[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Surprisingly, I am not dead.

Unsurprisingly, I need help again before I can make whatever kind of grand comeback strikes me at the moment.

My situation with my computer and viruses/malware reached a rather critical point at the end of February (or was it earlier? it seems like I've been gone longer than I thought). Basically at this point I'm going to move all the clean and critical non-executable files to a second drive and wipe the primary totally clean.

The thing that's holding me back, though, is that I'm deathly afraid of what I might destroy in the process.

Quite a few months back, I realized that I was missing some rather important documents of mine - not like game ideas or anything, but actual important stuff that it would devastate me to lose. I'm sure I should have these files somewhere, but I can't find them - and I've been trying to ignore this, because I honestly can't face a reality where they are gone forever. There are dozens of disks and CDs and a few old hard drives around the house that there is the most remote possibility they might be on, but I don't know where to begin looking, and so many things seem to be in unusable condition anymore.

Simply put, until I can verify that these files are no longer on the primary hard drive, I can't afford to wipe it. Even the slightest doubt that they might still be on there - even fragments of them - is enough to keep me from fixing my computer.

I already have Windows Grep to do good string searches, but I need two more things to really set my mind at ease (not that it ever is):

1. A comprehensive program that can find and search lost files - currently I have PC Inspector File Recovery, which seemed pretty good at recovering basic lost files (although for some reason it's stopped working on my corrupt drive partition on my second drive, possibly due to further corruption). However, it can't deal with real intense problem, and it can't search files like Windows Grep - something I figure it should be able to do, since they're still there, right?

So I need really good file recovery software to make sure I'm not missing anything.

2. I need a program that can scan large amounts of files and tell what type they are. You know, like if a .zip has been renamed a .zap, and Windows doesn't know what the hell anymore? I know about stuff like TrID, but I'm really hoping someone can name a program that can search a lot of files to tell what type they are originally - or if two different files have somehow been sandwiched together (like when someone hides a zip in an image file).

I honestly haven't the slightest clue as to what happened to these (I repeat, important) documents, and so I really don't know what to do to look for them. The idea that the only remaining copies of any of them may be on my hard drive when I'm about to wipe it honestly terrifies me.

Please help me if you can...and thank you for any help I can give. Once I do this I can hopefully fix my computer and come back and post some interesting things.

...

uh, if you can't help.....how have you been?



(on the positive side, I did get one email that made me very, very happy.)
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[psiga]

I can't help since I've never been so thoroughly porked by viruses and malware to need those things. Remind us again why you haven't moved to linux?
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[Toups]

DAIS I have nothing to help you but I want to voice my support.
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[km]

Alright who wants to just start a collection to buy DAIS a new hard drive

(seriously)
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Toups]

I'm for it

[km]

DAIS IDE or SATA
_________________

vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[negativedge]

I don't think a new hard drive is really going to help him. The primary concern seems to be the location of these files. His broken computer is merely a symptom of this search.

[Tokyo Rude]

Then he needs to take it to a data specialist and hope he doesn't have child porn on his computer.

[km]

Instead of being unable to use the computer due a paralyzing fear of flipping just wrong bit, he can make backups and do a clean install and look for files at his leisure, on a hard drive he is not actively using.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

actually, there are spare hard drives lying around, how many and why I'm not exactly sure. So truth be told, this particular crisis is more about my own insecurities and need to reuse materials than about conversation of finances. unfortunately, drama is the only language I talk.

if you guys really wanted to save up and buy me something, I would mind one of those special president-style health checkups they do at that one clinic. My whole family should be, what, $80,000?

I'm not sure what I'll do, but I have options. I was just hoping to explore some of them more thoroughly before I made my decision.

(I'd really like a mass file identifier, though)
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[Toups]

why not back up the offending drive if you have spare hard drives lying around, then, so you can at least format it and reinstall your OS?

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

dais i think you would do well to load up a linux livecd. i'm not a shell script genius but this would get you started:

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

btw file will check file contents, not extensions to determine what exactly it is

[BenoitRen]

[Gironika]

[Tokyo Rude]

[km]

[bloody heartland]

dais are these emails to/from that girl you were stalking on xbl dude

[BenoitRen]

[Kappuru]

[Gironika]

[km]

Or if you've got so many old drives laying around, dual boot. That gives you more options next time you blow up windows, at least.

I'll also expect you'll be pleasantly surprised how much better your computer runs. And having a package manager is one of the most convenient things ever. All your software is up to date, and is generally managed so that it all works together. No registry to fuck up. All of your personal files and configuration stuff are saved in one, easily backed-up place.

WINE, the windows compatibility layer, works for a lot of things, especially older software. DOSBOX works well too, for even older things. Emulation is kind of a weak point, but I have only really tried native stuff; going through WINE might work well.


Just slap Ubuntu or Linux Mint on there. Neither are perfect, but they definitely have the most polish and are best suited to first-time/most users, at least on the desktop.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[BenoitRen]

[km]

So, don't try to help DAIS because he's dumb and stupid and it's all his fault. People like him shouldn't be allow to use computers! People should spend their lives learning the ins and outs of bullshit system instead of doing things they actually want to do! Yeah!


oh ok


And if you're going to do the fucking retarded GNU/Linux thing, at least do it properly and say GNU/Xorg/Gnome/Linux or whatever. If you are claiming that Linux doesn't work without GNU, you should include the other software it needs to work too, right? Or could just drop it because it's completely a non-issue and just makes you look like an overly pedantic asshole.
_________________

vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

hi james. sorry, I don't have any drama for you. bye james.

Toups, harddrive backup would be good, but I know very little about the process - can you do it in such a way that it preserves the "hidden" stuff too? Files I've somehow caused Windows to lose, deleted stuff, etc..

Toll, my family already has government assistance - social security programs for my grandmother, disability programs for my father. I don't think my family is exactly in a bad way - we're generally unhealthy, but none of us are about to keel over in the next week. But we also rely on each other very much - I'm pretty sure that if any of us was taken out of "the equation", things would pretty much fall apart.

It never occurred to me that you could run Linux off a CD, although that obviously makes sense. Is there some definitive livecd I can grab? I normally don't think I can handle other operating systems, but if it's stuck on that disc, unable to take over my computer and stir the files in a revolution against me, I think I'll be okay.

(also, what people like BenoitRen assume is my being an idiot who uses Windows is actually more that I'm an idiot who never remembers to turn on spyware or virus protection after I've turned it off for whatever reason)
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[spinach]

Use Kanotix

[km]

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

You can even install it to a USB drive so that it isn't so goddamned slow, and you'll have some usable read/write space, instead of the tiny amount of slack running off read-only media like a CD gives you. Use Unetbooin to achieve this.


There is a command in linux that will do a byte-for-byte copy of stuff. It takes a while, and you'll need to hook up a hard drive that is at least as big as the one you are copying from; an external is fine. If you get the command wrong though, you can fuck shit up pretty hardcore (at least in terms of getting data back), so I don't really want to explain it until you've got the CD running and the hard drives hooked up. Once you do that, PM me or something and we can talk on AIM or whatever (there should be a client on the disc, or worst-case you can open Firefox and use Meebo or Google Chat_.

It may not be a bad idea to make TWO such backups. One for doing work on, and the other as a spare in case that one gets messed up. Or just make one backup and pull both drives out and install a new OS on a new drive.



Uhh, it looks like Kanotix hasn't been updated in over a year man...
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[spinach]

yeah.

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

km are you still on gentoo. i switched to arch because gentoo is literally a pile of shit

[km]

I tried Arch a two weeks ago and it was such a pile of shit I switched back to Gentoo. The packaging system is godawful.

Gentoo is a bitch though because nothing will integrate properly. KDE4.2 is all kind of fucked up. Considering backing up what I have in case I want it back and trying the new Fedora beta. I can't give up KMS, it rocks too hard.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[falsedan]

Jeff, km: bravo for suggesting a LiveCD. DAIS I have recovered hard drives by taking images of them and tinkering with them as virtual disks while the real hard drive sits safely in a drawer

BenoitRen: this is not the thread for your OS hangups
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[Gironika]

@benoitren:

[falsedan]

Gironika I have spend half the day rescuing my 9.04 workstation so I agree but I had a good experience with 8.10
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[BenoitRen]

[Gironika]

[Cossix]

Ubuntu is way more usable for average desktop users than Puppy Linux. Puppy Linux is just nice because it has a small footprint. It makes it pretty nice if you want to stick Linux on an embedded platform, but for today's average desktop, it's really not necessary to be that minimal.

[BenoitRen]

Cossix, I'm recommending Puppy Linux to use as a LiveCD. As a desktop OS, it's a bit minimal, though it works pretty well for the average desktop user that only browses the web and types up some documents.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

falsedan use dd_rhelp not dd if dais actually ever follows through on this

km what the fuck is kms

[BIGJ420COOLDUDE]

i have no idea why any legit linux user would bother with a "desktop environment." do you really need the clock that bad? manual window management helps me focus.