LP Update/Comment Thread

[IskatuMesk]

The FTP situation likely means the end of my public production unless the Mexican sleuth can pull through.

/edit

My Guild Wars 2 video would have been out on sunday if Vegas would let me just fucking render it. But instead it has to crash and/or throw vague errors instead, as if there's something different about this video than the last 40 fucking videos.

[IskatuMesk]

I have suddenly run into two very severe problems that are not likely to soon correct themselves.

1.) Either shaw capped my upload or their node is having serious trouble and my upload is capped at near-56k speeds.

2.) The new 3tb green I bought is now claimed it is unformatted and at best all of the files on it are totally inaccessible, at worst it crashed and I lost all of that invaluable data including all of my video data, a massive amount of resources including a ton of stock footage/audio, a shitton of stuff I had moved off the other drives to make way for recordings, etc... the loss would be enormous.

The inescapable hardware problems, the nonstop issues with the FTP and the internet, and the exhaustion of dealing with them means this very well is likely the end of the road for my content production as a whole.

/update

We believe we know WHY the drive is malfunctioning but I need to figure out a solution to fixing it. Supposedly drives exceeding 2.2TB on NTFS will run into this and fuck over their MFT.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

We believe we know WHY the drive is malfunctioning but I need to figure out a solution to fixing it. Supposedly drives exceeding 2.2TB on NTFS will run into this and fuck over their MFT.

When it comes down to this, your last hopes are often special programs to read drives more "cluster"-wise rather than overrelying on the MFT (or stuff like that, likely to go into some sort of DOS) and hope you can still recover a reasonable amount of your files.

Avoid at all costs anything that makes additional writes (even windows' subtle temporaly files or file deletions, etc.) on said drive before you use such programs to minimize files lost.

[IskatuMesk]

Yeah. I'm working with Parted Magic right now. GParted can't tell what the file system even is, so this is a bit more hosed than what we had hoped. I'm trying some other stuff but, really... I don't have much hope. This will be the worst loss of data I have ever suffered.

/edit

I am attempting to recover the partitions with Testdisk but it takes a very long time to analyze. The first pass detected an Invalid FAT boot sector which, according to my peters, may be the reason why it's flipping out. Currently, I'm doing a deeper scan and will attempt recovery when it's finished.

If Testdisk allows me to recover the files I will cull my recording drives, pull them off, and reformat that drive before using it again. Then finally this horrible disaster will come to an end.

If Testdisk does not permit recovery then the situation becomes very dire indeed.

As for the internet, I am now 90% sure that shaw is intentionally throttling my upload. This means that the GW2 video has been repeatedly delayed due to necessary restarts and other activities because it estimates over 500 minutes to upload. My pings are utterly insane and make playing anything with any upload activity impossible. Hilariously enough, my downstream is totally untouched and I can pirate at a whim if I want to. All this does is harm my legitimate activities. Point? None. Canada, making progress.

Lavarinth is making progress on the site but keep in mind since I do not know HTML or php nothing on the site is controlled by me except for the casts themselves. All comments and notes are made by him or ported from my thread.

/edit 2

My efforts to recover with testdisk have failed.

/edit 3

After repeated failures to make any progress I have no choice but to declare this a lost cause. I won't reformat the drive, so one day I'll try to do a direct image copy of some nature. But, until then, I have not only lost 3tb of storage but also most of my work and resources from the last 7 years.

This is the end of my production of mods and mod-related assets, including the two projects I was working on (Retribution and Apex).

The video data I have lost includes all LP's from GOW1 and beyond, a ton of private videos including a WoW pvp series, and more. Since the FTP decided to axe these files as well I am in serious trouble.

[IskatuMesk]

The drive is considered lost, but I have one more plan I will enact in the future to attempt recovery. Repairing the MFT and such seems unlikely to happen given the extensive efforts I went through with testdisk and gparted, but there's still two more options available. The first is Photorec, which bypasses file systems to copy files. But I don't have the space for a 2.5tb copy. So, I must drop a lot of bank and buy another 3tb + enclosure to attempt this. The second option is a direct image copy which then would need reversing, ultimately also needing another drive.

I did a full assessment of what exactly I had on that hard drive to get a full idea of what I lost.

- The drive had a full backup of the previous external (that still works), I think this is around 1.1 terabyte or so. This is a fair chunk of music and data.

- The drive contained all of my stock video resources. I used some of this in Black Sun: Salvation. Easy to re-acquire.

- The drive contained my entire downloads directory from Win7 beta and around that era which I estimate is around 300-400gb of music and resources. This is not backed up anywhere else and is the most significant loss, since it comprises almost all of my rare soundtracks and eastern/european music mandatory for projects like Black Sun and for general listening.

- The drive contained all of my LP files excluding my re-encode of Hunted (which has no audio) and The Ball (which remains to be fixed). Hunted is therefore cancelled unless photorec can recover the files.

- The entirety of the unreleased Space Marine LP is lost.

I was told the LP folder on the FTP was "moved" and not "deleted". This insinuates that when we resolve the issues the folder will be restored and I can re-acquire the missing files of existing releases. Thanks to the help of andr_w, hks, and killer 11, I was able to restore the entire library for my private WoW pvp series which I may end up making public after all. However, because none of the private developer material was distributed in immediate memory, it is all lost.

The biggest loss of this drive failure is the J downloads directory. This contained a colossal amount of resources, including a massive amount of rare music that I am not likely to find ever again. The loss of the other material, like the SM LP, is regrettable but not the end of the world. Thankfully, I did not move my Salvation or Retribution data to the drive like I planned, so I avoided losing all of my 3d and audio assets. Laziness pays off yet again (I've avoided similar problems in the past by being lazy).

Whether my recovery attempts fail or succeed in the future I plan to mirror the two 3tb drives for redundant backup purposes to avoid this problem from happening ever again. If I somehow find a briefcase filled with money I intend to dump it into a tape drive backup system. But I won't, so two 3tb clones will have to do.

/edit

In a turn of events, it is remembered that I gave HKS a significant number of soundtracks from that downloads directory a while back. I will be able to restore some of my library.

[ArcCain]

Did anyone download all of your LP´s?

[IskatuMesk]

Supposedly they're all still on the FTP somewhere, we just need them moved back.

The Mexican is working as hard as his little boyish hands can, but if you want him to work harder, it's time to break out the spicy burritos.

[IskatuMesk]

Some updates -

We expect restoration of the FTP very soon (today). Lavarinth is to thank for this as he has worked tirelessly, around the clock (and around the fence) to get this show back in motion. As a result of his work, we now have a dedicated website for the LP's and future projects - www.gameproc.com. Note that he manages the site (because I am inept), so all the stuff there is his work except for stuff copied from the LP thread (which I plan to maintain alongside everything else anyways).

I have discovered why my internet is so slow - somehow, my package changed. I was on an old contract with 2.5mb that is now deprecated, and somehow I ended up on a new one that replaced it with 1/5 the upload speed. To get where I was before I not only have to buy a modem but also pay a lot more money a month. I figure I'll go the extra mile and get an actual upgrade for 500kb/s upload. The cost will be very steep, especially with the HD I need to buy, but I have little choice because as it is the internet is practically unusable. I am footing this bill exclusively for my LP productions at this rate.

[IskatuMesk]

The FTP is back up and the LP's with it. Horray!

[ArcCain]

YaY!

[IskatuMesk]

My new modem for my "new" internet should be coming sometime this week. I've also ordered the secondary 3TB drive for my recovery attempts that I will pursue upon its arrival.

The cost for the V crash has already reached $230 plus the lives of however many interns are claimed during my massive transfer zoo going on.

Whether or not the recovery attempts succeed, I'll be using this existing drive as a redundancy backup for all things placed on the new one when the dust settles. The goal is to have a virtually failsafe backup plan for all of my valuable data, including my 3d models and remaining video/audio assets.

I cannot ever allow this to happen again. There must be a plan in place to prevent major data loss.

For LP's specifically, no progress has been made on Demon's Souls in quite some time due to the heat, exhaustion, and unexpected workloads. It is likely that Guild Wars 2 will arrive before I am anywhere close to finishing the game, and so I expect LP production to extend much longer. The biggest problem, however, is that I am just not having any fun playing the game. Too much grind, no progression.

It seems likely I will acquire Darksiders 2 and start running that alongside Demon's Souls when it comes out.

[IskatuMesk]

I have now downed quite a few bosses in Demon's Souls and am gradually becoming more and more enraged by the constant need to grind and the repeated stupid deaths I put myself through. Because of the need to grind, I've started to stop recording farming sessions (which I say inside the video) to save on needless viewing time, because the LP is already excessively long.

This will make me at least as enraged as Conan, but probably more consistently enraged. I'm sure I spent the last two hours swearing at myself non-stop.

ETA is who knows, but I might do Darksiders 2 to take a break.

[IskatuMesk]

Demon's Souls is at an estimated 30-35 hours of playtime right now. 10 segments equates to like 25 hours. Holy shit. I think I'm only 1/3 ways through the game.

It felt really grindy during gameplay but really there's only a few really "slow" parts during playback, but the commentary is always going so this isn't necessarily bad. At least not in my eyes. Demon's Souls is a nonstop struggle against my sanity, the game, and the weather. I spend most playtime being mad.

I don't plan to cut any more then what I am cutting in my playtime. I may, however, spoiler "important" segments if you're only interested in seeing bosses go down or major shit happening. Each segment will average 2-3 hours and 1.5-1.6 gigs. Pretty fly for a white guy.

I barely started Darksiders 2 before I got pissed off and ragequit because of how they WoW-ified it, but more importantly because I want to focus on Demon's Souls first.

[IskatuMesk]

There is no updates because nothing is happening. I foresee no releases in the remainder of 2012 if at all. I had hoped I could recover strength for casting and get a lot done this year. As always, I was wrong. Even if I finish Demon's Souls it's probably the last LP I'll do.

It is highly unlikely I will do another podcast or MGEC wave. I formally withdraw all service and VA offers I may have given in the past except for neph. My production days are over.

[IskatuMesk]

I have added some previously private/unreleased material to the Mesk Content Extras portion of the LP thread. This is all I can offer for the time being.