Lost Everything ...... Hard drive, not the beer!

[Calder]

My hard drive died earlier this week and I lost all my notes, recipes, calculators, and grain and hop lists ..... and tons of reference material. 15+ years of brewing information gone!

I have 25+ lbs of hops, and I sure as heck can't remember all that I have. I have 200+ lbs of grain, and don't know what I have; especially all the specialty grains.

All my successful recipes are gone. Granted I could probably figure something out without too much effort, but it's nice knowing the recipe is going to produce a good beer rather than guessing and hoping.

Even my mash temperatures and volumes are all on the drive. Sure I could figure it out, but it is really easy just to follow the successful procedure you just used on the last beer.

I'm amazed at how reliant I have been on my electronic notes/files.

It was a business computer, so the hard-drive is out for surgery to see if they can recover anything. Maybe I'll be lucky, but the IT staff spent a couple of days on it and couldn't get anything out of it, so I'm expecting the worst.

Fortunately no beer was harmed in this tragedy.

Next brewday is going to take a little more research/prep than normal.

 

[Thorsbrew]

Very sorry to hear. I hope they can retrieve your data. Though that can be extremely expensive, sounds like you're lucky to have help.

But this is exactly why i have a separate external drive sitting in a desk that i use to back up everything on my computer drives. Which reminds me, time to make another backup.

Let this be a warning to everyone else

 

[day_trippr]

Between business and personal I'd be totally croaked if I lost a drive.

Along with a verified backup strategy that's pretty much automatic (TrueImage) a few years ago I decided to mirror all of the drives on my workstation. Since then I've lost three hard drives so far - and didn't lose a single byte of data.

Considering how stupid cheap drives are (even SSDs, somewhat to my chagrin), how easy it is to create a raid set, and what a lifesaver it can (will!) be, it's something to be seriously considered...

Cheers!

 

[user 40839]

Not to be pedantic, but like the others have posted, this is the reason for backing stuff up. Fingers crossed the data recovery wonks are able to salvage your files, and get yerself an external drive or a subscription to a cloud storage service.

Considering how stupid cheap drives are (even SSDs, somewhat to my chagrin)

You're not kidding - when I built my Hackintosh, my 256gb Samsung SSD was something like $330 and I thought I was stealing it. Better spec drive from Samsung is now $120. Yeesh! Every computer in my house now has an SSD in there - it's kinda like all grain, once you do it, you never ever think of going back!

 

[Calder]

Very sorry to hear. I hope they can retrieve your data. Though that can be extremely expensive, sounds like you're lucky to have help.

But this is exactly why i have a separate external drive sitting in a desk that i use to back up everything on my computer drives. Which reminds me, time to make another backup.

Looking at something like $600 for first level, and $1,300 for the second level. Cost more than the computer. There is a lot of irreplaceable data on that drive.

Along with a verified backup strategy that's pretty much automatic (TrueImage) a few years ago I decided to mirror all of the drives on my workstation. Since then I've lost three hard drives so far - and didn't lose a single byte of data.

Considering how stupid cheap drives are (even SSDs, somewhat to my chagrin), how easy it is to create a raid set, and what a lifesaver it can (will!) be, it's something to be seriously considered...

Unfortunately company doesn't allow any external hardware to be connected to computers and monitors all activity of data transferred off computers. Anything more than a couple of megabytes and I'd be flagged by security.

However ...... after having this problem, the IT guys asked if I used XXXXX program to back-up to the Cloud. First I'd heard of it. I guess since it cost $3 per month, they didn't advertise it too much to save money. Talking to all the guys I work with, none of then know about this either.

 

[day_trippr]

A mirror set is entirely internal and totally transparent.
All it takes is adding an identical drive as the original.
Seal up the box, fire up Intel Matrix Manager and you're off and running.

Ask your IT folks if you're worth a hundred bucks and an hour of their time

Cheers!

 

[BentBrewer]

In my experience... If you install a new drive, install the OS, and then reinstall the old drive, you can often recover the bulk of the information.

Thanks to Western Digital and Seagate, I'm a little too familiar with this process.

 

[WaltStarr]

Man, that's rough.

As an aside for others that read this thread, you IT guys probably sealed the drive in a baggie with rice and put it in a freezer for at least 24 hours as the first effort. I've found about 4 out of 5 failed drives are recoverable via this method.

 

[C-Rider]

The hard drive on my Personal Computer died last month, but I have Carbonite.com back up which automaticlly backs my computer up daily because I'm to stupid to remember to use the external HD I bought a few years ago. Cost's about $60 a year. The only thing I lost were the bookmarks for my browser.

 

[Thorsbrew]

To each their own but I'd never put my personal files on the cloud no matter how safe they claim to be. I'll stick to external drives

 

[PADave]

Lessons learned, use your own computer, back it up. I'm also a big fan of the old school pen and paper for recipes.

 

[The_Bishop]

I print every recipe I brew, and it all goes in a binder with whatever notes I take as I brew written on the just in case something like this happens.

 

[tracyk]

I am with The Bishop and PADave as I also backup everything in a binder, that way nothing is ever truly lost. I also have everything backed up on a separate hard drive. Good Luck....

 

[The_Bishop]

I will say that thanks to this thread I just got done backing everything up to my external drive.

 

[beergolf]

I print every recipe I brew, and it all goes in a binder with whatever notes I take as I brew written on the just in case something like this happens.

This is exactly what I do. I have every recipe since I started in notebooks. I keep electronic versions but also hard copy versions.

 

[Johow]

As well, everything I've brewed is printed and on a clipboard. My computer is backed up daily and it's completely automatic. As my LHBS is within walking distance and he gives me 15% of for my AHA membership, I don't keep any grain in stock as it's easy and a nice visit to go to his shop. I do buy hops from him by the pound but I only keep 3 or 4 varieties.
Backups are the safe and cheap thing to do...

 

[Derp]

To each their own but I'd never put my personal files on the cloud no matter how safe they claim to be. I'll stick to external drives

To each his own, but unless that external drive is external to your house you risk losing it to fire, flood, theft, etc.

I have most of my important stuff backed up to the cloud. My Beersmith files reside on Dropbox, so I'll never lose them and I can access them from multiple computers.

 

[Thorsbrew]

To each his own, but unless that external drive is external to your house you risk losing it to fire, flood, theft, etc.

I have most of my important stuff backed up to the cloud. My Beersmith files reside on Dropbox, so I'll never lose them and I can access them from multiple computers.

That's a tiny risk I'm willing to take. And if there's a fire that's the first thing im grabbing outa my desk on my way out Ouch you just gave me a visual of my beautiful 120" projector and expensive water cooled computer burning! -_-

PS: Anyone else use a good free backup program? I've been using AOMEI because its the only one i've found that allow me to select only the files and folders i want backed up and run a differential backup on them but it's so darn slow. Also allows me to edit/add to that backup.

 

[The_Bishop]

It's not free but Acronis works very well.

 

[user 224599]

Two is one and one is none.
I'm a fan of Macrium Reflect, weekly data and system state backups to media that is unplugged and rotated every other week.
With multi-TB external drives costing well under a C-note now, there's no reason not to (barring policy in business PCs.)

 

[FirstAidBrewing]

If money is no object there is a company called Kroll OnTrack that specializes in data recovery if this sort. My company has used them a few times with great success. I believe they were even used by the government to retrieve data from the Columbia shuttle.

Downside is it's expensive. As in $300 just for them to asses the drive and see whether or not they can get anything. Then you're probably looking at another 1 or 2 grand to get your stuff.

 

[Thorsbrew]

I tried macrium as well as comodo, didnt seem to have an option for backing up only the folders i want.

Not going to be well under 100 for 3+ TBs unless you're using a cheapy seagate. I'm using a WD red for backups, believe it was $130-140 for a 3tb when i got it maybe 2-3 years ago, looks like $110 now. Almost out of space on this one hopefully itll last me until we can find 6-10+ TBs drives for not much more.

Sorry if i derailed this thread at all but hopefully this will be at all helpful to others on this subject.

 

[DrinksWellWithOthers]

This just motivated me to back up my spreadsheets and Beersmith files onto Google Drive and and external hard drive.

 

[WaltStarr]

I usually back up the entire drive to an external hard drive, and keep additional copies of my important files on thumb droves.

 

[Thorsbrew]

Damn really lucky to have found this thread......


My main storage hard drive just died. No more seagate!

I did already have a backup but i keep my backup on an external HDD and forgot to keep updating the backup so it was pretty old. Thanks to this i only lost 3-4 days of data.

Now i have to buy a new drive gah. Wasn't looking to spend that money now.

 

[Radboud]

If you like the way cloud storage works but are wary of big corp you can also use software called Owncloud which is not that hard to set up, see http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Owncloud-dropbox-clone/

 

[Thorsbrew]

Hmm interesting, never got into using rasberry pi's. I can plug in my external HDDs into that?

Something interesting to check out.

Thanks.



PS: Although i cant say im comfortable leaving an external HDD on all the time. That was part of the point of having an external drive was that it is only ever turned on when i am doing a backup so the chance of failure is greatly reduced.

Although it could be my first backup that backs up nightly or even more often and i could have another external drive i backup to weekly.

 

[Radboud]

Yes you can plug your drives into it, the raspberry pi has some USB transfer speed limitations because of its architecture though so transferring large files wouldn't go as fast as from your desktop to the drive. This is no problem for backing up documents etc.

 

[Thorsbrew]

Not that much of an issue. Will be a long ass update for my inital 2.4 terabytes but after that itll be fine.

 

[wyowolf]

This happened to me as well, I did manage to copy the entire beersmith folder before it totally went though. However I cant seem to find any of my old recipes in that folder? does it store them someplace else? or is there another way to locate them in the folder?

 

[bobeer]

Ahhh that's a bummer, man.
Look ito Google Docs. Forget using a work/personal computer for spreadsheets, notes, etc... Use google docs for all that stuff. I'm still old school and write everything down in a brew log just in case something like this happens.
I hope the IT folks can resurrect your data. I work in IT and I've had to attempt a data scrape before and it's not fun or easy. Your chances get less and less every time the disc's platter rotates. Good luck!

 

[cegan09]

I'm always amused by the people who think putting anything on the cloud is a terrible idea. Are you really worried that someone might be able to see your brew files? The horror. I have two step authentication on any online account that means anything, so no one is getting in. Plus google already knows everything about me anyway.


There are only two sure fire ways to make sure you don't lose something. The first is a cloud backup. I use google drive simply because it's so easy. Install their desktop app and there is a mapped folder to use that lets you directly save and access files from the normal windows file explorer.

The second is a RAID server of some kind. External harddrives go bad too, and it really sucks when that happens. If you build the right kind of RAID, a singular disk can fail, but you can just replace it and not lose a thing. I'm going to build one eventually to replace my home server.


Paper can get lost just as easily as electronic. That's what happened to The Alchemist in VT. Their place flooded and they lost the computers and the paper backups. All of it gone. I flat out suck with paper. My handwriting is terrible, and notes often are illegible years later. Plus I lose physical things.


Of course any type of backup is better than nothing. The chances of a flood taking out everything you own is slim. I just prefer to use at least one backup plan that is fairly foolproof.

 

[Thorsbrew]

I'm always amused by the people who think putting anything on the cloud is a terrible idea. Are you really worried that someone might be able to see your brew files? The horror. I have two step authentication on any online account that means anything, so no one is getting in. Plus google already knows everything about me anyway.


There are only two sure fire ways to make sure you don't lose something. The first is a cloud backup. I use google drive simply because it's so easy. Install their desktop app and there is a mapped folder to use that lets you directly save and access files from the normal windows file explorer.

The second is a RAID server of some kind. External harddrives go bad too, and it really sucks when that happens. If you build the right kind of RAID, a singular disk can fail, but you can just replace it and not lose a thing. I'm going to build one eventually to replace my home server.


Paper can get lost just as easily as electronic. That's what happened to The Alchemist in VT. Their place flooded and they lost the computers and the paper backups. All of it gone. I flat out suck with paper. My handwriting is terrible, and notes often are illegible years later. Plus I lose physical things.


Of course any type of backup is better than nothing. The chances of a flood taking out everything you own is slim. I just prefer to use at least one backup plan that is fairly foolproof.

I'll start off by saying it's amusing that you think this is about brew logs. I have all sorts of private data of different sorts that i don't trust to anyone but myself. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but that doesn't mean mass collection of metadata and other sorts of things isn't real. Edward snowden proved that years after people insulted people for suggesting what he proved is happening. Are they going to directly target me? Likely not. But mass data collection of all sorts is very real and abundant. And i'm not taking any unnecessary chances. Similar reasons why i havnt installed windows 10. Win7 works fine for me and when games finally start utilizing dx12 i'll dual boot windows/linux and use 10 for nothing more than games. But i digress.

A Raid array still contains hard drives and unless that server is stored outside your home then it doesnt protect you from floods as you claimed.

I'll finish by saying that an external hard drive is actually pretty safe as a backup. The chances of BOTH the main system drive/drives and the backup drive failing at the same time are extremely low. Additionally i plan to get a second drive (almost an archive drive you could say) so i can have one hooked up to the system for doing nightly or even more backups and a second one i'll put in my desk or somewhere else for doing weekly backups.

The first one will be turned on only for backups once or twice a day while the second one will be turned on only weekly. In this scenario it is virtually impossible for all the drives to die at the same time especially when they are turned on so infrequently. My drive that just died went after 3 1/2 years but it was on pretty much 24/7/365. The backup drives will likely not fail under these low use scenarios.

Sure this doesnt protect me from fires but for now this is just fine for me. And if im in the house the backup drive is the first thing im grabbing while heading out.

 

[Calder]

Ahhh that's a bummer, man.
Look ito Google Docs. Forget using a work/personal computer for spreadsheets, notes, etc... Use google docs for all that stuff. I'm still old school and write everything down in a brew log just in case something like this happens.
I hope the IT folks can resurrect your data. I work in IT and I've had to attempt a data scrape before and it's not fun or easy. Your chances get less and less every time the disc's platter rotates. Good luck!

It makes it just so easy to use my work laptop for my brew notes, rather than have a separate computer, so I have to live with the download restrictions.

Maybe it is a sad reflection of my life, but I'm pretty much connected to my work computer 24/7, so it is handy to use for my brew files, since I always have it available. Easy to check things, look up information, and take notes.

The report from the data recovery group says the entire data content of the drive is in movie format, and they are unable to recover any data.

I do keep my personal files (taxes and other crap) on a different computer that does have 2 separate back-up drives. Actually I keep the data on one of the drives disconnected from the main computer until I need to access it and also on the back-up drive. So although I lost my brew files, which is tragedy, That's mostly all I lost of my personal files - It is not the end of the world.


Another problem with the loss is that I lost all information about my Sour Beers. I have about 35 gallons of wild/sour beers in the crawl space in 1 and 2.5 gallon fermenters, which are just labeled with a letter and a number ....... Without my files I don't have a clue what is in any of them, what styles they are, and what bugs were used.

 

[Thorsbrew]

As others said write on paper or if you prefer digital like you said (i do too, i cant write for crap but i can type up to 100 words per minute). Then you could bring a little flash drive with you and copy your brew logs every night and put them on your own computer.

 

[bobeer]

It makes it just so easy to use my work laptop for my brew notes, rather than have a separate computer, so I have to live with the download restrictions.

Maybe it is a sad reflection of my life, but I'm pretty much connected to my work computer 24/7, so it is handy to use for my brew files, since I always have it available. Easy to check things, look up information, and take notes.

The report from the data recovery group says the entire data content of the drive is in movie format, and they are unable to recover any data.

I do keep my personal files (taxes and other crap) on a different computer that does have 2 separate back-up drives. Actually I keep the data on one of the drives disconnected from the main computer until I need to access it and also on the back-up drive. So although I lost my brew files, which is tragedy, That's mostly all I lost of my personal files - It is not the end of the world.


Another problem with the loss is that I lost all information about my Sour Beers. I have about 35 gallons of wild/sour beers in the crawl space in 1 and 2.5 gallon fermenters, which are just labeled with a letter and a number ....... Without my files I don't have a clue what is in any of them, what styles they are, and what bugs were used.

Major bummer... The best thing about google docs is you access it through your web browser. It's like MS Office but within your web browser so you can use whatever computer you want to. It saves automatically too. Not telling you what to do, or saying you're doing it wrong, just telling you what's out there that might help avoid this in the future.

If my beersmith gave up the ghost I'd lose a lot of recipes and notes that aren't in my written log.

Here's to starting new!