Today is not a good day. I have lost the entire drive containing everything for my art and comics. All my 3d assets, all my customized stuff, all my comic templates, all my works in progress, all my plot notes and scripts. I had a backup, but it is encrypted and the only copy of the key was on the drive (yes, I know how dumb that is). Literally the only thing remaining is what’s been posted online.
Obviously my weekly updates have come to an end for a long time. I’m not going to stop making my art and comics, but I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m definitely going to take this “opportunity” to upgrade to Genesis 8 and (probably) Daz Studio, since the Victoria 4.2 character I’ve been using is thirteen years old, and the last update to it was eleven years ago. I kind of hate to leave V4.2 behind, as I think I’ve gotten very good at customizing her as I see fit. But more and more I’ve run into her limitations, which I think the Genesis series can overcome.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about my existing stories and comics. It will take a very long time before I can replicate the characters and something approximating the outfits I’ve been using, if ever. I definitely want to continue making stories about Black Bat, all of my Near Tears characters, Lara Chang, and especially Mara and the rest of the cast of La Mouette Noire. But building up all those casts, outfits, and settings is going to take a very long time. I am especially frustrated because I like to bounce around a lot from genre to genre and setting to setting, and I was really reaching the point with my old content where had the means to do almost any kind of story in any kind of setting. Now, until I can build up my library of content again, I probably must pick one setting/story and stay with it for a while.
I don’t know what my next comic will be, or when I will start posting it. It could be a month from now, most likely it will be six months or longer. In the meantime, I will try to post WIP and preview art here of whatever I’m working on. I hope to see you all when my next comic comes out.
Sorry to hear about the disaster, such a loss! Do you still have the drive, and have you opened it? If not, depending on if it was a platter/head failure or a control board failure, you may be able to get it running again. Is there a lot of clicking, or tapping noise? If not, it might be the circuit board, which can be replaced (carefully) without risking data loss. Was able to save one of my GF’s drives that way, though it was a pretty old (20GB) drive.
thank you, but unfortunately the error exists between the keyboard and the chair 🙁 i was reinstalling my os and i selected the wrong drive. overwrote everything. tried file recovery but the really important stuff was completely overwritten, no trace remaining. i can’t even get mad at anybody for my loss XD
Oh god this is horrible!!! :(:(:( I’m deeply sorry.
Did you consider starting a crowdfunding campaign to get some money to pay a restore attempt by a specialized company?
unfortunately it’s probably not possible, recovery of overwritten files on older drives was possible because the encoding on the drives was “sloppy”, it left a sort of shadow of the old information. one of the reasons modern drives are so much bigger is that they are less “sloppy”. so when something is overwritten it is almost certainly gone forever, nothing left.
I know you mentioned that recovery is not likely, is it worth a shot? All you need is that backup key stored on your broken hard drive that would unlock your functioning hard drive. I would hope it is worth a shot.
If you start a crowdfunding campaign, I’ll definitely pitch in! Some many wonderful personalities: Mara, Lara, the nameless rider from Crouching Ostrich, Hidden Vulture, the World Warrior Alpha EX Turbo, the clanswomen from Against the Kultists. Now that I think about it, all your characters are unique and spunky in different ways. I hope they get revitalized with an Extra Life along with the hard drive.
If you want any help from the community you built, please reach out! Good luck!
i really appreciate your support and offer 🙂 i love all my characters. as best i can manage, they will all be coming back. some of them will necessarily look a little different, and some may take longer than others, i am building an entirely new set of 3d resources based on Genesis 8 and Daz Studio. but i have some help from other artists who are experienced with Daz and Genesis (thanks Ash!) and i hope to be making comics again by the end of summer.
would it be worth it to try to crack the encryption on your hard drive? It could take a while but it might be worth the wait.
well, the encryption used is what the government uses for SCI/top secret data. any encryption can be cracked eventually, but in this case by the time you brute force cracked it almost all matter in the universe will have collapsed into black holes!