this really blows..

theultimatebrucelee · Post by **theultimatebrucelee** » Thu Jul 01, 2010 7:23 pm

so I was all saved up and planed out and getting ready for AX yesterday, and this random moment occurred where I was trying to move my ex-HD along with laptop to a different location, and the next thing I knew my hand slipped and the ex-HD(4 months old) dropped to the ground and exploded!! ...ok it didn't explode but was no longer functional carrying around 500gb data of this and that and my memory just went blink that instant..

the next thing I knew I was at local Fry's trying to get a "memory implant" as well as a new harddrive, at their"lab" they said they would charge 150$ for the surgery, 35$ just to check wither its possible to do or not, and of course I'll need 100$+ for a decent new ex-HD. so uh..there goes 2/3 of my AX fund..told me they'd call me within a week and tell me if its possible or not, furthermore they also recommended me another place and told me that its for sure possible to restore everything within a new HD, tho it could cost up to 500$!!! and that'd be devastating to my poor student budget as I don't even have it!

so now I'm at home with nothing better to do than spamming away..lesson learned: always have backup:x next chance I get first thing I'll do is getting two ex-harddrives..

Sky Rat · Post by **Sky Rat** » Thu Jul 01, 2010 9:24 pm

Yiiiikes that sucks. I'd have a panic attack if my ex harddrive died. I probably ought to get a second one too.... I hope you recover everything! The timing probably seems tragic, but at least it happened before you spent all your money, and not after leaving you no way to fix things.

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Thu Jul 01, 2010 10:10 pm

Sorry to hear about that. That's messed up. So you were going to go to AX, but now you're not? Argh. Were you going to stay at a hotel?

Hope they are able to get it working. When I used a recovery program on my hard drive last year it came up with 14,000 photos. Most those photos were crap. It was a big mess.

Next year the Fourth of July is on Monday right? Maybe I'll attend next year. When is the Cel Panel usually on Saturday night? I might have to go back to work on Sunday since I work retail. I also get paid time and a half for working the Fourth of July.

EDIT:

Wah...they had three gaming panels eh? Interesting! I guess there's no need for a Cel Panel anymore right?

theultimatebrucelee · Fri Jul 02, 2010 12:44 pm

@Sky Rat, thanks man, yeah I got look on the bright side, its better now than later...but then its even better if this never happened..guess I'm just not meant to be there first day, perhaps someone is looking for the same cels I was gonna buy and their destined to have it lol anyways yesterday the lab dude told me ex-HD is for data backup only that way vessel still reming if either container fails, but 500gb labtop is just not big enough..whatever, double security from now on!

@Keropi, yeah I wasn't gonna go anymore, But! I'm having second thoughts on it since it is once a year and all, wonder if I can still manage one day without hotel expenses and all that..maybe I should..push the HD matter to later date lol gosh I really don't have much idea about the gaming panel and cel panel since I wasn't into cel collecting last time I was there, should check around more carefully this year! and yeah man, I really hope you can make it next year, for some reason I get along really well with people with more wisdom and exp since I'm all ears

zerospace · Post by **zerospace** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 6:21 pm

Is the HD totally unreadable? If you have another computer, I'd recommend in the future you try the following recovery software before forking over that kinda cash:

http://www.file-recovery.net/

The combination of their File Recovery software plus Partition Recovery will work in many instances of HD damage. Of course, if the hard drive is mechanically dead, it won't help much (the drive's read/write heads must be intact and at least in a semi-workable state). If the heads are dead (hearing a lot of clicking and inability to read the disk generally indicates this) then you'd have to remove the drive's platters to be able to read them ... yeah, that'd cost seriously big $$, and is a darn good reason why you should keep backups of all your data on either other HDs or some form of optical (DVD, CD) media.

Best of luck to you!

theultimatebrucelee · Post by **theultimatebrucelee** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 9:39 pm

well this definitely is something I need to look into..tho I'm having a bit trouble understanding all the options it offers..really need a basic computer class lol

I'm not sure if its unreadable but when I turn it on its got this click click sound and according to the company that made it(on phone), the thing will no longer be functional, but they also told me I could try to break the case and take out a part inside and somehow restore the data if I had a computer(which I don't, besides my already full laptop), which I think this software might of done the trick, if I knew it existed..

in any case I need to try out the free trial version in the future. I already paid for the recovery and new harddrive yesterday which was over 300$ total and can't even afford another backup extra one yet, maybe next week when I get paid*poor*

thanks alot for this useful info

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 11:49 pm

theultimatebrucelee wrote:@Keropi, yeah I wasn't gonna go anymore, But! I'm having second thoughts on it since it is once a year and all, wonder if I can still manage one day without hotel expenses and all that..maybe I should..push the HD matter to later date lol

Let me know how it goes.

So you attended Anime Expo in the past eh?

I really hope you can make it next year, for some reason I get along really well with people with more wisdom and exp since I'm all ears

Hopefully next year. I needed more reasons to go and there seem to be more of them now. I was surprised to hear that Anime Link got sketches. The gaming panels would be interesting too. The Charity Auction is no longer interesting to me because I could never afford something decent anymore.

If worse comes to worse I could always camp out in my motel room between interesting panels. But the panels are different than the ones that were around before. I still can't believe I was lugging around my ITOYA folder that one year when I went to the Maison Ikkoku panel.

theultimatebrucelee · Post by **theultimatebrucelee** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 1:06 am

yeah, this IS my second time attending expo, done it this morning

was able to plan this out last minute with a few friends and in the end it kinda worked out.

over at the vendor panel I was able to meet midori, gonzai, animeobsessed as well as another collector that also likes kikyo(I'm horrible at names-_-")

now two regrets I had, saw this really nice kikyo cel I would've gotten but didn't have the money for it. secondly, over at the dating sim game(manga gamer)booth, I saw this Humongous-Not For Sell-wall scroll of school days(the image of school days LE version game cover perfectly fitted)!!!! and it is going to be the lucky draw prize for their last day! god how I wish I could just be there tomorrow and offer all the money I have to the winner of lucky draw for it..it would just be Impossibalicious(self claim #1fan of school days) XD

tho when I got home some thing even worse than my harddrive problem happened and my day(+weeks or months to come) just got totally ruined by it

--my new goal in life now is to make as much money as I can possibly handle.

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 7:14 pm

Did anyone have their moniker on their namebadge? Do they even allow that these days? How does that work?

Sounds like you had fun at AX. Did Mangagamer announce any new English translated games such as KimiNozo? Who was on that School Days wall scroll?

Sorry to hear you have other troubles.

Yeah, that's the best reason to attend...meeting other people. The internet hasn't affected that aspect of attending....as much.

theultimatebrucelee · Post by **theultimatebrucelee** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 8:26 pm

Keropi wrote:Did anyone have their moniker on their namebadge? Do they even allow that these days? How does that work?

well that...I didn't pay attention, but the fact that animeobsessed had to introduce others to me prably means something, or not. and yeah I'm pretty sure there was nicknames..but I got fooled by my noob friends and ended up following them with real names lol there really, really friendly people, I believe anime obsessed was trying to tell me that the images in the cel books are in fact anime cels and not posters before I told her I'm a collector

Sounds like you had fun at AX. Did Mangagamer announce any new English translated games such as KimiNozo? Who was on that School Days wall scroll?

not sure about that either as I was just too busy choosing loots thats affordable, but heres the wall scroll image: http://blog-imgs-27-origin.fc2.com/y/o/ ... _cover.jpg

it definitely looks much better and more impressive on the scroll tho.

and I'm fine, at least for now, I hope lol currently trying to see if I can solve the problem but again money is really the key to everything and also something I lack

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 12:11 pm

I couldn't get the picture to at all. I tried various methods.

I wonder if Curt will be able to get to my e-mail once he gets back home and gets settled. I sent him an e-mail sixteen days ago, but he could have been dealing with a bunch of issues at the time including preparing for trips.

How was the registration line when you were there? Were you waiting long?

EDIT:

Must have been bad. I never gotten a reply when I've asked about AX registration lines.

theultimatebrucelee · Post by **theultimatebrucelee** » Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:06 pm

the image is the first one down where everyones on the stairs, and its more impressive on the scroll because its sooo huge and the material which its made out of is really nice: http://youranimekan.blog61.fc2.com/blog ... ry-26.html

wonder who got it in the end..

well judging by the time it took me to reply, the ticket line is just..well we went to the line with a few hundred people ahead of us and then found out that were in the wrong line and those people all purchased tickets online and waiting to pick them up. so then we went to one of the main building I think which is where tickets were sold and lo and behold...three people in front of us and we went though the whole process in less than 5 minutes, right outside the holy vendor hall

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Wed Jul 07, 2010 4:36 pm

theultimatebrucelee wrote:the image is the first one down where everyones on the stairs, and its more impressive on the scroll because its sooo huge and the material which its made out of is really nice: http://youranimekan.blog61.fc2.com/blog ... ry-26.html

Oh that one! Yeah, I remember that picture.

well judging by the time it took me to reply, the ticket line is just..well we went to the line with a few hundred people ahead of us and then found out that were in the wrong line and those people all purchased tickets online and waiting to pick them up. so then we went to one of the main building I think which is where tickets were sold and lo and behold...three people in front of us and we went though the whole process in less than 5 minutes, right outside the holy vendor hall

Hmm...you were fortunate there. In the past, it was difficult to tell which way of getting in was faster. Sometimes it took us few minutes or half an hour and sometimes we waited over three hours. Sometimes preregistering helped and sometimes it was worse doing it. Have no idea how they are handling things now.

theultimatebrucelee · Post by **theultimatebrucelee** » Wed Jul 07, 2010 6:24 pm

well maybe because it was the 3rd day already, but then again it really sucks for those who ordered tickets online...and last year we went on the first day in the morning and actrully had to wait 3+hours to even get inside the building. then again, its definitely cheaper to order online early, just got this email last night about some special offer ends on july 9th, 4days for 45$! but I'm broke lol

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Wed Jul 07, 2010 6:52 pm

Heck...I'd pay an extra $50 to avoid standing in a three and a half hour line. I hate standing in lines. Are people even allowed to sit on the floor while waiting these days?

I wonder if I could buy a small square top cooler and sit on that. I used to have one of those and it worked perfectly. I think I'm getting a little too old to sit on the floor for three hours comfortably (even if they allowed us to sit on the floor).

If I attend there next year, I'll try to stay away from the events that'll annoy me (and the overcrowded events).

Is Anime Expo supposed to be July 6th-9th next year? That's perfect. They can't schedule it on the Fourth of July this time unless if they changed the days it's held on. But are the vendors going to feel like going there next year?

My dad is wondering if the bankrupt City of Los Angeles is raising fees at the Convention Center? He just retired from working for the City so he knows how screwed up they've been lately.