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I'm looking for some pictures I took back in the last decade, and sent to someone who since died and can I find 'em? His family would like a copy.
Nope - but I have had NAS failures, HDD failures, and running-out-of-space-what-the-heck-do-I-delete failures since then, and even I don't keep backups that are over ten years old ... unfortunately. Maybe I should. 
So, I remember my stack of redundant HDDs - I get a bigger one, the old one goes on the pile.
Dig out my old ATA to USB box as my current MB doesn't support ATA drives at all. And ... all but one of them I've overwrite wiped, formatted, and re-fdisked ready for me to smash them to pieces with a big hammer but I never got round to that bit.
The last one? Doesn't fit in the converter box because it's a Maxstore and it;s connectoirs are upside down. 
Then I remember Herself's computer. The one she hasn't turned on for so long it's still using the WiFi Router ID for three routers ago ... it's an HP ... That'll have ATA.
Connect it all back up, power it up, it works. Turn off, set the drive to slave, connect it up, power it up ... and it's blank. Sod. Turn it off again. You have to remember that this is XP territory, and booting is quite slow. (And it's strange to see two physical processors in one machine instead of one).
But then I see a second HDD bolted into her computer, but not connected. Now, there are two possibilities here:
1) It's the original HDD from this PC which died and there may just be some of my data on it.
2) It's the original HDD from my HP PC which died shortly after hers and it's probably catatonic by now.
Let's see ... BOIS starts to scream at me "THIS DRIVE IS DYING!" Great, that means it's not dead yet.
Oh boy - it's the motherload. My HDD from 2010 which died. We could be lucky here.
And sure enough, there is the HTML file I sent the pictures in. Don't ask. Just don't. Are they embedded? No, they are linked to a picture storage website ... that doesn't exist any more.
But, I'm copying everything I can find off the computer to a USB stick and the pictures may be there. If not, they are gone for good. I'll see what I can find when I get it on my PC in a couple of hours, USB1 is so slooooowwww.
Somebody remind me: "never throw anything away, Griff" please!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: never throw anything away, Griff
Pop that in your signature line. You should then see it about 1000 times a day. 
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: Pop that in your signature line. You We should then see it about 1000 times a day.
FTFY 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Done! 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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If it wasn't for the family of the deceased, I would say you have some issues... In this case I only can salute you...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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And I just found them!
I've copied them onto my computer, and I'm trying to rescue the rest now just in case - but that's complicated because the computer is XP 32 bit, and I can't get AOMEI to work on it, it gives me CRC errors and stops copying, it doesnt like my 256Gb USB stick, and I don't want to turn it off because there is a good chance the HDD may never work again if I do...
Ah, the fun we have on a Sunday!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Prepare a clean room, get an identical drive on fleabay and then swap the media.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Why don't you use an old Hiren's boot // BartPE or similars from that time?
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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For some reason it seems you're spending every single weekend making back-ups, restoring back-ups, looking for files on old back-ups...
I don't think there's anyone more obsessed with his back-ups than you are.
I'd almost think you're some weird back-up fetishist... Are you?
"Oh yeah baby, I'm plugging it in and see if I can restore some of those old files" 
Anyway, have fun I guess.
Also, condolences on your friend 
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I am a little OCD where backups are concerned, yes ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Reminds me...
I was grumbling to my boss one day about lost work after a power outage. I had typed alot but not Saved recently.
The boss replied, "You know what the Bible says about this?"
Me: "No, what?"
Him: "Jesus Saves, you should do the same."
Likely, the almighty would be a fan of frequent back-ups too.
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Maybe I am a little too obsessed - now I've got the files I want off, I've got it to run as a USB disk attached to my "real" PC, and guess what I'm doing? Yes, that's right! A backup of it!
Don't think it'll work though - it's got 3GB backed up and it's making some very nasty noises.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I stand corrected. You HAVE issues!
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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It's taken me one afternoon and the following morning to find this crap - I'm not losing it again! 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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"Hi, my name is Griff and I'm a back-upper."
"Hi Griff, welcome to back-uppers anonymous."
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Do they have a 12 step plan?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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They have full, incremental, and differential plans.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Griff,
I agree with you. One can't be too thin, one can't be too rich, and one can never, ever have too many backups! No Joking, I am serious.
What you need is a an index of what is stored on each device. Please send me a copy after you have written one.
I had a copy of my signature line but I lost it.
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Ed Aymami wrote: Please send me a copy after you have written one.
 Upvoted.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Fascinating!
Quote: For over a decade, magnetic tapes from the 1976 Viking Mars landing were unprocessed. When later analyzed, the data was unreadable as it was in an unknown format and the original programmers had either died or left NASA.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Quote: Fascinating!
Assuming the data is not crypted, how hard it would be to Interpret it? 
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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Probably quite hard. Remember that back then, space was at a premium, and bandwidth from Viking to Earth was pretty low - so as much as possible was compacted into as small a space as possible. Almost certainly, there is error correction stuff in there as well, and you have no real idea what is being stored there - if you did you wouldn't need to send it in the first place.
So you have no idea what the data is, how it's stored, or anything much at all. Not an easy job.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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so, e.g. md5 much more developed is nowadays "something" insecure, means "nearly cracked". How can some "error correction" stuff may make a Problem to recognize it... only some minds from my side.
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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Because if you don't know which is error correction, or even what error correction there was ...
MD5 is a known, published algorithm which makes it a whole lot easier to reverse engineer.
Imagine you have a small executable file, but you don't know what it does, or what processor it was compiled for. And it might use EBCDIC, it might use ASCII, it could be English, it could be Katakana.
Now write the emulator that runs it!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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