New Brunswick Craft Brewers Association

Brewing => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: robcoombs on August 04, 2015, 12:16:08 PM

Title: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: robcoombs on August 04, 2015, 12:16:08 PM
A few days ago my hard drive crashed. For some reason I had never backed up my BS files to a separate drive  :frazzled: so I lost everything I didn't have on cloud storage. Luckily I do print every recipe I brew, but I did lose a lot I hadn't brewed yet.

Just thought I'd throw this out there as a reminder for everyone else. I will now remember to back up BS files on an external drive.  :facepalm:
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: Scott on August 04, 2015, 12:31:04 PM
that sucks.
I also print everything, but backing up is a good idea.
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: Roger on August 04, 2015, 12:48:53 PM
Ha! The exact same thing happened to me last week... It sucks!
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: blisster on August 04, 2015, 01:03:27 PM
Ouch!

Is the HDD completely dead?  As long as it turns, there may be a way to recover the files from it even if the MBR/boot sectors are corrupt or the disk has bad sectors..
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: robcoombs on August 04, 2015, 01:22:06 PM
Ouch!

Is the HDD completely dead?  As long as it turns, there may be a way to recover the files from it even if the MBR/boot sectors are corrupt or the disk has bad sectors..
The hardrive is running. I had a bootmgr error and couldn't repair. So I just reinstalled windows. I would LOVE to get those recipes and settings back! How can I go about recovering?
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: Al-Loves-Wine on August 04, 2015, 02:05:10 PM
Ouch!

Is the HDD completely dead?  As long as it turns, there may be a way to recover the files from it even if the MBR/boot sectors are corrupt or the disk has bad sectors..
The hardrive is running. I had a bootmgr error and couldn't repair. So I just reinstalled windows. I would LOVE to get those recipes and settings back! How can I go about recovering?

Lots of good software out there Rob, you may not even need any recovery software, might be able to just put the other drive in and pull all the files you need right off it. If by chance a bad sector has damaged the drive, I've used GetDataBackNTFS which is a piece of cake to use.

And remember, he who laughs last, made a backup!
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: blisster on August 04, 2015, 02:06:24 PM
Ah.. It might not work now since windows was re-installed on the same hdd..

There is a software called "get data back for NTFS". The "faulty" hdd has to be put into another PC with the software installed as a slave or connected through a USB adapter.

The software is very old but works great.. It scans every sector on the "faulty" drive one bit at a time and builds a new file table. It can take 12+ hours to run and once it's done you can browse the files/directories and restored them.  Not all data is recoverable but I've have had great luck with it.

This can still be done on your hard drive but a lot of the sectors would have been overwritten already so there may not be much recoverable especially if you old hard drive was highly fragmented.

I can email it you you if you want, it's not very big... You may be able to run it from your computer to scan the same HDD it's running from, never tried it but it should work.
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: Al-Loves-Wine on August 04, 2015, 02:10:51 PM
The software is very old but works great.. It scans every sector on the "faulty" drive one bit at a time and builds a new file table. It can take 12+ hours to run and once it's done you can browse the files/directories and restored them.  Not all data is recoverable but I've have had great luck with it.


12+ for a little data, I had to recover about 6000 mp3's back in the spring, couldn't touch my computer for 3 days during recovery. My entire music collection gone, I was almost in tears. Luckily GetDataBack recovered most and about 30% of them were damaged.
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: robcoombs on August 04, 2015, 02:32:01 PM
Ouch!

Is the HDD completely dead?  As long as it turns, there may be a way to recover the files from it even if the MBR/boot sectors are corrupt or the disk has bad sectors..
The hardrive is running. I had a bootmgr error and couldn't repair. So I just reinstalled windows. I would LOVE to get those recipes and settings back! How can I go about recovering?

Lots of good software out there Rob, you may not even need any recovery software, might be able to just put the other drive in and pull all the files you need right off it. If by chance a bad sector has damaged the drive, I've used GetDataBackNTFS which is a piece of cake to use.

And remember, he who laughs last, made a backup!

I'm actually very careful about backing up everything else on my PC. My music is backed up on two separate drives. My photography and related software is backed up on a daily, weekly and monthly drive, three separate drives, one of which I keep in a different location in the house. Just to be sure. But for some reason it never dawned on me to backup BS. Crazy stupid on my part.
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: robcoombs on August 04, 2015, 02:32:40 PM
Ah.. It might not work now since windows was re-installed on the same hdd..

There is a software called "get data back for NTFS". The "faulty" hdd has to be put into another PC with the software installed as a slave or connected through a USB adapter.

The software is very old but works great.. It scans every sector on the "faulty" drive one bit at a time and builds a new file table. It can take 12+ hours to run and once it's done you can browse the files/directories and restored them.  Not all data is recoverable but I've have had great luck with it.

This can still be done on your hard drive but a lot of the sectors would have been overwritten already so there may not be much recoverable especially if you old hard drive was highly fragmented.

I can email it you you if you want, it's not very big... You may be able to run it from your computer to scan the same HDD it's running from, never tried it but it should work.

Yes please! I would love to try to recover what I can
Title: Re: Backup your Beersmith files
Post by: HappyHax0r on October 22, 2015, 11:41:56 AM
I haven't lost any files, but mind if I get a copy of this as well?

I'd like to add it to my tools folder on my array to ensure that I have it if I need it.


XD