# just lost everything



## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

This is unbelievable I just lost all of my ledgers that told who owes what, are their any pc guys out there that can recommend a program for resorting old files. Stupid hard drive.


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## grandview (Oct 9, 2005)

Let me guess, no external hard drive or cloud service.


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## kimber750 (Sep 19, 2011)

If hard drive is dying stop using it now. Any computer store should sell the cables and program to recover what you can from it. Little sister is a computer techy person and this how she recovered a hard drive for me.


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## 32vld (Feb 4, 2011)

I had a computer die. Brought it to a computer repair business they were able to get off my data off of my old PC and put it on the new one. Worth the money. Because my thought was I could mess things up worse then even an expert will not be able to bail me out.


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

kg26;1751990 said:


> This is unbelievable I just lost all of my ledgers that told who owes what, are their any pc guys out there that can recommend a program for resorting old files. Stupid hard drive.


Bingo 100% the case


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## Mr.Markus (Jan 7, 2010)

Alot of the programs now have a recover setting where you can recover back to a certain point in time, try that first (If you can get it to boot up) then get yourself an external hard drive backup and start using it..


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

That was the back up. Excel said the file was in a different format when I click open nothing is in the cells.


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## ddobson (May 8, 2010)

If you've written to the hard drive since you've first noticed the issue, it will make recovery less probable. If you have a spare pc you can install the drive as a secondary hd and copy the data over, assuming it's not encrypted. Try the cable/recovery program that kimber mentioned as well, but if your original excel file is corrupted you could run a chkdsk on the drive, repair the files, then copy off the data and replace the hd.


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## Diesel Dan (Sep 8, 2012)

take it to a computer shop ASAP, don't use the computer


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

NO I didn't write anything to the drive.


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## ddobson (May 8, 2010)

kg26;1752348 said:


> NO I didn't write anything to the drive.


Then you should be in fairly good shape. If you take it to a computer shop see if they can image the disk first to preserve the original hd. This way you can make several recovery attempts and still have your disk to work from if all else fails.


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## Urdum2 (Dec 31, 2008)

Agree with the majority.....any computer repair guy.....I have all billing and accounts on computer and also made a paper copy(2) for my files....in case the above happens again....having two copies is in case I have to give one....to easy to say I will just make another off the computer...and then not do it and don't think of it till ...well


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## WIPensFan (Jan 31, 2009)

Call me old fashion but I write everything in a notebook. Then at the end of the month do my billing on QuickBooks. You can't crash a notebook...


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## procut (Dec 1, 2004)

^ Yup - exactly how I do it as well.


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

grandview;1751991 said:


> Let me guess, no external hard drive or cloud service.


It was on the external.:angry:


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## Chineau (Aug 24, 2010)

This is like a flash back to a very bad memory, arrrrrghhh! Stupid computers..


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## rcn971 (Jan 28, 2011)

I switched everything over to QB Online this year.....best thing I ever did. Don't ever have to worry about drives crashing or being corrupted and making back ups ever again. And since I access it from my phone my billing gets done way faster as well.


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

Seriously we are talking about hundreds if not at least a couple thousand of dollars in revenue that will take me at least a week to fish out the hard way by means of looking what checks I have on hand form clients, dates where snow accumulation was 2" or more, and invoices that I had drawn up 3 days ago. Might as well get cozy I'm going to be here a while.


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## grandview (Oct 9, 2005)

WIPensFan;1752427 said:


> Call me old fashion but I write everything in a notebook. Then at the end of the month do my billing on QuickBooks. You can't crash a notebook...


Same here, all handwritten invoices ,the entered into QB


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## ddobson (May 8, 2010)

kg26;1752829 said:


> It was on the external.:angry:


That's useful to know. I fixed a 1.5 TB ext. drive like this in December. So run the chkdsk on it. It may work it may not but it is sure better than trying to recreate from paper. At least you can get the info. in needed.


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## SnowGuy73 (Apr 7, 2003)

Any computer repair shop can restore your data.


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## linckeil (Sep 18, 2007)

i'm surprised to see guys still hand write their invoices and keep records in a notebook. do you also have a manual angle plow, or have you upgraded to the new power angle technology?


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## WIPensFan (Jan 31, 2009)

linckeil;1753053 said:


> i'm surprised to see guys still hand write their invoices and keep records in a notebook. do you also have a manual angle plow, or have you upgraded to the new power angle technology?


Why, just the other day I sat down to record some transactions in my ledger book...


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## grandview (Oct 9, 2005)

linckeil;1753053 said:


> i'm surprised to see guys still hand write their invoices and keep records in a notebook. do you also have a manual angle plow, or have you upgraded to the new power angle technology?


Just finishing up my books for taxes.


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## leolkfrm (Mar 11, 2010)

if the hard drive is bad you may need to send it out to a recovery center....they diassemble it and pull the data from the disks, not cheap though prob 1000 to 1500 

I would suggest using hand written work sheets for the day and enter them into a computer later for billing


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## linckeil (Sep 18, 2007)

Last year all my records had to be chiseled into stone, but this year i'm using this new fangled material called "papyrus". it's pretty advanced stuff - you should check it out.


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

linckeil;1753392 said:


> Last year all my records had to be chiseled into stone, but this year i'm using this new fangled material called "papyrus". it's pretty advanced stuff - you should check it out.


Where are you from Sumar?


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## Diesel Dan (Sep 8, 2012)

linckeil;1753053 said:


> i'm surprised to see guys still hand write their invoices and keep records in a notebook. do you also have a manual angle plow, or have you upgraded to the new power angle technology?


I have yet to have a notebook suffer a hard drive failure, get a virus, or be damaged by a power surge. Thumbs Up


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## linckeil (Sep 18, 2007)

Diesel Dan;1753507 said:


> I have yet to have a notebook suffer a hard drive failure, get a virus, or be damaged by a power surge. Thumbs Up


and my hand winch, manual angle snowplow has yet to blow a hydraulic line, suffer a pump failure, or have a faulty electrical issue.


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## leigh (Jan 2, 2009)

After an episode of corrupted quickbook files I'm so paranoid that I back up every time I enter anything. Twice, once into a memory stick and a 2nd in an external hard drive that goes in my safe. Very stressfull, I feel your pain:crying:


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## maxwellp (Feb 16, 2013)

I take a small 3 ring Binder with me, I have a form I made to check off the boxes when things are done for accounts. I use this to put in to the computer later, after that a copy goes on a thumb drive. 

I had a hard drive start to go bad 2 times now. I cloned them with Acronis True Image.
But the hard drive has to work for this to work. If it crashed you will have to have it opened up and the data removed the hard way and not cheep. The acronis program will clones everything on your hard drive so it will start up like nothing happened.


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## Diesel Dan (Sep 8, 2012)

linckeil;1753545 said:


> and my hand winch, manual angle snowplow has yet to blow a hydraulic line, suffer a pump failure, or have a faulty electrical issue.


What is your problem dude? They didn't teach you to write in school?

Hand writing my work all month is faster than computerizing everything. Should I keep a PC in my truck?

And give the guy running my loader and Ipad so he can log his hours and send me a facebook message when he needs to know where to stack snow.

He could save valuable time by posting a picture to instagram when the bucket chain breaks, instead of picking up that old timey two way radio to tell me.

Finding a way to use the computer more would sure make me more money!


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## Diesel Dan (Sep 8, 2012)

maxwellp;1753795 said:


> I take a small 3 ring Binder with me, I have a form I made to check off the boxes when things are done for accounts.


This is what I do. I fill out a notebook for me, the work sheet for the company I work with (sub my truck and loader) and fill out a blank invoice by hand as I go. End of the month I type up the invoice and send it on in.


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## linckeil (Sep 18, 2007)

Diesel Dan;1753923 said:


> What is your problem dude? They didn't teach you to write in school?
> 
> Hand writing my work all month is faster than computerizing everything. Should I keep a PC in my truck?
> 
> ...


sorry dude - i never learned how to write, so i have to use a computer for everything. the whole pencil and paper idea is far to complicated for me. and instead of using the high tech 2 way radios, maybe carrier pigeons would be more your speed.

oh and if you still haven't figured it out - thats a joke too. everyone else gets it, but it seems you are a bit slow on the uptake here. anyway, get off the computer and send me a hand written reply via the US postal service.

now jokes aside - it is 2014. are you saying that you cannot find any efficiencies or benefits to using a computer to better run a business? if thats so you better share your thoughts with every single human being on the planet. think of all the trillions of dollars wasted on these computer-thing-a-mig-jigs!!!!!! please help save us from these technological advances!!!!!!!


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

An update, I took everyone's advice who suggested going to a pc repair store to see if they could pull the info off. Instead of paying someone to do it I searched for file restoring software that would do the same. Lucky me it worked out fine,I got back half of the January file and with checks I had on hand I could fill in pmt info from Jan 16 till now. From now on its getting backed up anytime I write something.


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## John from OH (Mar 16, 2000)

As Grandview said, use a cloud service, it will back up when ever you are online. You won't have to think about or waste your time backing up. Here's a link to the Top 10. It will cost about the price of a fast food lunch every month. Money well spent.

http://www.thetop10bestonlinebackup.com/


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## Diesel Dan (Sep 8, 2012)

linckeil;1754392 said:


> sorry dude - i never learned how to write, so i have to use a computer for everything. the whole pencil and paper idea is far to complicated for me. and instead of using the high tech 2 way radios, maybe carrier pigeons would be more your speed.
> 
> oh and if you still haven't figured it out - thats a joke too. everyone else gets it, but it seems you are a bit slow on the uptake here. anyway, get off the computer and send me a hand written reply via the US postal service.
> 
> now jokes aside - it is 2014. are you saying that you cannot find any efficiencies or benefits to using a computer to better run a business? if thats so you better share your thoughts with every single human being on the planet. think of all the trillions of dollars wasted on these computer-thing-a-mig-jigs!!!!!! please help save us from these technological advances!!!!!!!


I have a computer dillnut, obviously, I don't keep every little tid bit of information on it. Computers crash and stopping at home to digitize everything wouldn't save me anytime.

We did over $2 million in total sales last year (most of it not from this snowplowing BS) all without the help of a single touch screen cellphone. Heck I still have to OPEN my phone. We get by just fine.

Although the tractors drive themselves in a straight line nowadays Thumbs Up


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## stargazer (Nov 22, 2008)

*Backing Up*

Lots of good jokes in this thread. By the way, windows has "system restore" which will restore your computer to an earlier date, losing any work you did since that date. Several ways to find it, usually click start, then right click computer, chose properties, then look for system protection and click it.

Here is how I back up- seriously.

We have a computer generated "plow list" in each truck, just check off the work, space for notes on unusual work.

Since most storms hit everyone, I make a couple memorized invoices in QuickBooks using the most widespread billing amounts. Then I keep clicking on the memorized transaction and clicking on the customer name, Zing, all filled out unless I need to customize some numbers.

I hate paper work so each time I enter a page I back up onto a USB stick. When I finish, and each time I enter payments, I back up onto the USB stick. When you always use the same one you can click back up and "finish" and avoid all the steps.

IMPORTANT - Then click backup, and chose "Portable" backup and finish. This gives me a compressed backup on the USB stick. I close out QB and email myself with the date and attach the portable file. That stores a full backup in the cloud with zero expense. Best to make sure you can restore the file from the portable, hard to find where to tell it to store the first time, best to already know if you need it in panic mode.

So, I have a backup at home, and if my home burns down, I have a free one in the cloud at my private free email I use only for that.

Be aware that if you read the fine print you are allowed to install QuickBooks on two computers, which I do. I only use one for data entry, the second is a full active backup on a computer ready to go. If my computer died, I'd just use the 2nd computer to do the billing. I NEVER enter data on the backup computer, I just restore it from the USB stick.

Last year my computer completely died. I took it totally apart and could not isolate the problem. So I dropped the hard drive into a hard drive bay hooked to another windows box and tried to get the data. Windows said it was protected. So I used a free Linnux distro (Knoppix) and removed the protection. Then the windows program could access the data and I copied it onto the other computer. If the hard drive was toast this would not work. Sometimes the controller on the top of the hard drive is what goes bad, and you can remove the controller from an identical hard drive and install it on the dead one and access the data. Then charge $1500 for a miraculous recovery!


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## 94gt331 (Oct 21, 2011)

WIPensFan;1753187 said:


> Why, just the other day I sat down to record some transactions in my ledger book...


That's a serious ledger book, looks like a mob ledger.
I actually do everything in a notebook as well, then I hand do all my invoices every month, im old school also.


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

stargazer;1761026 said:


> Lots of good jokes in this thread. By the way, windows has "system restore" which will restore your computer to an earlier date, losing any work you did since that date. Several ways to find it, usually click start, then right click computer, chose properties, then look for system protection and click it.
> 
> Here is how I back up- seriously.
> 
> ...


If you would of told me this a year ago I might of said this is way too time consuming but after going through what I did it is a pretty good safe guard.


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## DareDog (Oct 22, 2007)

what program did you use?


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## Whiffyspark (Dec 23, 2009)

This is why I use cloud based software


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## kg26 (Feb 5, 2013)

DareDog;1781618 said:


> what program did you use?


The fine recovery program I used was, File scavenger. The program I use to keep track of everything else excel.


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## sota (Jan 31, 2011)

File Scavenger has saved mine (and several of my client's. I'm a privateer I.T. guy by trade) butts more times than I can possibly imagine. They seriously don't charge enough for that program for how much heartburn it's saved me from. If the drive spins and the BIOS can see it, FS will get something off of it.

Now also, a good backup scheme is critical too.


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## Precedence (Oct 3, 2008)

I use a program called SyncToy and have a subscription to Dropbox. Anything i do on my computer for the business is backed up and synced to Dropbox cloud backup everyday automatically including all emails and even my phone log of text messages.

Also with Dropbox i can access and work on any of my files from any computer anywhere.


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