installed HD with all the progs on it). But since the birth of my son I find myself forgetting to do some of this stuff, and as a result I’ve paid a rather high price. I’ve lost some models I’ve been working some time on, but really even with out the models I’ve still got the experience and learning that came from doing them.

The weird thing is I actually was about to back up my work onto a ream of DVD’s the next day, so you could say it’s bad luck. Also the fact i was trying to remember what stuff I REALLY needed on 2 hours sleep probably contributed to it.

But I will be taking the advice given to set a house cleaning day. I always format prety damn regularly anyways (evey month or two) as its easier sometimes than sorting out a problem with an installed program. So the moral of this story is learn by my mistake and back your stuff up regularly!

Wayne…

#6

My biggest lost was two years ago. I started creating a piece of classic animation, 24 pictures by second, all hand-drawned. Scanned them all, colorized them all.

Then, one day, near completion and after months of work, I opened what I thought was a single and honest .JPG.

It was a virus, and a nasty one : It erased all the pictures files on my HD, and renamed the .MP3.

Of course, I didn’t have any backup. Next day, when I finally stopped crying ( sort of ) I bought a CD burner.
Never had a trouble since - hope it’s gonna last like this. :slight_smile:

Bye !

#7

I end up fixing probably 3 or 4 computers a month…should start charging I’d be rich…for folks who don’t listen to my tired often repeated mantra…

turn those damn firewalls on and set em up so that nothing comes or goes from your computer without your knowing it

turn that damn av on and set it to update the minute you long on…not weekly, or daily at 3, the minute you log on

stay away from irc, porno sites etc

get web based mail and don’t open anything from anyone you don’t know and don’t download any attachements from someone you do know til it’s been scanned thoroughly and you know they sent it to ya.

the fbi, your bank, whatever is not going to email you for anyreason concerning your accounts or your online activities…if you’re not sure…don’t click on any link

back up, back up, back up at least once a week if you don’t have some kind of auto-back up…like a tape drive or whatever.

They are all tired of hearing it from me and I quite frankly am tired of them knocking on my door, head hung low with the…just this one last time mantra of their own. :smiley:

#8

Waynes Top Tip:

Get a copy of Get Data Back for NTFS and run it after a format ect. I managed to get back about 70% of my stuff!!! Mind you it’s also highly addictive as it also gives you list of stuff from previous formats. I had a list of 4 installs (thats 4 formats ago!) it’s amazing the stuff you come across. I can’t recommend this prog enough if you have an unfortuate accident like I did.

Of course the stuf I really REALLY needed was lost but the other stuff I needed is now sitting safely on my drive once more.

Woooo HOOOOOOO:D :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Wayne…

#9

Watch those external disks… I backed up my tutorial collection to an external firewire disk. Then I formated the PC to give it away. Yes, I know, you can recover data, but not when you ran a program which writes nulls into the sectors.

Then I wass looking forward to work on a tutorial. Just to see that the external power supply frizzled. Got another power supply and the disk is not accessible any more. Now I am auctioning a similar disk on ebay so I can exchange the board or even the disk stack in the bathroom…

I don’t backup stuff which I can easily replace, but that taught me that there is just nothing better than to incrementally backup to DVD’s…
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Lemo

#10

A dvd can scratch too… if you want to be really safe run a few disks in a RAID setup. :slight_smile:

Recovery software is nice, but usually takes ages :slight_smile:

#11

Well this one only took 20 mins tops for a 80 gig drive! So you can see how I was impressed.

Wayne…

#12

This is a funny thread, cause it happens to everyone so Ill share mine,

I lose work ALL THE TIME in Z brush and this is why, I want to know if others have this happen as well so please share,

its random but Z brush only locks up and freezes ( I have to kill it in the task manager by ending its process) when I use my wacom pen button to activate the coin menu to do like brush size /focal point changes, so Ill hit the button on my pen, the window will pop up right where my cursor is and as soon as I slide the bar down on the brush size OR focus it will immediatley freeze up,

needless to say this is VERY ANNOYING, and it seems to happen about 5 percent of the time, is anyone else having this problem???

Im using a fire GL 1400 FX card , maybe it has to do with the display drivers I dunno-

#13

needless to say this is VERY ANNOYING, and it seems to happen about 5 percent of the time, is anyone else having this problem???

It’s just happened to me, that’s why I’m searching the forum now. Does ZBrush create a temp file or similar to the tool being used???

#14

Almost never lose any work, sometimes due to a prog crash or a freze but only about 20 mins worth so it’s not really an issue…(knock on wood so I don’t jinx myself…lol)
BUT… I have lost a whole PC before which included ALL my work on the HD and the MotherBoard, Video Card, Sound Card, Ram, Power Supply, ect. Pretty much the whole thing got toasted by a power surge (luckly I did have back-ups of progs and work as it was a TOTAL LOSS of the machine). The thing that made me wonder was why my surge protector never tripped (I got rid of that one and now have a UPS surge/noise protection system) …well turns out that the “Surge that killed the machine” as I commonly refer to it was not large enough to actually trip the surge protector but was large enough to cause my power supply to surge to ALL of it’s connected components…putting 120V to a hard drive is a BAD idea…lol
Just a little heads up here that I never really thought about till it happened to me…Check your POWER SUPPLY!..most of us have a circuit/overload protection inbetween the wall outlet and your Power Supply but does your Power Supply have overload protection on it’s OUTPUTS that go to all the parts inside your comp? Mine didn’t and inturn SMOKED my machine…My new one does now and has survived a Lightning stike to my house…coffee maker and several other pieces of electronics didn’t make it but the comp was fine.
Another good piece of equipment to get is a Uninterruptible Power Supply set-up with Adv surge and line-noise protection. With one of these you will NEVER lose power as it can have up to 20hrs of power stored inside of it, enough time to save your stuff or finish it if the power to your house goes out or your family decides to plug in and turn on every electrical appliance in the house that is on the same electrical circiut as your comp and trips the breaker right in the middle of a project…lol… it has happened. Tripp Lite makes some very nice ones…check them out, it has saved me and might one day save you and your comp too.

Escape

#15

Well Gentlemen,

I went to a place where they handle technical stuff and I needed format one of the virtual disk where the programs are intalled and specificly said to the kid who was working on it: Format C, not D because my files are there…
After a while he was already formating I repeated to him: Remember, Format C, not D because my files are there -just to make sure, you know?-… to which he said: Format C? …the kid quickly turned around like if he had made a mistake… a few moments later… I realized he made A BIG MISTAKE!

What they didn’t know is that there was an image I was working for about a year! So that got lost and it was for an art contest… needless to say I wanted to faint on the spot… I mean, it was that or choking the kid to death and then setting the place on fire… but that would’t give me back my contest image

I made a backup several months before the lost… and had the contest deadline pretty close… so had to start from where the backup was

So the moral of the story is… never, never, never ever! let a kid with a mental/hearing issue format your stuff! -my shrinks says I have a small problem of denial… actually I think it’s his fault I’m not cure!

Oh! And my brother lost most of all his work by a virus that had a little message: We are all one… didn’t get it untill we realized that all the affected file were down to 1K… ooooh the tragedy… but you have to give the virus some credit… had a sense of sarcasm

See you guys

#16

I haven’t lost… “but”…

I’m the leader/founder of DK Entertainment etc; Maybe some of you guys heard of the Shards of Asgard project…
Anyway, our 3d Lead Artist, Master_Blaster (aka grrrrrrr) who was making the village completly lost it due to a HDD crash :frowning: :mad:

So i’ve set up an Art Depot with permissions on our private forums, something similar to our programmers SVN. Now anyone can back up thery progress at anytime and everything is ok because our host is reliable and if somebody “dissapears” we’ll still have most of their work in the safe place :slight_smile: