Our two cars have finally been exported from the USA and imported into Canada (1 year and 2 months after we returned to Canada)! 

 

Thank god for good friends who've run into similar technical problems. If it weren't for that, I never would have even thought that there might be flash drive specific file recovery software and wouldn't have subsequently discovered that my data was just playing hide and seek with me.

 

I had tried my old file recovery stand-by - Restorer2000 - but it couldn't see anything on the drive leading me to assume (what it is they say about U (you) ME and ASSume...) that the data was just gone.  Well, my bestest buddy, Kristine, passed me some "flash memory" retrieval software she purchased not too long ago when the card in her digital camera got corrupted on the off chance that it might help me out.  I ran it against my data and I was very happy when it found all of my raster-based image files (her software, designed for retrieveing lost camera data, only searched for raster-based images) and, by extension, proved that my files were actually still there.

 

Knowing that the data was there sent me to Google looking for file recovery application that was designed to retrieve all kinds of files from a USB flash drive.  Although I found several contenders nothing proved to be useful.  It appears there are some bad sectors on the drive and most of the application demos I tried just couldn't get past that little hiccough.  The one that did get past it found a bunch of folders, but they all appeared empty and I wasn't going to shell out $60 just to find out if it would actually retrieve the files that weren't appearing.

 

Temporarily stymied, I thought about the problem some more and decided to see if I could mark the bad sectors so the applications would get past that and decided to run good ol' ChkDsk against the drive in "report" mode. Lo' and behold, it found 2.1 G of "lost file fragments"!  Excited by this discovery I made a tiny mistake - I let it convert these "fragments" into *.CHK files rather than running it again in "fix" mode, and letting it mark the bad sectors and then trying the retrieval software again.  Of course, once I had a hidden system folder with 1500+ *.CHK files in it I realized I didn't know how to identify what type of file each fragment represented.  <sigh>  Back to Google.

 

In the end I found a web page where I could download two Open Source applications to Recover CHK Files.  Since this flash drive was so new most of the "fragments" should be whole files, so I'm expecting a pretty good recovery rate.  I ran one last night and let the other run over night (1500+ files takes a while) and will start the slow process of confirming which files have at least one good copy between the two applications, which only have a corrupted version and which just wern't converted by either.  Hopefully there will only be a few of the last two types so that I might have a chance of reforming those few files that are just in fragmented bits rather than actually missing pieces.

 

Once again, let me offer my undying gratitude to Kristine:

 

 

:-j(enni)

It's gone! It's ALL gone! Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone!!! 

 

I needed to open space on my hard drive because I had less than 800M of space left and I was about to do some video and audio editing.  But most of my stuff needs to be active - that is, I need ready access to it - even the stuff that doesn't change much because it's reference material.  So Ron bought me an 8G USB flash drive and I carefully copied everything over and then cleared the "original" copies off my hard drive.

 

For a week I used it without a problem, editing several documents and illustrations right off of it. I knew I needed to back it up - what if I lost it - but I wanted to use CD-RWs and needed to buy some. Yesterday, I plugged it in ... and it was EMPTY.  Everything was just GONE... all 3G+ of my art, my career files, my RPG files (campaign files, character files, session notes, adventures under development, and years worth of collected resource material).  AAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

 

After running a file restorer program against my hard drive I managed to successfully retrieve a little under half (1.42G). Unfortunately, some of the most important files are lost to the ether of cyberspace.  As it happens, many of my older files may still be available because, for similar reasons,  I put most of them on our data archive server not too long before we left the US.  But anything I've created or modified since then...

 

Super sad pandas.

Well it's time to step up and admit to all that I've been on the Jenny Craig weight loss program for a month. In the past 28 days I've started eating better and exercising more - just this last week I actually went to the gym at lunch every day I was at the office (four days, since Monday was the Labour Day holiday)

 

I weigh in once a week, but they re-check body measurements (bust, waist, abdomen and hips) once every four weeks, which I did this morning.  Today's results: A total of 8.6 lbs and 3 inches lost (one around the bust, two at the waist). I've gained two notches on all my belts, I have moved to the second set of catches on my bra and am at a point where I'm going to need a new pair of jeans pretty soon. I've started to have more energy too, which is great!

 

Having done this program once before (about 15 years ago) I know that the second month is tough - the newness has worn off and you begin feeling tempted to slip a lot more.  So wish me luck, and I'll update you again in another four weeks.