Today is my sad day.

[The Space Dino]

Long story short, my friend's pendrive infected mine with a virus which wiped out EVERYTHING in the pendrive. The pendrive is now safe to use, the virus is gone, but down the drain goes months of work.

By work I mean all my KSP progress (the game is in the pendrive), some presentation stuff for school, and a 11,000 word fan-fiction I had been working on for about a month or two. Back to square one I guess.

[Green Baron]

Well, sorry for your loss, but pendrives are bad means to store valuable data. They get around a lot and catch viruses, the cheap ones are volatile, they can easily get lost, ...

Better would be a harddrive, but don't carry it with you. Next best are all those clouds and things on the internet, but you give away your data potentially for everyone to see. Quite ok is a NAS at home that you can configure, but one that doesn't call home every now and then. And best of all is a file server at home, separate from the internet, with some kind of redundancy, that backs up regularly to tape or optical storage, but that's a bit overkill.

[The Space Dino]

Not knowing too much about software, may I ask what is NAS?

[Green Baron]

Network attached storage.

A good sounding name for a very simple "file server" with an easy configuration program and harddisk(s) that you simply plug in to your router and follow the installation menu.

[linuxgurugamer]

At the very least, use your computer for permanent storage and sign up with a good offsite backup service .  I use Backblaze, but there are other good services available.

[Just Jim]

3 hours ago, The Space Dino said:

...and a 11,000 word fan-fiction I had been working on for about a month or two. Back to square one I guess.

Did you post it on the forum? If so, it isn't really lost. I make lots of back ups, but even if I lost everything, Emiko is still here, and my screenshots are on Imgur, so they're retrievable. Yours may be as well if it's online somewhere

[p1t1o]

There are so-called "data recovery" services around that offer various things. 

I know that merely "deleted" data can easily be recovered, but I have also heard of overwritten data being recovered from hard discs, and I have even heard of data being recovered from unpowered RAM, depending on the circumstances.

Anyone have any good experiences with this sort of thing? Or are these companies a little bit overhyped?

[ThreePounds]

41 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

At the very least, use your computer for permanent storage and sign up with a good offsite backup service .  I use Backblaze, but there are other good services available.

Interestingly enough, I use github for my KSP save files. Works like a charm.

[Green Baron]

I once (~10 years ago) spoke with a criminalist about data recovery from an overwritten harddisks. It may be tried with special equipment to read the sides of the overwritten tracks, in the hope that the current for overwriting wasn't strong enough to delete the fringes. Small fragments may thus be recovered reconstructed.

But really, completely overwriting a track usually destroys the information on it without comeback. That's it's deeper sense ...

Edited September 12, 2017 by Green Baron

[linuxgurugamer]

25 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

There are so-called "data recovery" services around that offer various things. 

I know that merely "deleted" data can easily be recovered, but I have also heard of overwritten data being recovered from hard discs, and I have even heard of data being recovered from unpowered RAM, depending on the circumstances.

Anyone have any good experiences with this sort of thing? Or are these companies a little bit overhyped?

Deleted is easy. Overwritten is much harder, if at all possible.  Ram, forget it

[YNM]

Sad for your loss @OP.

Though it's a good lesson to always have backups, or interchange something through a completely virus-incompatible means.

Most of the time I store things in my phone - when it comes around to having to display them in computers I'll just connect it. As Android / Linux is completely oblivious of windows viruses (but still able to see the files) you can theoretically wipe them out first. It's also how I kept my PC clean (if I feel worried, I just boot into Ubuntu then manually hunt it down).

Another option would be cloud storage. Dropbox, Google Drive are a few I have experiences with. Others are there - and some probably better - but I stick with those two for the time being.

48 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

There are so-called "data recovery" services around that offer various things. 

I know that merely "deleted" data can easily be recovered, but I have also heard of overwritten data being recovered from hard discs, and I have even heard of data being recovered from unpowered RAM, depending on the circumstances.

Anyone have any good experiences with this sort of thing? Or are these companies a little bit overhyped?

Overwritten and deleted data are easier to resurrect from disks (which standard HDD is one of them), because they leave physical remmant. Pendrives aren't disks so there's no artifact left over of the old data.

Edited September 12, 2017 by YNM

[The Space Dino]

2 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Did you post it on the forum? If so, it isn't really lost. I make lots of back ups, but even if I lost everything, Emiko is still here, and my screenshots are on Imgur, so they're retrievable. Yours may be as well if it's online somewhere

I did post the prologue on a website, but I'm planning to rewrite it as IMO it's a little bad. I could salvage some of it to save some time, but that's about it. All my KSP screenshots are actaully in the now empty pendrive, but I still have some up on imgur which are from my older career mode (which I aborted halfway after killing Val )

I want to make as much progress as possible but recently I don't have too much time, I guess I could go for once per month chapters with the first one being the old prologue I guess?

[Cmdr Hawkeyez]

hi

Edited June 4, 2018 by Cmdr Hawkeyez

[Just Jim]

4 hours ago, The Space Dino said:

I want to make as much progress as possible but recently I don't have too much time, I guess I could go for once per month chapters with the first one being the old prologue I guess?

Do whatever's comfortable for you. There's no time limit. Sometimes I take a couple weeks to do a chapter, others can take a month... And occasionally a hurricane makes it even longer... Lol.

Remember, we do this for fun, so you don't need to push yourself.

[liz.smi]

I would suggest not to use the pen drive as it may overwrite the drive data and you will lose your data permanently. To get your lost data back you need to download the data recovery software ( Note: there are a number of data recovery software you may download as per your requirements such as Recuva, Stellar Phoenix, etc. ) connect your pen drive and run the data recovery tool to recover your lost stuff. Also would like to tell you that once the data deleted from the external drive, then there is no manual solution available for recovering the lost data such as recycle bin, etc.

[The Space Dino]

3 hours ago, liz.smi said:

I would suggest not to use the pen drive as it may overwrite the drive data and you will lose your data permanently. To get your lost data back you need to download the data recovery software ( Note: there are a number of data recovery software you may download as per your requirements such as Recuva, Stellar Phoenix, etc. ) connect your pen drive and run the data recovery tool to recover your lost stuff. Also would like to tell you that once the data deleted from the external drive, then there is no manual solution available for recovering the lost data such as recycle bin, etc.

Does the data recovery software have to be run on the computer where the data was lost?

[NSEP]

Sorry for your loss. Its like getting your office burned down.

Time for a new beginning, i geuss. 

[Nuke]

i like to keep multiple redundant backups. but i got a lot of data and dont trust automated backup software. so needless to say things dont get backed up very often.

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, The Space Dino said:

Does the data recovery software have to be run on the computer where the data was lost?

As your data were on pendrive, you can run the recovery software on any computer, inserting your pendrive and selecting it in the drives list.
It will usually show you deleted files, probability of their resurrection and ask where to put the recovered file (strongly recomennded - not on the same pendrive).
I usually use Handy Recovery 5, but it's not freeware.

[Cmdr Hawkeyez]

hi

Edited June 4, 2018 by Cmdr Hawkeyez