[LE] Just lost everything

[Elias555]

The hdd I use for games and mods just gave way and I lost everything. I just want to know if reinstalling the CK will give me back my back ups or anything I had previously. I was working on a mod for a couple of months and I only have a few meshes saved outside of the hdd. Any other help is appreciated.

[agerweb]

The backups are stored in the the Skyrim\Backup directory so their gone. All you will have left is your saved games on steam. No help now, but for next time drop your mods on a usb stick every time before you turn off your computer that's what I do.

[Tasheni]

Worst case. I don't know what happend exactly, but sometimes a disk is not entirely broken. I could repair some in the past, maybe that will work also for you:

https://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Physically-Broken-Hard-Drive

 

USB-Sticks are not the best solution to save important data for longer because they often have the habit to stop working suddenly. I use many of them and not a single one of my first has survived. I use a external hdd to store backups and a laptop because if you want to get sure you need different storage devices. Good luck.

[Evangela]

HDDs are just a ticking time bomb from start up. All you can do is backup as often as possible. Granted, I've had some last up to 7 years.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Rasikko

[agerweb]

Depends how paranoid you are - but anything off-line is better than your hardrive.

[Di0nysys]

That blows. CK doesn't cloud save afaik.

I've had mixed results with some hard drive data recovery programs before. If the drive can still boot and be formatted, you may be able to restore some files on it. When files get "deleted", they're only removed from a master record, but the data remains there until the drive overwrites it with new data.

[JonathanOstrus]

@OP I'm sorry to hear about your issues. Do you know what exactly how the drive failed? IE data corruption from sudden power loss, mechanical problem like clicking/grinding sound? If you're looking for recovery check my last 2 paragraphs. If you're looking for mitigation read the whole thing.

 

Being that I work in the tech industry, and personally own 65 hard drives, solid state drives drives combined (not an exaggeration), and a slew of USB flash drives. I can accurately say any storage device is susceptible to sudden and irrecoverable failure. Be that hard drives, solid state drives (sata or m.2), usb flash drives (technically also solid state arguably also the least reliable). I'm not even going to get into the riskiness of recordable cd/dvd/bluray media.

 

For those who are really curious:

 

 

Gaming Rig: 3 SSD, 1 HDD, 2 USB FD

Design Rig: 2 SSD, 4 HDD

Laptop1: 1 SSD, 1 external HDD, 4 USB FD

Laptop2: 1 SSD, 1 external HDD, 2 USB FD

NAS1: 16 HDD

NAS2: 8 HDD

MediaCenter1: 6 HDD

MediaCenter2: 4 HDD

 

Personal offsite backup server: 8 HDD

 

I then have the 2 NAS boxes and my personal server backup really important data to cloud services as well.

 

Spare external HDD: 3

Spare internal HDD: 5

Spare SSD: 1

Spare USB FD: 13 (last checked a week ago. don't keep really close track as they fail often)

 

I would say on average 1 per month fails. Sometimes 2 or 3, but then sometimes none for a few months. But over the last 3 years it's equalled about 1 per month.

 

 

Sometimes hard drives will give leading symptoms of impending failure, like getting slower and slower over time. Sometimes making an occasional click sound (generally signifies a mechanical failure is imminent). Other times it will be working fine and then just suddenly it won't power on.

 

In the case (no pun intended as follows) of external hard drives, sometimes it is the enclosure case that goes bad and not the actual drive itself. For desktop style drives in enclosures, simply removing it from the enclosure and placing it in a new one or internally to a computer may allow for recovery of data. For the smaller laptop portable drives this is less likely. A lot of the newer designs are embedding the USB port and controller onto the hard drive circuit board to save size and cost. This prevents the ability to replace the enclosure should that be the failure.

 

Solid State Drives (SSDs)/Flash drives will generally not give any warning and one day work, then the next day do not. Sometimes you get lucky where it will intermittently work and then not, giving potential for time to recover data. USB flash drives are pretty notorious on this front. There are many things that can cause more frequent failures. Such as a static build up from keeping them in a pants pocket and then going to plug it in. The cloth and general walking movement will build up a charge which can short it out. Sometimes a failure on the USB port in the computer causing a surge will blow them out. Other times they just wear out. They don't have the same type of wear leveling that a regular storage SSD does. So rewriting data to them will generally wear them out faster. One of my clients uses USB FD for daily work backup against my recommendation. Though at least she maintains 6 copies of the data at all times. The likelihood that all 6 drives AND the original pc copy would fail all at once is fairly unlikely. She keeps a log and notes each time data is written to one of the drives. She never uses any one drive more than 100 times, then destroys it and disposes of it. Her data set is < 2gb so small 4/8gb drives are pretty cheap compared to maintaining an equivalent amount of hard drives.

 

I'm not going to get into recommending any DIY solutions for your own recovery. I've had plenty of clients who've done that and then come to me too late and just made it worse. Depending on the type of failure that occurred sometimes time is paramount for the ability to recover the data. This is especially true if there are mechanical issues like the drive making clicking, grinding, or beeping sounds. Remember, hard drives don't have speakers. Any sound it's making other than an electric motor spinning sound is generally abnormal. There may be a small (as I describe it) "flutter" like sound where the arm holding the read and write head is being moved around. But it's usually pretty faint on modern drives.

 

If you really want to recover the data try to find some reputable place that has data recovery to take care of it. Prices can vary dramatically depending on where you go and what the problem is though, so keep that in mind. If you need professional data recovery I cannot recommend DriveSavers https://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ enough. I've had to recommend clients to them on numerous occasion when the issue was mechanical. Their prices are fairly high for non mechanical recovery but they can do it all. Normally I can do corruption and software related issue recovery so my clients don't have to go that route. But when a mechanical part fails the only solution is to disassemble and rebuild the drive. They have clean rooms and equipment to do such things. To avoid the immediate "stick shock" of pricing, think about whether you have an insurance that may cover the data recovery. In some cases a homeowners, renters, or business class of insurance may cover it. Check with your agent. Their reps will tell you the same thing. I believe they still give a free quote over the phone after some basic questions so it doesn't hurt to call them and ask. Have the drive handy though as they usually want the brand, model, and serial # of it.

Edited February 12, 2018 by BigAndFlabby

[Elias555]

The backups are stored in the the Skyrim\Backup directory so their gone. All you will have left is your saved games on steam. No help now, but for next time drop your mods on a usb stick every time before you turn off your computer that's what I do.

Damn. I'm getting a 4tb passport thing in an hour or so and will periodically make back ups.

 

 

Worst case. I don't know what happend exactly, but sometimes a disk is not entirely broken. I could repair some in the past, maybe that will work also for you:

https://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Physically-Broken-Hard-Drive

 

USB-Sticks are not the best solution to save important data for longer because they often have the habit to stop working suddenly. I use many of them and not a single one of my first has survived. I use a external hdd to store backups and a laptop because if you want to get sure you need different storage devices. Good luck.

Are passport drives good?

I'll look into the link shortly, cheers.

 

HDDs are just a ticking time bomb from start up. All you can do is backup as often as possible. Granted, I've had some last up to 7 years.

I have 1 that's about as old for my OS and it's still kicking, the one that failed isn't even 3 years old.

 

That blows. CK doesn't cloud save afaik.

I've had mixed results with some hard drive data recovery programs before. If the drive can still boot and be formatted, you may be able to restore some files on it. When files get "deleted", they're only removed from a master record, but the data remains there until the drive overwrites it with new data.

I don't think it's even detectable.

 

@OP I'm sorry to hear about your issues. Do you know what exactly how the drive failed? IE data corruption from sudden power loss, mechanical problem like clicking/grinding sound? If you're looking for recovery check my last 2 paragraphs. If you're looking for mitigation read the whole thing.

 

Being that I work in the tech industry, and personally own 65 hard drives, solid state drives drives combined (not an exaggeration), and a slew of USB flash drives. I can accurately say any storage device is susceptible to sudden and irrecoverable failure. Be that hard drives, solid state drives (sata or m.2), usb flash drives (technically also solid state arguably also the least reliable). I'm not even going to get into the riskiness of recordable cd/dvd/bluray media.

 

For those who are really curious:

 

 

Gaming Rig: 3 SSD, 1 HDD, 2 USB FD

Design Rig: 2 SSD, 4 HDD

Laptop1: 1 SSD, 1 external HDD, 4 USB FD

Laptop2: 1 SSD, 1 external HDD, 2 USB FD

NAS1: 16 HDD

NAS2: 8 HDD

MediaCenter1: 6 HDD

MediaCenter2: 4 HDD

 

Personal offsite backup server: 8 HDD

 

I then have the 2 NAS boxes and my personal server backup really important data to cloud services as well.

 

Spare external HDD: 3

Spare internal HDD: 5

Spare SSD: 1

Spare USB FD: 13 (last checked a week ago. don't keep really close track as they fail often)

 

I would say on average 1 per month fails. Sometimes 2 or 3, but then sometimes none for a few months. But over the last 3 years it's equalled about 1 per month.

 

 

Sometimes hard drives will give leading symptoms of impending failure, like getting slower and slower over time. Sometimes making an occasional click sound (generally signifies a mechanical failure is imminent). Other times it will be working fine and then just suddenly it won't power on.

 

In the case (no pun intended as follows) of external hard drives, sometimes it is the enclosure case that goes bad and not the actual drive itself. For desktop style drives in enclosures, simply removing it from the enclosure and placing it in a new one or internally to a computer may allow for recovery of data. For the smaller laptop portable drives this is less likely. A lot of the newer designs are embedding the USB port and controller onto the hard drive circuit board to save size and cost. This prevents the ability to replace the enclosure should that be the failure.

 

Solid State Drives (SSDs)/Flash drives will generally not give any warning and one day work, then the next day do not. Sometimes you get lucky where it will intermittently work and then not, giving potential for time to recover data. USB flash drives are pretty notorious on this front. There are many things that can cause more frequent failures. Such as a static build up from keeping them in a pants pocket and then going to plug it in. The cloth and general walking movement will build up a charge which can short it out. Sometimes a failure on the USB port in the computer causing a surge will blow them out. Other times they just wear out. They don't have the same type of wear leveling that a regular storage SSD does. So rewriting data to them will generally wear them out faster. One of my clients uses USB FD for daily work backup against my recommendation. Though at least she maintains 6 copies of the data at all times. The likelihood that all 6 drives AND the original pc copy would fail all at once is fairly unlikely. She keeps a log and notes each time data is written to one of the drives. She never uses any one drive more than 100 times, then destroys it and disposes of it. Her data set is < 2gb so small 4/8gb drives are pretty cheap compared to maintaining an equivalent amount of hard drives.

 

I'm not going to get into recommending any DIY solutions for your own recovery. I've had plenty of clients who've done that and then come to me too late and just made it worse. Depending on the type of failure that occurred sometimes time is paramount for the ability to recover the data. This is especially true if there are mechanical issues like the drive making clicking, grinding, or beeping sounds. Remember, hard drives don't have speakers. Any sound it's making other than an electric motor spinning sound is generally abnormal. There may be a small (as I describe it) "flutter" like sound where the arm holding the read and write head is being moved around. But it's usually pretty faint on modern drives.

 

If you really want to recover the data try to find some reputable place that has data recovery to take care of it. Prices can vary dramatically depending on where you go and what the problem is though, so keep that in mind. If you need professional data recovery I cannot recommend DriveSavers https://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ enough. I've had to recommend clients to them on numerous occasion when the issue was mechanical. Their prices are fairly high for non mechanical recovery but they can do it all. Normally I can do corruption and software related issue recovery so my clients don't have to go that route. But when a mechanical part fails the only solution is to disassemble and rebuild the drive. They have clean rooms and equipment to do such things. To avoid the immediate "stick shock" of pricing, think about whether you have an insurance that may cover the data recovery. In some cases a homeowners, renters, or business class of insurance may cover it. Check with your agent. Their reps will tell you the same thing. I believe they still give a free quote over the phone after some basic questions so it doesn't hurt to call them and ask. Have the drive handy though as they usually want the brand, model, and serial # of it.

 

Woah, massive post, thanks for all the effort!

It makes a tone and then a click sound over and over for approximately 10 times and then it gives up. That happened the day before but it didn't stop for several minutes. I panicked and put the computer into sleep mod, the next day I noticed my CK was closed, and I was missing a hdd. There were no earlier warnings, if anything, Skyrim was starting up a lot faster than usual in my test environment. Playing games felt normal. The CK was behaving normally too.

I did open it up to see if there was dust or something but it's surprisingly clean, no scratches on the top disc. I haven't attempted to fix it since it's way outside of what I know.

 

I doubt I'll get it fixed, it's way too costly. Most of what's on it will take time to download and reinstall, the mods that have been taken down and the mods I've made/making are the only things I can't recover in full. Would you recommend using a passport hdd or external hdd for monthly back ups? Or are passport hdd similar to flash dirves in function?

[JonathanOstrus]

 

Woah, massive post, thanks for all the effort!

It makes a tone and then a click sound over and over for approximately 10 times and then it gives up. That happened the day before but it didn't stop for several minutes. I panicked and put the computer into sleep mod, the next day I noticed my CK was closed, and I was missing a hdd. There were no earlier warnings, if anything, Skyrim was starting up a lot faster than usual in my test environment. Playing games felt normal. The CK was behaving normally too.

I did open it up to see if there was dust or something but it's surprisingly clean, no scratches on the top disc. I haven't attempted to fix it since it's way outside of what I know.

 

I doubt I'll get it fixed, it's way too costly. Most of what's on it will take time to download and reinstall, the mods that have been taken down and the mods I've made/making are the only things I can't recover in full. Would you recommend using a passport hdd or external hdd for monthly back ups? Or are passport hdd similar to flash dirves in function?

 

 

The clicking is a pretty common failure. It's the drive failing to get a servo lock because it cannot read the data from the platter. The cause of the read failure can vary though. In any case it's a mechanical problem and no amount of software will be able to retrieve it without hardware modifications.

 

If you have no plans to attempt recovery through a 3rd party, then a last ditch effort is to hope maybe it's a slight alignment issue. If you have the skills to take it out of the pc, do so. Place it in the freezer for 24 hours. I know sounds dumb but sometimes it works. Then remote it to try again. Place it on a paper tower if you can arrange to plug it in without mounting it. If not then don't worry about it. If it doesn't work the first time don't bother repeating as it is unlikely to work even after more attempts. However if it does work and you get some data but the problem comes back, feel free to repeat it. However make sure the drive has cooled down to room temperature before placing back in the freezer. You want to avoid condensation as much as possible.

 

As for the external drive options. The WD Passport drives work pretty good. The small drives like that which are the "portable" externals as I call them, tend to have a higher and quicker failure rate in my experience. The passport is by definition an external hard drive. It's easier to differentiate the types as saying laptop external, or desktop external to signify the size and style of device. In any case I wouldn't put too much thought into it other than finding a reasonably priced drive as I said before, they all will fail. It's just a matter of is it your only copy when it fails. Don't be like some of my naive customers and think putting the data only on the external drive is a backup. A backup is an additional copy besides the original. So the original presumably staying in the pc main hard drive, then the second copy on the external is a valid "backup". But you can always go paranoid like myself with 5+ copies of everything.

 

Edit: Uhh...I just reread that and saw the part you said about opening it up. You opened up the hard drive cover to expose the platters and arm inside? That's a fairly good way to damage the drive. You could still try the freezer trick but if that doesn't work it's pretty likely gone without someone like DriveSavers.

Edited February 13, 2018 by BigAndFlabby

[Evangela]

My worse failures were from a western digital and a seagate, the latter I found.. shocking, and that one failed on the second day. The WD was catastrophic as it was the OS drive, and it was a mechanical failure, it would have cost 500USD and I didn't think it was worth the cost and just let it go. It so far has been the only HDD that gave warnings of imminent failure, with the first sign being the load clicking.

 

Had an external fail, and that was the drive itself, it booted up for one last hurrah and allowed me to backup as much as I could before it wouldn't boot up anymore.

 

Now I'm remembering all my crazy PC experiences. Heh, the weirdest one being a motherboard I ordered, arrive to my house, dead. MSI support didn't believe me though lol but they had to take it back anyway to confirm. Dead mobo is dead man, power going to it, by it ain't gonna do much else. Don't get me started on a HP PC catching on fire on day 2 of purchase.

Edited February 14, 2018 by Rasikko