It Finally Happened (Computer Croaked)
DeeRock
1,836 Posts
I was at my gig Friday night. A super dope private corp. event and on the very last second of the last song of the night my computer froze up. The colored circle popped up and stayed there and never went away. I waited for about 20 minutes then just powered it off and rebooted. NOPE. It's all she wrote son. The Fat Lady sang.... I lost everything!!!! I try to stay good about backing my files up but haven't done so in about 4 months. So I completely and totally lost the last 4 months of music. I got up the next morning and installed a new hard drive myself. After doing so I had one hour left to get to my gig for the night which is about an hour away from me. I grabbed a folder of music and jetted off to my gig. I had 100 songs to rock a 5 hour set! I did it and pretty damn well I might add. I've spent the last 24 hours going through music and moving files over. As bad as this is I believe it to actually be a blessing in disguise.
I've lost 3 years of very tight organization but I've been feeling like I wanted to start over. It seems like I'd show up with 20,000 mp3 files yet still play the same 200 every night. This will MAKE ME change that for the most part. It's going to very difficult to remember what's actually lost. At any rate I have 5 events to do this week and need to get this stuff in order asap.
I've lost 3 years of very tight organization but I've been feeling like I wanted to start over. It seems like I'd show up with 20,000 mp3 files yet still play the same 200 every night. This will MAKE ME change that for the most part. It's going to very difficult to remember what's actually lost. At any rate I have 5 events to do this week and need to get this stuff in order asap.
Comments
There are companies that specialise in saving data from crashed discs. It's amazing what they can recover. Bit expensive though but may be worth the 4 months of work!
that ever happen to anyone on here? would be kindof awkward to get on the mic to explain that m.o.p ended mid track cause of computer malfunctions
most played, etc...
An IT person I knew recommended this program called getdataback, let it run for a day or so, and it shows you which files can be recovered. In my case, that was all of them, despite the fact that windows couldn't read anything off the drive. You have to pay like 50 bucks for the full version before you can copy the files off the drive, but since I was getting estimates of $1500 and up for hard drive recovery, I went for it and got everything back.
You'll need to have a working computer and a way to plug the bad drive in, plus somewhere to copy all the files to, but the program's free up until you see what's recoverable, and it saved my ass big time. Might be worth a look if you don't want to just move on..
And yo, t*ny, that's my worst nightmare, having the laptop go down mid-set. During one of my first serato gigs, my laptop ran out of batteries and was suddenly going to sleep! Luckily it was the 2nd to last song of my set and I had some vinyl with me...never forgot to plug in the power again after that shit..
It keeps a detailed history of what you play as per-set, which one is able to export. But not play counts as with iTunes.
Sucks man, but as someone who it's happened to in the past, it seems super daunting but before you know it you're back up and running again. And yes, take it as a blessing in disguise and a chance to completely freshen up your crates. I do that every so months or so - delete all the crates in Serato and start new. Totally liberating.
Truth man. And a very common phenom. I think when you're confronted with seemingly limitless choices, it actually makes it MORE likely that you'll resort to the safety of the familiar.
Whereas, back in the crate days, while you might have a few "go to favorites," I feel there was more pressure to make sure you brought - and used - new joints.
I think it was doc delay who mentioned on here sorting by date added. That definitely changed the way I rock a little. Good way to get away from the same ol..
I've been doing that for a long ass time and it does help to shake things up a bit but I find - and this is my own damn fault - I introduce new shit at the start of the night but at the height, I get more conservative and go back to the "Top 100 Bangers" list. But yeah "date added" is a great way to organize. Or simply having a "new arrivals" folder that you update every month or so.
I still look through the garage every now and then hoping to find a box of old computer parts. It's been over a year and I still really regret losing all that music.
That's what I'm saying..... I thought about doing this about a month ago and then I thought all I'll be doing is adding the SAME songs so why waste my time?! LOL
At any rate I totally did my thing at that club with only 100 songs. It made me think when I would ONLY bring 3 crates to a gig. I kinda liked it. It made me work a whole lot harder while playing trying to figure how can I make this song work that probably shouldn't have. Another thing is with me I actually also OWN the real record of any MP3 I have or play out unless it's an exclusive joint that was never pressed before. I woke up to be totally snowed in today so perfect for trying to finish getting back on track with this. I just hope it melts before my gigs start tomorrow! Haha...
data recovery shouldnt be an option with the cost of HDD's these days. i got 3x 1TB drives for just under $350, they werent the least expensive but even if it was for a lappy, 500gb drivers are around $75m bux these days, and external drives are perfect for all your backups, plug em in once a week or month sync it and your done....
it wasnt until i lost all my data that i learned my lesson...
you stay hustling; good for you.
the rainbow of death!
that sucks.
i would like to just read from a packed firewire hard drive and eliminate itunes altogether... slowly getting ready to do that.
i have experienced total crash at sway when a drunk idiot ho spilled a sugary drink onto my old mac. it was perfect timing i had ordered a new mac that week but man, it was the way she just saw a ledge and tossed her drink in that direction without much of a plan, slow motion over said ledge, willy nilly as though it was going to vanish. she really thought this glass was bound to land safely. it did not. that's another story for another thread.
fresh start will be good like you said, s.erato , "crates" they can put you in such a rut. i do love not being in one crate and just looking at everything on the whole drive by bpm. that helps me inspire variety.
good luck.