Computer Crash = Lost All My Recipes

[Cincy17]

My computer decided to perform Hara-kiri yesterday and after spending most of last night and today working on it, it is back functioning. But stupid me didn't have a total backup, and basically lost everything :smack:

How can this possibly relate to beer? Well, I just realized I still needed to reinstall Beersmith, then I came to the crushing realization that I had lost all of my recipes and notes except for a handful of old (read: not very good) ones that I had saved to the Beersmith cloud. I am more p****d off about losing my recipes than I am about anything else I had on my computer. I really need a beer or ten about now.

 

[mcspanner]

That sounds awful but may not be as bad as you think.

I had a similar experience a few years back, took my laptop to a small computer shop and for about £100 managed to get their specialist to recover about 95% of the data that had disappeared. Pricey but I had essays and stuff on there that I needed so it was worth a shot.

It's worth a call at least to see what might be possible.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

Sorry for your loss, it really sucks. I'm a database guy.

I don't back up my recipes, however I do print everyone of them before brewing, and I take additional notes on the paper version. Just a thought.

MC

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

Go to youtube and search for "recover lost disk" or do some googling. There's a lot of freeware out there to get the files back.

 

[Cincy17]

I don't think I have many options anymore. I did everything I could think of or could find online to get it working again, but the only thing that finally worked was a triple pass format of the disk and re-installing the OS. Recovery partition had vanished, the bootloader corrupted, and I wasn't able to repair or access the drive when booting from an external disk even though I could see it was there. If I could have been without my computer for a few days while I worked on it or had it done somewhere it may have been possible, but I needed it functional for work today. I'm just lucky that I did have a backup of the majority of my important work/school data. Going through my head yesterday of the stuff that I had on my computer that was likely lost, my beer recipes didn't occur to me.

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

Hmmm... priorities? I would have gone for the recipes first and ditched work

 

[Sherpa FE]

A friend and I back-up our recipes and then swap our back-ups, its basically another redundant back-up.

 

[kh54s10]

I print out all my recipes but losing the computer data would really suck! I think I may have to backup off the laptop!

But, Really this only means you have to start anew. Try things that you have not explored before! Though if you had a favorite......

 

[GrogNerd]

if the fixes listed in the 2nd post of THIS LINK don't work

check your documents folder for the beersmith2 folder and try opening RECIPE#.bsmx where the # is a number from 1 to 5 (maybe more). try opening the latest dated one first, if that one doesn't contain your recipes and calendar, try the largest sized one

worked for me opening #4

 

[neosapien]

the only thing that finally worked was a triple pass format of the disk and re-installing the OS.

yeah, you have no options anymore. sorry to hear that. if it ever happens in the future (or for anybody else), hiran's boot recovery cd is a mutant hybrid of ninjas and black magic when it comes to recovering totally screwed systems.


as far as losing your recipes, just look at it as a chance to rebrew/improve all your old recipes with new knowledge (and it's a good excuse to brew a lot more).

I store all my recipes on my computer, but I write down the actual brew day in a little blue book every time. It's a jumbled sticky mess of half drunk scribbles, but at least I can see how my recipes have developed over time if I lose my computer.

 

[GrogNerd]

belay my last; missed the part about a triple-pass format

 

[Homercidal]

Maybe next time try the recovery software BEFORE you do a triple pass format. Keeping what you got, even on a drive the the computer doesn't even want to recognize, is always priority. I can't tell you how many times I've reloaded a computer, asking the owner if there are any files they need (Email, documents, music, pictures, etc) only to have them later ask me where their bookmarks are, or tax records, or WHATEVER IT IS THAT I DIDN'T SPECIFICALLY ASK THEM ABOUT!

So I always attempt to recover ANYTHING I think they might remember later on.

And you know thumb drives are pretty cheap. Maybe buy one or two and have some free software perform automated backups to the thumb drive every night.