Hi everyone.. I just wanted to say that these days I'm fighting my computer and a partial Format. Everything I had backed up to protect it for a system cleaning format, has been lost. ALL my poser stuff! all the music I've made (the save-files to this music) all my textures, pics and install files... EVERYTHING has been lost! right now I don't know what to do. I'm trying demo's of data-recovery software, but nothing has worked so far.. so I don't know what I'm going to do so far.. I haven't even installed Poser yet, since I don't see the point when my runtime is all gone.... 5 gigabytes of data is gone :( maybe forever...

Sorry to hear that. :( I made the same experience several years ago. That's why I backup my data on regular basis from that day on. Whish you luck, Phil

That is a bummer of all bummers.....I'm sorry, but I have no advice to give you...guess that pro data recovery sources are pretty darn expensive. My runtime is about the same size, plus the gigs of UNBACKEDED -UP stuff as well. My project of the night will be to get everything on CD...or CDs...I need the DVD burner now:) When you say partial format, how did you do that?

I was trying to fix a partition with Partition Magic, and I checked to see if it would format anything, and it never claimed it would so when it startet formatting my back-up drive, I cancelled it at 3 % but now i'm trying to get my data back

Oh man, I am so sorry. That happened to me once, I won't let it happen again, I back up everything on CD's, and 2 extra computers....But one thing I did learn when that happend, is my stuff got better when I had to re-do it...so keep that in mind, starting over is sometimes a blessing. Sharen PS: if you got models from us, we will gladly send you backups.

That's awful and I'm sorry. It happened to me a little over a year ago on my laptop due to a head crash. Because it was work-related, I took it to a data recovery vendor and they were able to bring back about 95% of what was on my harddrive. I got to expense the $600 it cost, because it was business but it would have cost many times more to recreate the work I'd done in the week between backups. -Nancy.

oooh! been down that very same sh$$$y road my friend. It sucks for sure. As others have said, I now backup on a regular basis to an external format (e.g. CD) because if I lost all my poser stuff now ... I would probably start shooting people...seriously :-) Wax: yeah $600 is not that much to have paid to get back 95% of your data...especially when you consider all the time you spent creating or acquiring it. Time is money for sure! Here's to better days then!

You should contact the stores where you bought your stuff, a lot of it can probably be re-downloaded. Sorry to hear about your original stuff. Marque

Thanks for all your concern, but the problem with re-downloading is that I don't remember where I got half my stuff, and some of it is freeware which isn't available anymore.. but i'm still fighting with the Data Recovery tools.. I do have about 3-4 CD of install files with just POser stuff, but it's going to take a billion years to install it all again sigh but if that's the solution, then i'll just have to go through with it. (then I could probably sort out all the stuff I don't want to use anymore.

Mariamus , I feel your pain as well . Had something simular happen a few months ago and lost 50% of my stuff. Then trying to reinstall from CD's i found out they were not the best way of backing stuff. Now i use a external hard drive.

I have two hard drives in my computer, a 120 GB and an 80 GB one. the smaller one is partitioned with a Windows 98 installation, (bought a game that wouldn't install in XP) I think a friend of mine found a freeware program that could make a list of all the stuff you have on a CD.. (Maybe I should back-up all my stuff on CDs and make a small library ^_^)

I too, am sorry to hear this........but like everyone else, it has happened to me too. I agree with tasquah....an external hard-drive is the way to go. I now just down-load directly to that hard-drive, mostly because I tend to neglect copying everything on CD's and I am soooooo bad at organizing. (: Genny

I still find the failer rate to be fairly high for CD's . Hard drives are a much safer way to go. And one used only for back ups is not going to fail as much.

I have a 12 GB Runtime folder. Since I've upgraded my HD to a 120 GB, I have an 40 GB HD as a spare. I bought a USB enclose for that 40 GB HD and backup my poser runtime on it. Still there's a possibility that both hard drives fail on me, so I also back up my runtime on CD's every other month.

I use CDs for backup... yes, sometimes CDs will fail and there's no way to check... sometimes DAZ EXE and ZIP files get corrupted in the process. The way around this is... burn at a slower speed (If you have a 48X, burn at 24X). It's all good to have a burner with over and under burn protection. I don't appreciate CDRs because if the top surface gets scratched off, there goes the data too. So a paper stick on label comes in handy to buffer in between. Harddrives are good, but they can fail at anytime. Once I bought a PC with a new IBM 45GB harddrive - Brand new! It lasted only 30 days!!!!!! I posted a new article on my home page "Poser Reloaded" regarding DAZ and ZIP files. It takes about seven clicks to install a Daz file... so painstakingly, I converted my entire EXE files to ZIPPED runtime folders. Whenever I'm ready to install my files, I run Equilibrium and it requests the CDs and install them on the fly. It also will record the location of bad or skipped zips or EXE files that were not installed. It doesn't and won't install a duplicate file -even if the name is different. I did like the EXE format... but it's way too many clicks and it time consuming when you have a lot to istall. My suggestion is... convert to zips! Furthermore, you don't have the file check when using upgrade files like v3 upgrade nor will you have to waste time trying to find the base files.

try to get your hands on easy recovery pro. it's expensive, but restored 99% of everything off a drive i mistakenly full-formatted.

CDRWs are NOT the way to go, sorry. But I have yet to have any of my back-up CDs fail on me, probably because I burn at 4x and no higher.

Wow. I'm really happy to see so many replies on this one. it really warms my heart htat you all care so much about it.. and i'm not alone in it :) Thank you Mizer357, I'll check it out :) right now i'm trying a demo called ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery) And it was able to recover picture files. something that wasn't possible when I used another program. :)

Most folks who sold you models will restore them to you if asked. I've been there...LOL ;o). It's the personal stuff that I lost tho that was so heartbreaking...sigh. But, I learned my lesson and back everything up now as soon as I have enough to fill a cd. Gonna start backing up on the hubby's DVD burner too, but IMHO, that just makes me more lazy because you can let ALOT of stuff accumulate before backing it up as opposed to a 700 mb cd. Of course, I need an extra desk just to hold all my cds now...hehehehe. Hope you get your data back! Laurie

I recently went through this as well. With nearly 20 gigs of "for pay" work being caught in the cross fire. The older versions were on DVD however the newer (corrected) files had not been backed up yet. Needless to say I flipped out, the sources (downloads) wouldn't have been a problem. It was all the custom stuff. However I found a program from: lc-tech.com that worked perfectly and I recovered all but two textures which were on the DVDs. I highly recomend File Recovery (or File Recovery Pro) from lc-tech.com . It is for pay, but well worth it IMHO. And the only one that the demo even saw the missing files on. They saved my butt :) Tom

I put all my files on CD, in zip format or whatever they were in originally, before installation. That way, if the unspeakable happens,I don't lose them, even tho its a pain in the @#$ to re-do. I recently had a meltdown, and am recovering bit by bit, but at least, I didn't lose the files. It's a huge job tho.

I only have one harddrive on my computer and it's used for work and play. I backup everything on CD's. Since I've had a couple fail, I back up twice. One back up is the fully extracted folder and organized by runtime or by model type. I list on the front what is on each CD. What I've found is that zips and exe files can get corrupted. Having a fully extacted version is less problematic. I have close to 75CD's with nothing but Poser stuff and an equal number with Vue and Bryce stuff :) The CD's most prone to fail are the CDRW (read/write) version. I quit using them and now only use CDR's. I keep each of them in their own case. Knowing what is on each CD will make it easier to track down if the CD fails. It's a lot of work to do it this way, but someday may save me a lot of grief. I hope you are able to get your data back. Nothing worse in the world than losing data that you don't have backed up.

Hi Mariamus, If you have any Renderosity Purchases that were lost, you might want to contact ClintH. Hopefully he can help you recover purchases made through the Rosity MarketPlace. Best of luck! ladynimue

Worth repeating... NEVER use CDRWs. They are NOT reliable. I have some pretty good HD recovery software; EasyRecovery, and CD recovery software, CDDR. Both are very effective, and worth investing in.

I also long ago stopped using CD-RWs because of the high failure rate. Now using a DVD-R, and love it, but haven't had it long and was wondering if anyone had heard any failure stories with DVDs similar to the problems with CD-RWs? Anyone experience any "just-sitting-on-the-shelf" failures with DVD-Rs?

I recorded files on a CDR. Later on, when tried to use it... it stated that there were files present, but they couldn't be accessed. I assumed only the file system was intact, because you can see all the files.. you just couldn't run them or view them. Later on, I got Roxio software and attempted a CD repair. It repaired the CD (I think it was a reformat)... but this time it said only 300MB of free space was available (out of 650MB). The CD no longer displayed any files. How stupid can I get? I erased over 350MB of data. But I became perplexed because how can you get 300MB of free space out of a full 650MB CDR that's written to the MAX? So I decide to write over the 300MB of free space to see if it was possible. It was. A few weeks later I decide to view the damaged CD and low and behold... I saw all the original files displayed. Of course I must be dreaming. I think I finally woke up when all the files sucessfully transfered to my hard drive. I really don't know what happened, but I'm just happy to get the original files back.

Yes......they do "magical things" sometimes. But take my advice and copy all those files you can now see to your harddrive and then make a new copy on a brand new cd. This "magical one" will go belly up soon. I had one do the same thing. One day I opened it and "wham!!".....sat there and watched everything disappear before my eyes.....never to return again!

Lucky you :) I think I have found a solution to get my data back. :)) The thing is, that I first used my e: drive as the back-up partition. but when I had to work a bit with it, I moved all the files to F: which was partially formatted, so I MIGHT have a chance to get my files from the E: drive instead :)

Oopps.....I think you already took my advise (just re-read your post).

I sympathize with you. Can't help with your loss, but here is something you might try in the future. I download everything directly to a CD. I run Norton on all my zips on the CD before ever installing. This way I've always got the original on CD and it's already been scanned for virus's.

Another tip with CDs... Try to avoid making multi session CDs wherever possible. Some of the common problems happen when the burning software (Easy CD is notorious for this) blithely ignore the first session and trash the existing TOC.

I have a second hard drive I use for backups Its hard to o wrong- espcially with 20, 30, and 40 gig drives so cheap. I can copy all my poser stuff, work files and music files in about ten minutes. Exteral USB 2.0 are nice also too but more expensive Ooo reminds me- about time to back up again

Mariamus: As long as this is not your OS boot drive, try this little trick. Go into Control PanelSystem, right click on the drive, and set it as a removable drive. I've salvaged several drives that way. Windows will essentially ignore the boot sector information, and just treat the drive as one big floppy. Whatever was formatted over is gone, except for a data recovery shop, but you may be able to get the rest.

I backup to CD-Rs all the time by making multi-session CDs with Nero and I've never had a problem with any CD that I've burned. (I used to use Easy CD creator until it work with XP. Now I guess that have a version that will work, but I like Nero much better.) I only touch the CDs by their edges, and I put them back in their case or spindle when I'm not using them. I know some people used to handle records like they were playing cards, but I took care of my records as well, and I have some that are 30 years old and still play pretty well, so maybe that's the difference. How you treat them.) I don't use CD-RWs. I never had one of those fail either, but I haven't used too many either. I stopped using them when I found that if I got a new drive, then my CD-RWs could no longer be read. Even if I had the same software. I also back up to an external drive.

Attached Link: http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery/

I think CDRWs are too slow (4x), but I do use them to transfer small data (<600MB) to other PCs - then there's the reformat factor. I also had problems with multisessions, but latetly, it has worked sometimes. It's really hard to burn a 10MB file on a 700MB CD and not use multisession. It might also be a good idea to limit your runtime folders to 600MB+ (to allow for custom files... p5 supports multi runtimes) and back them up to seperate CDs... such as V1 stuff, v2 stuff, v3 stuff, ect.

If you have a Zip or similar drive you could always back up to that until you have a CD-full. That's what I do, with three Zip-250s for my recent downloads.

Hi everybody :) thanks for your support, I just found a program that looks like it can help me out, so right now i'm recovering my runtime :D happy happy joy joy! :)

Happened to me too 2 weeks ago. Two drives with "click of death" sound. One had system files and programs and the other had downloads from past couple of years. I kept intending to back-up to CD's, but got lazy. Anyway, connected the drives to another computer and copied the files a couple at time. And every once in awhile encounter the "click of death." Tapping the drive a couple of times will get the platters spinning again (at my previous job, I used to once in awhile whack Quantum drives in Compaqs to get the platters "unstuck" and spinning again). There were a few files I just couldn't recover, such as a fairy texture (wing? posette? vicky? wasn't sure). Gives me an idea of doing a render with a fairy. Yeah, one with a mischevious grin and holding a magnet and a hammer. :-O Wishing you good luck in recovering your files!!!

Mariamus! How'd it go? Could you recover your stuff? Generally Partition magic is a fantastic package, I live by it. Just recently reformatted 2 partitions to NTFS on-the-fly for video editing work. But it can be confusing to keep track of all the things it does.... :] Fish (2 PC's, total of 9 harddisks (yes, 9 physical disks, not partitions) and multiple copies of everything, virus protection, firewalls, DVD backups, old tape backups, the works)

A friend told me to do this.... Divide your drives/partition into this system the next time..... Drive C: Programs - Use to store all program files (would be nice to dedicate one solely for Poser if you have more than 10GB of poser stuff). To figure out how large of a space you need for this drive... it's 3X the amount of space your programs are consuming now. 4X if you're planning on installing more programs. The reason drive C: is for programs is that most software require a C: drive installation. However, if you install Windows on Drive D:, some programs will refer to drive D: to install to. Drive D: Windows OS - this drive is soley for Windows... you'll need a minimum of 4 GBs...but if you store stuff on the desktop alot, you can create shortcuts to drive E: or make this drive bigger. Drive E: Data - Store all your changes and data here so you'll only need to back this drive up. Drive F: Virtual memory (this was my idea) 4GB limit (you can arrange a 1 or 2 gigabyte swap drive but no greater). It's better performance if this is a seperate physical drive. If you use Photoshop, this is an ideal swap drive. Drive G: Backup drive for Drive E: Should be the same size. This allows all drives to defrag 100% faster. If a crash occurs, your PC doesn't go buttom up. Your PC will back up faster Any programs can be easily fixed... such as reformat, windows reinstall, etc.

I just had a 40GB hard drive fail.... and it was a maxtor. I never had one of those failed before. Can you believe it? It was the Poser Drive! I had problems in the past with this drive... but I ran Maxtor PowerMax and it told me there were problems and it did the fixes as it suggested (prior to that I did a low level format on the entire surface). After the fixes, it recertify the drive as in mint condition. However, 3 months later it failed. And this time not even PowerMax could resurect it.

I got my runtime back :) I havent tested if it works 100% but it is looking good so far :) My music-save files are still to be recovered, so i'm still working on it. :))