Short post here just to give you guys an update of what’s going on in my world.
It’s 3 days ’til Christmas and I’ve had the WORST week ever!
Everything has went totally wrong – big time!
Here’s a list of this week’s calamities:
- My phone broke (samsung galaxy s2) – I didn’t drop it and it wasn’t water damaged. The screen just decided to go totally black for some reason. Not a good time to be without your phone. £140 repair bill.
- My microwave broke. Not the end of the world but still.
- I’m sick. Not the end of the world either, but I get disappointed because it’s rare that I get ill. 🙁
- My hard drive was wiped! This really WAS the end of the world!
Yes. My crappy Dell laptop wouldn’t start up so I had to try and repair it somehow. The usual Windows repair disk didn’t work either.
I decided to try Dell’s “wonderful” Datasafe option that was appearing after bootup.
What it does is backup your hard drive, then formats it, and then puts all your stuff back. It didn’t work out exactly as planned, folks. Somewhere along the way it crashed during the process. Nightmare.
What I had to end up doing was installing Windows 7 from scratch on a formatted drive. Everything’s gone. Everything. The original word documents for all my books, all my workout logs, my book-keeping files, my pictures, testimonials, all my programs…everything!
The most disappointing part was that all of the work and research done in 2011 for the new membership site is also gone.
I bought a recovery tool and it was able to find some word and txt files. But the ones with the most work in them are totally gone. About 2 or 3 smaller files are there, but when I try to restore them, they’re corrupted (both Word and .txt files).
Any ideas on how to repair corrupted Word or .txt files? Not that it really matters because these files don’t contain the real meat of the research.
And yes, the MuscleHack Chow book is gone too. I can’t even think about re-writing it all again right now.
However, I will release the free calorie and protein calculator that was to come with the book. The guy that designed it for me will have a copy on his hard drive. 🙂
Oh yeah, and I almost broke my arms squatting! 😯 The bar rolled off my back (totally my fault) and bent my arms way back. Ouch! The bar fell hard on my safety pins and bent them out of shape. So I gotta order new ones.
After saying all this, I’m actually UPBEAT today 😀 No joke!
This is a challenge. And a challenge always brings opportunities for growth.
I’ve bought an external hard drive for backups, and my computer is a lot more organized now. I’ve bought antivirus & spyware software, too. I also got a foam barbell pad for squatting.
Starting to work on the membership site from scratch will be a pain to begin with, but it’s an opportunity to make it even better than it was!
It won’t be ready for January 2012, guys. There’s just no way I could get that much work done that fast. Remember, even the research and references to studies are gone. It has to start from the very beginning again.
I’ll probably start blogging again in January. I’d love to have the membership site ready for February, but I can’t make any promises. For those who don’t yet know, this member’s only site focuses on simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain (yes it’s possible). It will also contain Advanced THT Training for the fastest strength and size progressions you’ve ever had!
After such a downer, there’s only one way to go. It’s all good from here on in! Plus I’ve learned some valuable lessons.
Like I say in this post, the path of least resistance is the path of pain. Learning the lessons, figuring out what needs to be done and starting the rebuilding process is where the opportunity is, so that’s all I’m focusing on now.
2012 is still going to be awesome!
Stay Motivated!
Mark
Mark,
A little late, but if you use Microsoft Office products you might want to sign up for Microsoft’s free “SkyDrive.” You get 25GB of free storage and basically it is cloud storage for all of your documents (and other stuff you want to upload).
You can even use their online versions of Word, Excel, etc. in the cloud, you can share documents with others and collaborate, etc. and best of all (for you) is that if your computer crashes you can access your documents from any other computer at any time…all free.
Get dropbox, it will never happen again. Afree program that can back up thousands of word/powerpoint/excel files. download it now before you start writing again. It really is a lifesaver when it comes to hdd crashes
Oh…and Merry Christmas everyone!! 😀
Really sorry to hear about the lost work, Mark. Although you’ll be busy for awhile, it won’t take as long as you think. It might be a good idea to get an online backup system in place for your important data like dropbox.com or box.net. Hang in there!
Hang in there Mark – I’m sure you’ll be back on top soon.
That’s such a shame, Mark. I know you bought the backup hard drive, but you might give cloud storage a try for extra ease of mind. Google’s (what I’m currently using) is super cheap and you know their storage is safe and secure. Just a thought. Anyway, happy holidays to ya!
That’s such a shame, Mark. I know you bought the backup hard drive, but you might give cloud storage a try for extra ease of mind. Google’s (what I’m currently using) is super cheap and you know their storage is safe and secure. Just a thought. Anyway, happy holidays to ya!
Thanks for the tips, guys! Will definitely look into them 🙂 @Don. True, it won’t take as long the second time around.
Sorry to hear of your bad week. But do hang in there. As a fellow fitness business owner, I too have lost LOTS of data from computer crashes, and it never comes at a time when you are ready for it. I guess the lesson learned for me is that you are never really ready for these things, no matter what you do. My best thought is to just stay the course and you’ll get through it. It does stink, but there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Merry Christmas to you, and all of your readers!
Mark,
i’ll fire you a message on FB. I might be able to help you recover some of those files. Also, I can help you get setup with one of a few online backup options as well if you want to go down that road. I’ll message you later today.
Merry Christmas to you too, bud! All the best for a healthy and prosperous 2012!
Adam
Hi there Mark,
Sorry to hear about your week from Hell, I’m not sure if this will help you or not, but I work in IT and I use to use an Appication called Active File Recovery for recovering files, (works well as long as you haven’t written too much data to the drive) It’s a app that you have to pay for,but you might be able to recover files with the demo version (it’s been a while since I used it)
As for recovering text from corrupt documents, in word there is an option when you go to open a file to select Recover Text from document, Word 2007 has this option on the Open button, the select Open and Repair, Hope this helps somewhat
Mark. i am sorry to hear that happening. I bought Carbonite last year and just a few months ago my computer bit the dust too. I was able to buy something off of ebay that I can hook up to hard drives and transfer that info to my laptop. I know the hassle of having the hard drive go like that. I trust things get sorted quickly. Have a wonderful Christmas in spite of all this. Take all of these issues to the manger scene. That is our only centre of hope. God Bless. Pete (Canada)
This happened to a friend of mine a while back too. She lost all her pictures from the past 5 years or so; she was crying. If I may throw in a suggestion, since what you are writing is usually important, I would look into professional off-site backup. Basically it will automatically back-up data you choose to an off-site server. So let’s say (heaven forbid) a fire breaks out in your house and you lose all your hard drives, including the backup ones, you will still have all your data. It’s also pretty cheap since I don’t think you will need much more than a couple of gigabytes for all the important stuff. I’m talking like a couple of euros per month and you never have to think about it again. In fact you can even skip the backup hard drives this way.
The cloud stuff is a cheaper/free alternative, but you actually have to manually copy files I think.
Anyway, working on my second week of TSPA, loving the results!! Just thought I’d add that. Good luck Mark!
My heart goes out to you Mark. Its great that you see the sunny side in all this…great attitude! Always your No. 1 Fan! Merry Christmas!
Another idea – for any past work, there are many tools for converting PDFs into Word or Excel. Presumably you have the PDFs on your web server somewhere? Also, many of your customers have the PDFs and so asking your favorite customers to send you a copy of everything they’ve gotten from you might help.
Mark … and apple a day keeps the doctor away – in more ways than one !
Eat an apple to stay healthy … !!!
Buy an Apple instead of Dell … !!!
Merry Christmas !!!
Im very very very sorry to read that…. But on every failure, you get up stronger !!! Walking tall Mark 😉 End sometimes God wants to learn us a lessons in a strange way… Keep the faith !!! Good luck !!!
Hey Mark,
Sorry to hear about all your troubles. Things happen in three’s, it seems. Thought I could give you a little feedback based on my similar experiences.
Hard drive crashes: It’s always going to happen. Best decision I made was finally sitting down and coming up with a solution to backups. crashplan.com has been a God-send for me both at work and home. Sounds like I’m hocking a product, but this is the best solution I’ve found. Not to mention utilizing dropbox.com for any kind of documentation. Also, Google Docs is great for writing since it’s all in the cloud.
Computer crash: Hate to be “that guy” to admit this, but Apple products are the way to go for me. Up until 5 years ago I used Windows products, and had multiple horror stories. I haven’t had a single problem since then, using Apple products. I had one crash, but it was a minor glitch and fixed running diagnostics app.
Hope this helps.
@Adam. Thanks
@Jonathan. I’ll def look up Active File Recovery and give it a try. I bought Undelete Plus yesterday.
@Peter @Suito @Darshan. Thanks for the support! 😀
@Darrin. Yes I have the TSPA uploaded so I can get the PDF and hopefully convert it back to Word for editing. I can also download THT 4 myself. Thanks!
@Scott. LOL. Don’t know if I’ll go apple, but this was second Dell, and it’ll be my last.
@Goce. Thanks, bud!
@Blake. Will take a look at crashplan. Thanks!
I second Dan. Get Dropbox right away. It seamlessly backs up all you documents in the cloud.
Do it now!!!! 😀
Hang in there Mark! Most everyone has to recover from a crash like that at one time or another…
Merry Christmas!
Sorry to hear this, Mark. I’ve learned the hard way that thumb drives (and online backup) are cheap insurance against losing data from a crashed hard drive.
Hope you still have a Merry Christmas.
Agree with everyone on the cloud backup. I use the free version of dropbox for automatic backup and instant access of my documents and Carbonite for larger files that I don’t need immediately if I lose them (large pictures, video files, music files). I used to backup to an external drive, but realized if some crazy thing happens to my laptop, it’ll probably happen to my external drive (burglary, fire, etc.).
Mark, if you have any files you cannot restore, try sending one to me to play with. I run linux and often I can work wonders sometimes.
I agree, a cloud system would be a good idea. All of my documents, spreadsheets, etc, are stored in Google docs which is completely free. No matter where I go, I can update the document and it keeps REVISIONS of each edit so you can always look at previous stuff you wrote or restore if needed. Additionally, you can export directly to Microsoft Office or PDF.
Get a Mac and you’ll never have that problem again.
After experiencing significant data losses myself, I now save all my data on separate hard-drive (my D:\ drive), while the operating system and all original programs remain on my C:\ drive. In addition, I back up all my data from the D:\ drive onto a separate hard-drive which is kept separate and apart from the computer. Here, all my back-ups are scheduled automatically. It sounds like a lot, but it’s really no big deal. When your entire life is on the line (so to speak), no price is too great, and it has saved me several times since.
Merry Christmas!
So sorry to hear that your hd crashed.
You should have told us as one of us might help you.
If it happen next time, use linux live cd to boot your computer and back up all the things you need. Linux live cd will not touch your hd but it can read and write your hd and transfer files from crappy hd to external drive.
Take care.
Merry Christmas.
Mark, what a horrible week. I feel for you. But you will overcome. I’m sure you know that too. Good luck with it.
Most shocking news was that you got ill. I actually feel better hearing that…because I got ill a few weeks back just as I was starting your 3-day split and felt like such a failure as I pride myself on never getting ill and never taking sick leave. So I’m sorry you were ill but it proves it happens to the best of us!!
I hope you have a really great Christmas Mark and all the ‘Hackers’ too.
Best wishes for 2012 everybody!
Wow Mark! That’s a lot of grief in a short period of time.
Sorry to receive the unfortunate news but I know you’ll recover and as painful as it can sometimes be; I also know from personal experience of a like situation that happened to me where I lost a lot of my hard-earned work in a hard drive crash, that you’ll simply make a comeback that was better than before.
The comments for using the cloud as a backup are cool, but I personally don’t like placing a lot of my personal stuff on a publicly shared network. I’d recommend good old fashioned duped image with regular incremental backups. Norton’s Ghost is excellent for that.
There is also another recovery tool available that I’ve used in the past that saved my butt a few times. Can’t recall the name right off hand, but I’ll find out and give you the name.
Hang in there champ! I know you’re comin’ back awesome and swingin’ hard!! 😉
Wow Mark! That’s a lot of grief in a short period of time.
Sorry to receive the unfortunate news but I know you’ll recover and as painful as it can sometimes be; I also know from personal experience of a like situation that happened to me where I lost a lot of my hard-earned work in a hard drive crash, that you’ll simply make a comeback that was better than before.
The comments for using the cloud as a backup are cool, but I personally don’t like placing a lot of my personal stuff on a publicly shared network. I’d recommend good old fashioned duped image with regular incremental backups. Norton’s Ghost is excellent for that.
There is also another recovery tool available that I’ve used in the past that saved my butt a few times. Can’t recall the name right off hand, but I’ll find out and give you the name.
Hang in there champ! I know you’re comin’ back awesome and swingin’ hard!! 😉
Merry Christmas Too!!!
Hey Mark,
It’s sad to here what happened! you having such a positive attitude towards it is really admirable and an example! Coming in January or February, no matter when, I’m looking forward to your new website (I guess I’m not the only one!)! Think of all the people your work has helped and will help!
Enjoy your Christmas and good luck!
Always install Linux on a separate partition in the same hard disk (even if you do not need it) with a GRUB program (free with every Linux disk) to choose which OS you want to work with. Since Linux is very stable, if Windows ever has problems starting up (always actually), you can still boot into Linux, mount the windows partitions, and copy all important files into the Linux partition. Then you can do whatever you want with your Windows knowing that your files are copied into Linux and safe.
Hang in there man! These things tend to happen in threes.
(in your case, fives! 🙂
No doubt, 2012 will bring triumphs that will make all this a distant memory!
Hi Mark,
In media school I had to switch to MAC. Since then, no problems of this nature OR viruses… or spending extra $ to get virus programs.
Feel better and have a great 2012!
CJ
First and foremost, merry Christmas!
Second I have to say, damn you are a wise man. I am positive everything is going to work out for you.
As for the computers: I used to hate macs, but now I have to use them at work (asst. Video editor) and I’m starting to come around! I would recomend them, these things can be pushed like an old horse and still work.
You might also want to look into cloud data storage, I think I saw a few people say that above, it’s not too expensive and could really save you if it happens again.
Lastly, I just bought TSPA for my fathers for Christmas, not only can your product change lives, it can also make a great gift haha!
Have a great holiday Mark.
What dosent kill you..makes you stronger..With that being said..nobody likes a week like that..but we are patient..cant wait for the new stuff mark..take your time and make it kick ass…merry christmas..
Very sorry to hear that Mark. Definitely look into uploading to dropbox and such, also for your next laptop I would recommend Asus G-series.
As for re-doing the work – often when you have to rewrite something without the benefit of the original the second version is much improved, so think of it as releasing a second version, not a recovered first.
Happy New Year!
-Joe
Hey Mark,
Just like the boxer floored from an unexpected punch, you gotta get back up and come back even stronger and you’ll win the fight!
After all if this wasn’t in your nature, you wouldn’t be lifting the iron, you’d just walk away and find something easier to do!
keep the faith bud’ we’ll still be here.
Kind regards, Graham
Hey Mark,
Is your website backed up? It’s unlikely but web hosting companies have screwed up in the past.
Merry Xmas!
Mark,
Sorry to hear that!!… well for future backup..try “mozy online” good backup system. I acttually use it to run my companies backup files.. All account database, financial database…
For recovery of your old hard drive you can try :
Recuva
It can only get worse. . . . .
Hi Mark, Everyone tell tou about computer but what about your health? are you ok? If u get cold buy Manuka Honey 15+ and should help really quick. Also I recommend 1000mg of vitamin C everyday in the morning before breakfast.
I use Manuka and is fantastic try and you see.Help u recover quicker is well from workout. I hope help u.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!
Your Upbeat Attitude…..That’s Why I’m A MuscleHack Fan!! Keep on plugging away, A Blessing instilled in us from the Good Lord!! Merry Christmas Mark McManus!! And your right, 2012 IS GONNA BE GREAT!!!
Total bummer. I guess a lot of us have learned that lesson. Although, I can’t imagine the frustration of losing a book that I was writing. That’s awful. Anyway, I bet you’ll be doing double back-ups from now on. Merry Christmas and thanks for all your help this past year. I’m a 50 year old with a darn good hard body because of you.
Hey Mark, that really sucks what happened to you. I feel for you man. I had a really crappy October and November that hit points so low, there was no other way to go except up and out of it. It’s taken tremendous effort on my part but now things are at least manageable just in time for the holidays. I just want to show support for you during this tough time. I’ve gained more in 4 months following your principles than I have in years of doing reps without reaching failure and that has definitely added to my overall optimistic view of life. Get better, stay strong, train hard, and keep moving forward!
Keep up the good work Mark, only good things shall come =)
mark i see it as a reset button it happens to us from time to time,and we a hackers we never give in.
Don’t worry bro. You’ve done so much already for us and now is the time of the year to put work aside and gym (which is really hard for me) and just chill with the family. When the new year starts then go for it!! Have great xmas Mark, Dont stress, father xmas might bring you something.
Hi Mark,
sorry to here your badluck with the hard drive.
Happened to me earlier this year lost everything movies (shh) family photos training logs and more. But this program saved my skin and recover EVERYTHING (Partition Find and Mount Pro 2.3)If you still have the drive give it a try.
Hope it helps, only wished i’d seen this earliar. Good luck.
And Merry Christmas to You & ALL muslce Hackers everywhere
Tom
Bad times… Good luck getting it all back together though. At least you didn’t break your arms!
Merry Christmas
isn’t it wierd how things go wrong in clusters. Been through it. Came out of it the other end 🙂
my compaq crashed and would not start up. Panicked a little. I did have an external hard drive but had not backed anything up (due to my own laziness).
for future reference, if your computer crashes and wont startup you dont need to buy any fancy software that might corrupt your files. You just connect the external hard drive to the computer via the usb port. then when your computer attempts to restart (but can’t) it gives you the option of starting up the “command prompt” which is a dos window. Open two different dos windows (one for your computer and one for your external drive)
in one of the dos windows you simply type “chdir” and the path where all you files are located (eg chdir c:\mydocuments).
in the other dos window try to find the “drive” letter for your external drive (for mine it was “f:”
then go back to the dos window for the computer and type “xcopy *.* f:\ /e)”
this will copy all the files from c:\mydocuments to the external drive including their folders. it will take some time to copy if there is a lot of stuff on there.
once it’s finished copying then in the external drive dos window type “dir” and it will show you all the folders and files that have been copied.
You can then switch off the computer and disconnect the external drive. The external drive can then be connected to a computer that works to check that all the information has been copied correctly.
Chin up and Merry Christmas.
Sugarsync.com
I currently pay $24/month for 250 gb. I think there a free 5 gb option. I like sugarsync over Dropbox because sugarsync allows file archival and not just backup and sync. Apps like these do the backup automagically and you can have access to your files from anywhere. Hard drives are too fragile (especially laptop hard drives) to be trusted. It seems like I’m replacing a hard drive (almost always my wife’s) every 6 months.
Hang in there Mark! Thanks for all your work & Merry Christmas!
Damn! Haha my computer died also, and I almost lost EVERYTHING, but what I did was that I downloaded Knoppix (it’s too late for that now) and I recovered my files, and then I formatted everything. I learned my lesson also though: ALWAYS BACK UP
If you use webmail, you might want to email your documents to yourself. It works great!
Thanks SO much all the advice and encouragement, everyone!
I’ve taken all the suggestions on board and for a start have downloaded dropbox. I’ve also got an external hard drive coming in the post.
As an update, I was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life yesterday! Within about 10 minutes my head got ridiculously sore and I was shaking all over. I put on 2 layers of clothes, put on both radiators in my bedroom, got under the duvet, and had a 4-bar fire blasting a foot from my face…and I was FREEZING! I actually shivered for a full 2 hours in that situation! I mean really shaking! It subsided and I’ve been in bed ever since. I’m only out now to write this, about 36 hrs straight in bed 🙁 no food. But I just had some tomato soup, which tasted awesome. I’m def on the mend now. Man flu? Dunno, but I actually thought I might die for a while. It’s definitely all up from here lol.
Mark, these are bad news to read to..I feel for you since I’ve lost critical data for some college papers, but managed to deliver anyway. And at the same time I am a TSPA purchaser and loyal reader of yours.
But you know? It is, at the same time, ‘good’ to see our heroes overcome hard times because it reminds us that you guys are human too, and that we are capable of achieving what we propose to, even if the obstacles resemble of titanic proportions.
Stay motivated and remember that you have a large base of admirers that have found inspiration in you, so never give up mate! (: