Disaster Strikes! (And Not the Fun Kind)

[jabezscratch 159]

I need help.

Background: I have been working on one and one region alone for the past two and a half years.  Over time, I have pasted new regions to the original to expand it to the point where it had grown in physical size and in population to about 14 million citizens.  My largest capital city was incredibly huge: 2.5 million.

Then disaster struck ... and not the fun kind.  Without warning, my harddrive (Western Digital 120 GB Caviar) failed -- you know, that awful clicking and grinding noise that a dying hard drive makes.  And, alas, I have to admit that the last time I had backed up the files on that region was about a year ago.  The end result could be that I've lost my region and all 14 million brave souls.

Some hope exists however.  Upon learning of the HD failure, I scrambled to email some of the city files and config but may have lost many city files and about 2.5 Gigs of plugins.  Further hope: a computer store is working on getting the spinning again and, if they can, they said that they can clone the HD contents and plop it on to a new drive.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Right now, I feel a profound sense of loss.  I didn't realize how much my region meant to me (Is there a philosophical lesson here about telling loved ones you love them before it's too late?)

If the worst occurs, I'll simply have to rebuild from scratch.

I suppose the only technical question is: if I can recover the config and city files but have lost the plug ins, I assume that, to make the region whole again, I will just need to d/l the plug ins?

Also, has this ever happened to anyone else?

[SC4BOY 20]

Dude.. sorry to hear it.. but remember for ALL harddrives.. it is WHEN not IF that they will fail!! Always keep a backup on some other media.. its a shame to lose all that history and hard work and many hours.. On some occasions some bits can be recovered from a "failed" drive if you get help for it FAST.. hope you have some good luck.. Hopefully one or two other people will learn something from your experience.. always backup.. ..and NOT on the same harddrive.. harddrives are just too cheap now to lose all that work for such a small amount..

And yes you can re-dl your plugins, but one problem.. SC4 is very unforgiving of missing items.. its usual response to anything missing is to simply crash to the desktop when you are missing something so you may find reconstructing it may be very annoying and require considerable perseverance.. again.. GL!!

[teddyrised 1]

I've encountered exactly the same problem one and a half year ago. My harddisk starting making those horrifying "tark-tark-brrrrrr" sound that indicates some serious problem. Then it failed. I can't even load Windows while the day before I bought an external harddrive to backup all my Simcity 4 files courting for hope that my laptop will start up properly at that day.

I lost my entire region and almost everything. The thing that bugs me after that is to somewhat reconstruct my region according to my vivid memories and also finding all the plugins I need on the STEX.

Since the crash, I keep a weekly backup of all my stuff on my external harddrive and also keep a list of things I've downloaded off the STEX. So that even if my backup media failed I can still play Simcity 4 by just reinstalling it and downloading all the STEX files listed on the list (although I will still lose the region).

Good luck!

[paperboy15 4]

That's why I bought an external harddrive too...never had a problem with harddrives myself, but it seems a lot of people do.

[Tommy_Vercetti3 3]

Happend to me about a year ago. I had a great region and about 7 GB of music and movies and then my harddrive just died. nothing ran, nothing opened. I was so pissed...Thats why my old computer is in pieces in my backyard. =D

[pogoboymtk 9]

Whether for gaming or working.... Always keep backups of data... A second hard drive as a backup is not that expensive when you think of what you could lose......

[callagrafx 3]

@ jabezscratch: Don't DL the plugins, donate $20 and you will get the STEX CD, which will have most of your downloads on them..this way you will never lose the plugins again.

[jabezscratch 159]

Originally posted by: callagrafx @ jabezscratch: Don't DL the plugins, donate $20 and you will get the STEX CD, which will have most of your downloads on them..this way you will never lose the plugins again.quote>

 

Great idea -- I was thinking of doing that.

Thanks for your comments so far.  I'll let you know what the computer store says about recovering the files.

I have only myself to blame.  The HD was about three years old and you start thinking that it's invincible when, of course, it's not.  I won't make that mistake again and probably in invest in an external HD or just back up to CD/DVD more regularly.

[Bones1 96]

Forget the external HD. Just burn onto DVDs. Use DVD-RW or DVD+RW if you want to reuse them, but remember that rewritable media won't retain data for as long as write-once media.

[SC4BOY 20]

actually just stick a second HD into the system.. it doesn't have to be fancy or big.. just functional.. after all you could care less how fast it backs up as it isn't something you have to do often.. I bought an 80Gig HD IDE ATA for 50 bucks about a month ago.. 80 gig is a LOT of backups ..

[tungston 19]

People don't realize the importance of a constant votlage supply.   With the way electricity supply is now, there are constant drops, and spikes in voltage.  What that does is damage the power supply, which in turn supplies improper voltage to the hardware inside the computer.  That can cause hard disk, motherboards, CPU's, and other components to fail, or malfunction.   To keep this from happening a $60 UPS will supply a constant voltage to the computer, with the added advantage of the battery backup when the power goes out. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Put not your faith in hard drives, external nor otherwise.  The best solution for backups is something archival.  Bones1 has the right approach.  At least once a year or more often burn a DVD-R.

I use a DVD-RW with WinRAR's archiving capability most of the time.  For my system, backing up my stuff (I do more than Simcity) takes about four hours, running in the background once a month.

Do archive stuff off-line.  If you are really antsy about it, make two copies and send one to your Aunt Nelly to keep for you.

[jabezscratch 159]

FYI: the computer shop was able to clone my failing hard drive and plop it on to a new 250G Seagate HD and preserve every bit and byte of data, including my beloved region.  So, 14 million Sims did not die b/c of my inattention to do a basic data backup -- yeah!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Congratulations.  A costly lesson, but without loss or §§§.  We are happy you were able to get your region back.

[hamsterTK 93]

its weird, people in our families have had computers forever, we have some ancient ones that never have given us trouble.

yet it seems like the ones built in the last 5 years are more prone to HD failure?

[phattonez 1]

Try a hard disk case. You can salvage some of the information.

[SC4BOY 20]

Hard drives are far more reliable than they ever have been, not to mention they are orders of magnitude more precise and rather faster too.. it is common for drives to have MTBF's in excess of 100000 hours now.. If you've not had failures, you don't have much experience.. a drive can run happily for years, and usually if you know that to look/listen for they give you pretty much warnings they are going to fail.. most of us ignor em.. And it also seems to me that if it gets past the first few months, its likely to last quite long.. But trust me its WHEN not IF your HD's will fail... If ya don't believe this, just wallow in your ignorance.. I'll loan you a towel to cry on when it fails.

[ky72x 13]

In June 2005,  I turned on my computer after I got back from the last day of school.  Then I heard the horrible "duh duh dah " sound, saw a blue screen reporting an error with the hard drive, and then whip into a screen resembling a black hole.  Thankfully, this was before I discovered Simtropolis - or else I would've had a lot of searching to do.  I even thought my city was big!  Needless to say, it had a measly population of 80,000.  A month after, I started a brand - new city that would soon grow into a bustling metropolis in the coming months.  Today, I have back - ups of my regions, albums, picture and music files, and plugins on another computer and CD's.