.. And there goes all my work...

PBEmpire

A total catastrophe happened yesterday! The hard drive of my Mac got corrupted and when I took it to the service shop, they told me that I had to have my hard drive replaced!! All my files would be deleted!! There goes 2 half finished games down the drain! Damn I am pissed! The game was shaping up nicely with all the logic bits done and with some minor additions, it was set to be launched by next month. Now all the files, with the code and artwork is all lost!

When my Mac returns next week from repair, I have to start all over again. I will have to ditch this game idea and start afresh with a new one. But now I have lost some motivation to restart my game making hobby, as my studies are also taking a toll on me. Sigh.. How I wished I had backed up my game files to the cloud..

Wingmanapps

thats some bad news right there

I save all my game/files/art on Dropbox. - Simple to use and free though I have upgraded to pro to get 50gb cloud storage.
Also working from several macs makes it alot easier.

BoomshackBarry

That's real bad luck, sorry to hear that. Your last line about cloud backups - that's exactly what I do. To make it easy on myself I just have my development directory inside my dropbox and I do everything inside that, even if it's just quick ideas or tests, and it all automatically cloud syncs every time I save something.

I hope you get your motivation back to start again - a lot of successful people are the ones who pick themselves up again after a set back and keep on trying. Good luck!

-Timo-

thats really sad to hear
make sure next time you make a backup...
I hope you will find your motivation back
good luck

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Sorry to hear. That is exactly why I have an external backup drive always hook to my machine and time machine setup.

Armelline

There are companies that specialise in clawing back data from broken HDDs. It's expensive, but may be worth investigating. Data on a HDD is rarely "gone" even if the HDD itself it broken. Just depends what it's worth to you At the absolute least make sure you get back your old HDD when they replace it.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

@Castle is right get your hard drive back and send it to a recover company you could get you data back for a couple hundred bucks.

Armelline

You also just inspired me to signup for a cloud backup, since my external HDD I normally used for backups recently gave up.

http://drive.google.com/
https://www.dropbox.com/

These are the two I have experience with. Dropbox is a bit slicker but you get 7x the free storage (15gb) with Drive.

Since it has been shown recently that numerous intelligence agencies have unrestricted access to many of these services, be careful what you put there. But for backing up game projects it should be just fine!

BoomshackBarry

Since it has been shown recently that numerous intelligence agencies have unrestricted access to many of these services, be careful what you put there. But for backing up game projects it should be just fine!

Sounds like you've got something to hide, Castle )

I tried both of these in the past, but dropbox is the one I'm still using. I had a couple of problems with google drive where it just wouldn't sync certain files, or if they did they took ages. I often use a mac and pc side by side, and with dropbox as soon as I save on one computer I can already see the other computer downloading the changes. Very slick.

Crestwood

Dropbox is free up to 2gb. If you invite a person to join dropbox you get an additional 500mb (up to 16gb). All they have to do is accept and install. I just asked several friends to join and now have a ton of extra storage.

Dropbox also has some version control which is very important when developing any type of code.

BoomshackBarry

I've upgraded to pro, referred loads of people and taken part in as many dropbox promotions as I can (they often offer free space for doing puzzles, promotions, etc, check out their blog) and I've managed to boost mine up to 138.5Gb. Nice

Armelline

@BoomshackBarry Maybe one day my games will be worth enough to be worth protecting but for now Google can snoop all they want )

I definitely prefer Dropbox but my Dropbox is overly full (I used to pay for 100gb but can't justify it any more), and there's no way I can face sorting through it all to clear up space. So I'm giving Drive a whirl as well now!

jonmulcahy

you should also check out crash plan. it starts at like $60 a year and goes down if you buy multiple years. it is unlimited offsite encrypted (you set the encryption keys) backups of everything. I have 1.5TB of data with them updated every 30 min or so.

I use both this and time machine

edit: I just renewed and I got a 20% off link for friends and family. PM me if you'd like it.

Asobu_Games

Damn that really sucks, it's never fun losing work. This should serve as a good reminder to everyone to stop what they are doing and back up their work! Personally I have 2 external hard drives and back up every few days to one of them, and every few weeks to the other just as an extra safety net. If we ever have a fire I'll just grab the HDD on the way out

BoomshackBarry

If we ever have a fire I'll just grab the HDD on the way out

What if you have a fire when you're not at home!? You'd better get a third hard drive and carry it with you at all times

MillionairApps

That's really sucks, and here I was thinking I am all set and protected cause I own a Mac.
When it comes to my game files, I don't like the idea of online storage space. So everyday I make a copy on a USB ( they are those things that use to be around before online storage ) then just paste it on the iMac.
But we all learn lessons and your forever have trust issue with your computer but at least it won't be so expensive in the future.
Hope you get your files back.

StormyStudio

Sorry to hear your bad news..

As @Castle says there are companies that can get data back, we've done it a couple of times at work, where they move parts of a hardrive over, or fix it enough to copy over the data.. once it worked perfectly, another itme we got abut 80% useful data back though the file structures were a little messy, it did mean we have the files we desparately needed.... it was around the £100 mark I think...

Asobu_Games

Hey @PBEmpire, just a quick thought but had you uploaded/published any test versions of your projects to test on a device? If so you might be able to go into your portfolio and select those games, where there is an option to download the gamesalad project file. Obviously you would still lose all your original art files etc, but you would at least have your project back. Maybe a long shot but hopefully you were already at the testing phase.

@BoomshackBarry haha yeah offsite backups are a good plan but I'm too lazy and I don't think my stuff is quite good enough to be worth the trouble yet. I haven't made my million-dollar app yet :P If that happens I'll just put it in the 'fate' basket.

PBEmpire

Unfortunately I have not yet tested the game on any devices..
But luckily majority of my artwork was already backed up on google drive (I forgot about that!) so I don't feel so bad.

PBEmpire

@Stormystudio
The people at the service centre told me it was not recoverable as the registry gotten completly corrupted. Should I cancel my repair and go to some other service guy who can help me out?

Armelline

@Stormystudio
The people at the service centre told me it was not recoverable as the registry gotten completly corrupted. Should I cancel my repair and go to some other service guy who can help me out?

A normal computer repair service won't be able to do it most likely, but a specialised service might be able to. I'd just have them replace your HDD but be absolutely sure they don't throw out your drive but give it back to you to take away after the repair. If they won't do that then something fishy is going on...

Once you have your computer back and the drive sitting on your shelf you can explore how much data you lost and what your options are for getting it back if you deem it worth the expense.

BBEnk

I always worry about this sort of thing so bought a My Passport 1TB firewire 800 Backup HD on sale at bestbuy for $129 sure it could break too but don't think main Mac and Backup will crash at same time so it's a little piece of mind.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

A backup drive doesn't get the kind of workout your main drive does. Way less read write hours.

natzuur

Mac's OS don't have a registry, and unless it's clicking non stop and grinding very audibly, chances are data exists and is recoverable. Even if it had corruption of the file system, that data would still exist, just not in a normal orderly manner (sort of like giving someone random street names, but no directions and telling them to find something). I would keep the harddrive and try another shop. I used to do data recovery all the time when I was the senior technician at a shop (now a networking sys admin).

Software such as Parted Magic (a linux based bootable hdd management and recovery OS), Stellar Pheonix, Easus, or many others exist for this kind of situation.

If it is clicking and grinding, there is still a small chance of recovery via the methods listed above by a competent technician, otherwise a company such as drive savers would be needed, where they can literally read the platters in a clean room and extract the data from the location on the physical disk in parts, and then re-assemble.

LoungeGames

I would just back up the files on a USB stick or SD card. I'd rather do that then mess with cloud files.

tenrdrmer

I have a 4TB network attached drive my machine runs time machine backups to any time I'm home. I also keep copies of nearly everything on Dropbox for a little extra redundancy.

It's still a horrible feeling to lose data like that.

RP

I back up my backups. Why people don't backup just blows my mind (it's kinda like how magical cars work as long as you keep putting gas in them). I get ticked off loosing any file that was created just minutes before. It's just time and work lost.

jonmulcahy

Yea as others have said, the registry excuse doesn't make any sense, that's windows only. Get the drive back and throw it in an external enclosure and plug it into another Mac. There is a few different utilities out there for disk recovery. I've used data rescue 3 before and it worked great

PBEmpire

Thanks for your advice guys. I have cancelled the repair work and am searching for a specialist to recover my data