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...update: new drive should arrive tomorrow (Wednesday)
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Take a look at Amazon's Kindle for self publishing. Doesn't cost anyhting but the time you put into making the story / document together, upload and it'll convert to amazon kindle format. Considering how amazon made sure to have its reader app usable by all platforms including mobile, there's a wide audience out there and there's alot of great independant self publishers out there putting out quality content. Considering most of the self published books are between $0.00 to $4.99 , cheaper than an actual pocketbook novel (let alone hardcover) , and sometimes the author puts out the first book in the series for free (permanent of time limited) gives people a chance to see if the like the story and style of writing without putting out any money at all.
Lots of those book covers are done with daz studio renders too.
A good story, well developed characters with depth (not talking about physical characteristics but personality, background story, attitude & emotion, etc), and going by the quality of renders you post (are really great by the way), I don't think you'd have a problem making some sales.
...again, I tend to do much better with illustrations than with words. Kindles are not colour so I don't believe you can even reproduce images to them.
Anyway, the new drive has arrived (need to go down to the office to get it).
Kindles are in color now aside from the Paperwhite.
I have a Amazon Fire tablet its what I use to read on and it does colour images etc. I never thought I would like reading from anything but a 'proper book' but I wouldn't give it up now the advantages are so worth it, larger print when I need, back light if needed and this can be changed from a bright blue light to a soft orange and anything in between, and then there's the whole no hands cramping up painfully from holding a book.
...while the Fire 10 has the largest display (screen dimensions of a Trade Paperback) and doesn't cost as much as a Kindle Oasis (100$ less without accessories) the downsides are that it only holds a 10 hr charge (as opposed to "weeks" for a regular Kindle), is backlit like a notebook (whereas the Kindle uses a concept known as "electronic paper" [electrophoretic display} that mimics ink on paper and is easily readable even in full daylight), and the battery is non replaceable.
Again this is moving off track as I have no intention of (nor the resources for) obtaining either device as well as have a less than favourable opinion of the Amazon company itself (won't go any further on this for obvious reasons).
You'll have to give an update when you get your new drive hooked up and the vhd file examined!
You really have to, Kyoto. This thread has more views than the new Complaint Thread (which is twice as old as this one). Looks like people are genuinely concerned about you and your situation. Either that or they enjoy watching bad things happen to you. Naw, it's probably that first one.
Genuinely concerned. I don't care if KK publishes in the common way (even though I do myself), I just want her to be able to continue her work,
kyoto kid , I really must thank you for this thread. Here I read about this HD Tune Pro software, which shows if a drive is about to die. I downloaded and used it, and my second drive which I imagined to be perfectly well and working (not very old, that one) shows sure signs of failure. I was able to save about 99% of 2 Terabyte, the last files were already corrupted, so the test software was right, but I know where I can download them again.
So, a big, fat thank you!
...a little tough on the budget at 35$, but then if it does allow me to discover a potential catastrophic failure earlier than Windows notices it, as well as avoid having to pay for expensive file recovery, does sound to be a good insurance policy. Downloaded the trial version.
Anything good in the recovery?
...been a bit busy with other unrelated matters but installed the new drive, checked to make sure the BIOS sees properly all the attributes are fine, CPUID Hardware Manager shows it installed but Widows doesn't. I did get a pop up that a the device driver was initialised for the volume but no initialisation wizard opened to perform the process.
I checked on the Net and most tutorials mentioned about going into Disk Manager to do this but I don't remember having to do so when I initially set up the original drives (this was over 6 years ago). Opening Disk management it does show a "Disk 1" (C: is Disk "0") which is "not initialised and it's storage sector (1,863 GB) "unallocated". The situation that I am not sure of is it queries me for a "partition style," (MBR [master boot record] and GPT [GUID partition table]) something again I don't remember in the original install wizard years ago. So a bit unsure here.
I guess that depends on How big your drive is and if you planning on splitting the drive up into multiple smaller drives (and how many) or if you plan on just leaving it 1 big drive. Either way the MBR option should be fine if it's just a secondary storage drive for your Daz (and other) files
When I install a new secondary drive nowadays, I always have to go into the Disk Manager and initialize it, and allocate the space. I use MBR for anything 2 TB or smaller. You have to use GPT for anything larger, or if you want more than four partitions on the drive. One advantage of GPT/GUID is that the index and boot data is stored in multiple locations, so it is in theory more resistant to corruption.
If you install Win 7 with all disks hooked up, Windows will help take care of the initialization and allocation during the install process. I always install Window with only the primary boot disk hooked up, as WIn 7 (and I think 10), will put files and partitions on a second disk too during installation, and then you can't use that second disk for WIn 7 image backup.
In some cases (old machines/bios), the disk manager does not see the new disk, and I have to use the utility provided by Western Digital or Seagate.
Good luck with everything!
...cool, thanks. Like I mentioned, been a while.
..ahh that's probably why I don't remember doing it as I put the entire system together first, then installed W7.
...OK got it all working Windows recognises the drive as Drive D:, so now how do I go about restoring the files from the VHD that was created?
I will be screaming with delight at my screen the moment you report back that you;ve managed to recover everything. Waiting with baited breath. All the best bro!
Ok, just tried this again to be sure I remembered right.
Windows 7: Open disk management.
At the right of the window, there should be an "actions" pane. Select "more actions"
Select "attach VHD". Select "Read Only" for safety's sake
You can then browse to the VHD file, select it, then "OK"
A window will open displaying the files (may take a bit as it has to uncompress stuff)
When done just close the window and disk management.
You can also use the "restore from backup" function in the backup and restore menu to restore it all at once, but I usually prefer to do it by file or directory.
Good Luck!
..I did that and all it did was create another "drive" (most likely a partition on that drive which suspiciously is the same size as the C: Drive).
This makes me wonder if the backup process tagged Drive C: rather than D even though I had D: specified as the target drive to backup. If that is the case, then it's having to start all over again from scratch as there is no way to address the failed drive.
That is strange....when I try this with a backup VHD file, it does show the VHD as a new read-only drive, but it shows it as "healthy" with a blue bar that shows it is allocated.
Did you use WIndows 7 backup, or a Toshiba backup utility to create the original backup?
If you used an app that came with the drive, you may need use that to restore it as well. I have run into that before. It seems all VHD files are not equivalent.
Windows 7 backup.
Yeah there are no other options but to detach it which will erase that info (I did remember to set it to read only first).
I wonder if I should just copy the VHD file over to the new drive and try it from there (would be a long process to copy). I still find it a bit troubling that it is the exact same size as the C: Drive. which makes me think it may very well be a backup of the boot drive which would have saved none of the scenes or runtimes.
If you have winzip or winrar, you should be able to right click and explore the file. I believe you should be able to do the same with windows built-in zip. Right click the file and see if there is an explore type option.
Basically, it should just be zipped contents labeled as vhd.
...only 7-Zip shows as an option for extracting and I get an "access denied" error. Don't have Winzip.
Downloaded and installed the free version of WinZip and tried to view teh file (it did get a WinZip as the file type but I received a "file sharing/permissions" error. This is becoming just more complicated than it needs to be
...wondering if I should just detach the VHD that shows as "Disk 3" as the file on the backup is read only.
Are you running as an Administrator? I am able to open my VHD files with 7-zip.
I have had no problems attaching and detaching a VHD multiple times. There is an option to delete the file when detaching, but it is not automatic.
Maybe you can try restoring the whole image, by clicking on the icon for that backup. Making a copy first would not hurt.
..OK detached it. As I am the only user therefore I'm listed as the system administrator. Do I need to go to the logon as Administrator (this is the kind of stuff that throws me and why I'd never make a good IT specialist)?
Copying to where though? I started to do so to the new drive but it mentioned the process would take over an hour so I aborted it. I just want to know for sure if this is indeed a backup of C:(based the size of the attached "Disk 3"). If so then I can just stop dealing with this and begin the long laborious process of downloading, installing, and rebuilding my runtime structure again (which means going to Rendo and TS to re-download older purchases as well as different sites for various freebies I've collected over the last several years that after I made the old DVD backups (some of which became corrupted). The real bugger is I lost a bunch of special freebies and gifts, like those from Mech4D including that include a very useful neutral ambient environment I use for my character proof rendering as those were all on the old D: drive as well.
...well I guess that is that. Logged on as Admin tried to view it through WinZip there and received an error that the file was "corrupted or not not a compatible file type".So all this trouble for naught.
Looks like it's time to fire up the DIM and start downloading/installing everything all over again as well as dig through boxes for physical backups of non Daz content & freebies.
Not a very happy camper after all this. particularly since it's going to take so bloody long to rebuild all the characters, custom work, and the scenes I was still working on.
If you are listed as system admin you should be fine in terms of permissions.
Ok, I found some posts on computer forums that noted that when they tried to attach a VHD file with "read only" checked, they came up with a blank volume. When they detached it and then tried again without read only checked, they were able to see the contents. That makes no sense to me at all, and it works either way when I try it, but it is easy to check.
..tried that on the Admin login and still the same results. There was a second error message which mentioned it was not a "valid archive" so not sure what happened.
Here is what I see on the Admin login:
The blue areas are why I suspect this is a backup of the C: Boot drive. The Red highlight shows "Drive 3" as being a SCSI drive (the external Toshiba drive is USB).
Beginning to feel like I am flogging a deceased equine.
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