My Great DIM ordeal
Ron Knights
Posts: 1,801
I lost a 3TB hard drive awhile ago, along with decades of very important custom characters. It was literally a large chapter of my DAZ history. I've been slowly struggling with an approach to finally get back into operation. I finally decided to re-purpose a 2TB hard drive, and reinstall everything using DIM. I broke things up. Each generation of DAZ characters got their own "runtime" collection. (Generation 2 with Michael 2, Victoria 2, etc.) That was when I realized the massive amount of content that was lost during that last disaster. The good news was that I've been trying to convince myself to work more exclusively with the Genesis characters. Now, all the Genesis characters have their own "runtime" collection, along with some favorite scenes. I'm about ready to totally abandon the DAZ Generations before Genesis.
I was totally shocked to see that DIM repeatedly uninstalled DAZ Studio 4.10 and installed DAZ Studio 4.9 instead. I finally fixed that problem by manually installing DAZ Studio 4.10. I may not actually make art for awhile. I'm still dealing with some health challenges. I've decided DIM and Smart Content might have been a good idea, but they've totally lost their appeal to me because of what I see as some bad decisions on DAZ's part. I cheated and used DIM to install everything, then turned around and rearranged things to suit my needs. I'll manually install all my new stuff in the future.
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Comments
I went through something similar. On top of all the DAZ stuff, I had a couple thousand ZIP files that I had to re-install by hand. It was actually such a monumental effort that I put off getting back into 3D for a couple of years because of the mountain of work to just get things back to the state they were in so I could find my content.
JonnyRay, I know what you mean. Up until the recent disaster, I had a large collection from Renderosity, PoserPros and other sites. I estimated about two weeks time manually installing all that stuff. I lost all those files when I had this last disaster. In addition I lost maybe 20 custom characters I created for my own amusement. I had a cast of characters who sometimes made themselves into silly illustrations that sometimes amused my small number of followers over the past 18 years. Those are all gone now. JonnyRay, I hope you're having fun with your artwork now!
It was when I finally had enough Genesis 2, 3, and 8 stuff that I stopped feeling the pain of losing my Victoria 4 wardrobe. Since then yes, I'm having fun again. Most of my recent stuff is in my portfolio link in my signature.
I'm sorry you lost so much work Ron. I'm really paranoid about drive crashes so I regularly clone my drives then safely store them.
I know it can be expensive to buy another HDD but in time savings and the costs of content, it's worth it.
RSand55 I had a 3TB hard drive that I used for a clone backup of the original drive. But I went a bit nuts when I had the troubles. Yeah, I need to get a new hard drive. I have a mountain of bills to pay first! Have a great day!
Hi Ron Knights,
Are you sure the drive is lost and not just corrupted?
If you are on windows, have a look at "Lazesoft Data recovery", the application is free for home use, and it will not take long to install and check the drive.
I have had drives go down myself, but have always been able to recover all files.
http://www.lazesoft.com/lazesoft-data-recovery.html
It's been a month or more since I had that problem. Now the drive refuses to stay connected. I keep getting error messages saying I should undock the drive before disconnecting it. I use a Macintosh computer.
don't do anything to the drive in the meantime... take it to a friend who has a pc that reads mac see if the pc can read it...
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find someone with linux...
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I had a pair of 5tb seagates 6 mos old that dissappeared.. ran the diagonostics .. both showed the same problem same distance into scan...
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Seagates own rescue program said no data
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give one to a friend and he plugged it into a linux machine... didn't come up .. but he let it sit there .. in about 5 minutes it appeared on the desk top and said I'm here...
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brought it back to my machine .. plugged it in and windows (which wouldn't see it before) said "there's no driver, should I install one" I said yep and we've been happy for a year...
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I've put "dead" pc drives on a mac and recovered data.. both systems read the data a little differently .. try everything.. you should be able to get a linux for free run it from a cd...
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is it in an external case? get one of the little bare drive mounting kits $10 on amazon... take out of case...bypass interface in case... and the bare drives have power connector rather than just trying to suck off usb...
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years ago I had a mac drive that was just flaky.. but I took it out of it's case ... put in another one... it was the case not the drive
the ultimate thing to try.. and depends on how much your characters mean to you... is find an identical drive... that works .. and swap the card on the bottom of the drive....
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I had a computer that was in a fire... drives wouldn't come up.. talked to tech .. tried the software etc they suggested... nothing.
a year later a friend gave me an extra drive that matched it... that drive stopped spinning.. so I took the card and put it on the drive from the fire and it came up and I got my data...
called tech and asked them why they didn't suggest that.. answer .. well, it doesn't always work so we don't suggest it.. huh.. I lost data and you don't want to suggest a possible way to fix it because it doesn't always work?
@Ron Knights
I have both windows and an older Mac in my pipeline
Consider that your external drive my literally have a physical connection problem with its USB Cable
USB and firewire cables can "go bad" from being stressed too much at the connector head.
I have a dodgy one that I was using to connect my samsung android Phone to my win7 laptop and it started dropping the connection if I moved it too much during operation.
Have you tried replacing your cable??
yes, it's back and happy.. it literally lost it's driver? .. so windows wouldn't see it at all --- when it was on linux .. something happened so the next time it was plugged into the PC .. the pc said no driver and fixed it...
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I was just passing on some of the stuff I've done over the years to get data back...
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but with the newer tiny drives .. opening them up and reading the surfaces with a loop just doesn't work any more...
The hard drive apparently has difficulty coping when I move massive amounts of files. You know, like when I try to rearrange all my DAZ Studio files! The drive was in an external plastic case. In my past experience, some drives have gone bad in plastic cases. I've usually removed them from the plastic case, and installed them in a metal case, etc. Yes, it appears I used a couple defective USB cables. It's amazing. I had two shoe boxes full of USB cables that I rarely used. I tossed one box a year ago. Next month I plan to buy a brand new USB cable. I'll throw out all my old USB cables.
The 3TB hard drive has been reformatted a few times. I've encountered some weird errors in the process. I've decided not to try reclaiming my old work. For now, the 3TB drive sits in a fancy Aluminum case I bought from Other World Computing a few years ago. I'll try just using it to store my multimedia files.
I'm using an old 2TB external Western Digital hard drive for my DAZ Studio stuff now. It's in a sexy aluminum case, and works just fine. I'll likely buy a portable 2TB USB drive for a backup drive, next month.
if it's a seagate.. I had three.. one died a month before the warrenty, one died a month after, and one in the next year.
Some googling turned up stats from a company with server farms that the 3tb seagate had a 40% failure rate (worse of any 3tbs)...
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on the other hand the 4tb seagates in the same line had the lowest failure rate of any 4tb drives at under 1%
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the 5tbs gave me issues..
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maybe the lesson is don't buy and "odd" drives?
I've purchased Western Digital drives, almost exclusively, forever. One time I ordered a drive from Iomega, and it crashed fatally. Iomega wanted me to pay $20 just to make a warranty call. I trashed the drive.
dear old seagate will sell you the software to recover data for a mere $89...
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I try to stick to WD Blacks now .. 5 years is the best warrenty to find