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Post by kalbaern on Dec 22, 2011 13:19:33 GMT -5
Due to a bad hard drive, I'll be offline awhile. Should be back just after Xmas at the latest. Luckilly, I have NWN also backed up to a secondary drive which I just checked and is fine.
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Post by Snubletraad on Dec 22, 2011 14:08:28 GMT -5
Hope you didn't lose anything valuable?
Have a great christmas!
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Post by DM Arsescratcher on Dec 23, 2011 2:11:37 GMT -5
Yead, hope you had everything backed up.
Hope you have a grand Xmas!
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Post by kalbaern on Dec 23, 2011 9:43:17 GMT -5
Soooooo ... here's what happened. My primary hard drive took a dump. Dead. So I thought, cool, no big deal, I have some old ones I can swap in with no problems and my secondary drive was still good. My secondary drive however was from an older computer that ran under ME 2000 is all, so I couldn't just make it my new primary. So I grabbed another hard drive I had from another older Windows 98 computer I'd gutted years ago (I save hard drives, power supplies and memory sticks as a "rule" ... just incase ... before tossing out an old computer.) and loaded XP again with it as my primary drive. I made a crucial error though. I should have first removed my secondary drive. With the new Windows XP install, the file format on the secodary was reset as "NTSF" and all the old files stored on it were in "FAT32". So after reinstalling XP and my drivers ... lo and behold, when I check my secodary drive, it shows nothing on it. ?!?!?!?!?! Yeah, I had a minor panic attack at that point. I did notice that however the drive was still showing at 180g of 200g used still. So doing a search of hidden files and directories, I found that all the info was still there. Windows was just refusing to "see" it under normal circumstances due to what it expected the formatting to be. I could even select a launch icon from the hidden list and load the game or toolset ... phew. I couldn't however make any writes to the disk drive, i.e., save anything due to the formatting confusion. Just abit ago, I came back from my local computer repair shop with a Windows 98 disk in hand. I reformatted my primary drive with it and in the process my secondary was fixed again.  So now I just need to take it out of the case before I reformat the primary as Windows XP again and all should again be right with the world. XP, Vista and Windows 7 all read older formats, just so long as you add them AFTER and not before reformatting. There is actually an option I failed to enable during the first reformat that would have saved me all this grief; "leave formats in present condition", but since I use a 27" flatscreen as a monitor (its a TV with a SVGA input) the boot screen is only partially displayed and the option missed. Anyhow, off to reformat yet again, but I should be back IG and the toolset soon. **The actual moral of this whole story is: "Don't be a cheap ass and pay your local professionals to do it right the first damned time"!  |
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So now I just need to take it out of the case before I reformat the primary as Windows XP again and all should again be right with the world. XP, Vista and Windows 7 all read older formats, just so long as you add them AFTER and not before reformatting.