The loss of data.

Since Windows 8 had crashed my laptops with its updates, I had to restore both.
I have a 1.5 TB external drive, so restoring was no problem, I have windows disc's and USB drives, so it was no big deal, really. Heres the (tl;dr) story

Windows update crashed my Lenovo.
I used windows 8 refresh, 
lost my Far Cry 3 data, was able to save my Skyrim data.

Downloaded BurnAware and Windows 7 Usb Tool on my Asus, with means to put my Windows 8 CD on a Flash Drive (the lenovo has no optical drive (SLI Ultrabay))

Asus needed to restart in order for me to install the .net framework required to run Windows 7 Usb Tool (since it was a kinda-new install)

The restart installed the same update that crashed the lenovo

The Asus suffered the same fate

Tried to refresh Asus
Couldnt because drive is partitioned to separate Windows Install and User Files/Programs
Had to reinstall Asus, to create the USB drive, to restore the lenovo.

Did that, 
both survived the update this time (im guessing microsoft swapped it or it was UX Theme Patcher that caused the boot issue)

Look at the external drive where skyrim data was saved
Along with UX Theme Patcher, The Theme, and a game called QUBE
None of that copied.

Now lost both Skyrim data (~20-30 hours) and Far Cry 3 data (~17-20 hours)
Feels bad man.

>>Bedtime

Next day, both are restored, up to date, I installed a new program called EaseUS Disk Backup to backup both windows installs, feeling good.

>>Open external drive
>>Look for my backed up userfolder
>>Its not there.

Now my loss has expanded, from savedata, to nearly everything I've ever created.

Entire Music Library (86+ Albums, all with ID3 tags I edited, all with album art from my files)
Entire photo library (~5 gb's, many not uploaded)
FL Studio created files (songs and cover tracks I made)
Text files containing all songs/tabs I wrote
ALL the programs I created across ALL the languages I've dealt with
(AutoIT 2 & 3, C++, Python, & HTML)

I cant even count the days I've lost, regarding all of this. This is a terrible feeling, losing something so immense. 

If you create Anything on your computer, you need to back it up. 
Not just once, put it on a server, put it on a flash drive, put it on a disc, more than one place.
Because in my case the Backup failed.

Google Drive now allows you 15gb between Gmail, Drive, and Google+ Free

Microsoft Skydrive allows you 7gb Free

A Box account will give you 5gb Free

EaseUS Todo Backup will allow you to backup your Windows Install or Files (or both) on a backup media such as a (large) flash drive, or external harddrive. For Free

Lastly, Sync Toy for Windows will allow you to sync a folder(s) between media (Paritition/Flashdrive/Harddrive) and allows for many options such as updating files, adding to files, or straight synchronization.

>>SyncToy used to backup Userfolder on to Flash drive


Do not let your hours of time go to waste.
Do not let your creativity go to waste
Do not Lose your memories, creations, work, and progress.

Back
Up
Your
Data



~Rudy

The Joys of Windows 8: Lenovo Y500 ExpressCache guide.

Its been months since my last post. Actually over a year.
Ive long since given away my xperia play to someone who needed it.
So that whole post was kinda useless.
I bought a new Ideapad Y500 from Lenovo. And ive been loving it.
Until Windows 8 May 2013 update fucked my install, and I had to reinstall.

I thought I knew exactly what I was doing as well. I was far from knowing what I was doing.

---
EXPRESS CACHE
---

Lets start with the hardest part, Intel Rapid Storage / ExpressCache
This was the hardest thing to do, Myself I thought id end up installing windows on the drive, and that'd be done, Turns out the 16gb SSD is used for cache'ing.

1. First of all, you need to have the SSD unpartitioned. if you don't have a windows disc handy, you can just run diskmgmt.msc , find your SSD (in my case it was the 14.3gb drive) and press DEL. That'll ask if you want to delete all the volumes, then the disc should disappear and you're ready.

2. There is two links I had success with for this part.
     - Number One - I installed this first (RUN AS ADMIN)
     - Number Two - Then I ran this (ALSO ADMIN)

After this you SHOULD be running ExpressCache, and there's a nice way to check
Create a .bat file with the following line:

start cmd.exe /k "eccmd.exe -info

Run this as admin, and if it returns some sort of table, then it is successful, if not you probably assumed having UAC off would incur that you ran the program as admin, and it did not.

Now we have ExpressCache back. But what about Intel Rapid Storage?
Well it turns out that's just an updated driver for AHCI, which does increase your harddrive management. (I didn't research this part too much)

So you can just install intel rapidstorage from intel themselves, since expresscache will be doing the cache'ing.