Make a backup.

Reserved

hoard>hardware ages over time or fails>sudden loss of data>become depressed for days>hoard

story of my life

The same happened to me some months ago, I lost two drives (one SSD, one HDD), so many "unfinished projects" (programming rather than music), notes, files, digital hoard, etc.. I know the pain too well :(

Yikes. RIP. What happened, has happened. Its fine, you'll recover (nothing intended there😬) somehow.
As for me, I did get a heartattack in the recent months, when my laptop wasnt turning on or rather looping at the start. Probably becz I dropped it a couple of times in that week. That issue went away, but I was afraid that id lost my analysis and raw data. Backed it up to the cloud there and then. Unfortunately I didn't get into the habit of taking regular backups. Maybe i will now!

i know how you feel.... i should make backups of stuff.... i recently lost a phone and a lot of valuable stuff on it for me, a phone or pc can be replaced but whats on it not, i lost many sentimental pictures of pets thats passed away, stuff like that but if i would lose my pc i would litteraly lose money (mostly steam keys i have saved) and other stuff

It is no use crying over split milk.🍼
There are many words similar to this on earth.😭

🙄Let's think about it the other way around.

You have been given the opportunity to create something better than your previous work.🍀

I hope this experience will contribute to your creation.

[The following is for those who have not backed up and is not for you]
SSDs have faster read/write performance, but the limit is much lower than HDs.
Backup to external media will be necessary.
Compared to hard disks, I think it is more common for SSD data to be erased by electrical shocks.
In the case of HDs, the data can often be recovered, although the HD base is usually replaced because the base is damaged in the same environment.

But in any case, data backup is essential, and many people write out their data to external media each time.
(It's not funny because the very act of backing up can cause a breakdown.)

For example, in CLIP STUDIO PAINT and Illustrator, the forbidden act is to save directly to an external HD.
Some music editing software also recommends saving the data to the main unit and then copying it, but this became a hassle and there were people who falsely claimed that the hardware was the cause because the data was not saved on the backup media.
...Remember, someone else will be annoyed by that excuse....
If you have software that you intend to patronize, be sure to read through the notes. You can avoid ruin.

It's a shame, usually they can recover datas even from a very damaged HDD.

i'm crossing all my fingers for you !

View attached image.

You cannot reverse what happened but the experience is still in you. You can create something even better.

For backups, it's a good idea to make it a habit, a monthly routine. You can set reminders for this, but perform that when it's time. Never neglect it. Also, always have more than one backup. If you have the instruments, it's much better to automate things (for example, syncthing is a nice tool). And one of the backups should be a good old HDD. Recoverability of HDDs is much much better than SSDs and it's worse with NVMe drives.

You'll mourn this for a while but I wish you good luck for your future creations.

I have lost two drives in a space of 15years or so. Neither were recovered. Most was just downloaded stuff, games, music but even some obscure TV shows that I managed to track down, never to be seen again. But also a large portion of emails, quite a few years of them (saved locally from defunct internet provider), photos that I can't find anymore, personal stuff.. unrecoverable. It was devastating, both times..
I wish I could say something that would help, nothing really helps in this situation..
..but the thought that.. YES.. you can still do more, you can still create, you have the ability, you are, basically, still alive! And I know it may sound cringy or otherwise, but it is the truth.
You most likely don't want to hear anything right now and you go through infinite negative thoughts and what-ifs, and that is also a process. And when it passes, with a calmer mind (yes it will happen, in time), you may revisit this thread and may start thinking more positively again.. and you can start creating again, from a new perspective, with new thoughts and, yes, experiences..
Stay sane..

Or 5% may turn out 100%.. and you can keep this as just a reminder of things that can happen..

Bummer, SSD is a nanoscale device using principles of quantum physics. If retrieval with software tools fails I assume data recovery is complicated. Even an electron microscope wouldn't help much as structures are so tiny.

I don't think there is anything I can say that will suit this tragedy, but I still wish to give you a commiserating pat to mourn the loss. The loss of beautifully inspired creation into the petty digital void. Some may frown on me for making this comparison, but from reading your description above, I vicariously feel the dread in the gut and the loss in something so special must feel like losing a child in the womb. But once you recover from it (we all can recover from something as long as it's not our own deaths), you may just find a new spark of inspiration waiting for you in the unlikeliest of moments, and create something even better like Kappa & others said above.

I too know I really should go do a backup. I even have the software ready for it. But the initial backup size of what I have in my laptop would be over 10x my available HDD space, and just thinking about that, I have no idea how to even begin, short of buying yet another HDD, of which current physical space and funds would advise against. My very old backups take up stacks of CDs and the newer-old ones take up big blocks of externally-powered HDDs that lie in the dust somewhere. From newer laptops onwards, I no longer do backups because it just takes up so much resources exponentially, especially if you follow multiple-backup practices like the 3-2-1 strategy. I do have the most critical GBs stored in the free cloud spaces like OneDrive, GDrive, etc, so I just hope for the best with that. But it's never a good feeling when we inevitably lose our belongings, be it digital or not. I truly hope the light of hope shines soon for you again!

Sad to hear what happened. Most of us have "that important thing" that would be the worst thing if we lose it because a disk failed, or whatever.

Over the course of my life I've had several HDs and one SSD converted into a brick. The last one was that SSD. It suddenly wouldn't respond. Reboot? No drive. No system. Used a GParted livecd, nothing. And yes I went full panic. Lost a lot of personal stuff, no money to replace it, etc. So I turned computer off and went to bed quite depressed. Next day I got some money from someone and I was ready to dress and go out for a new SSD, but nothing would recover what I had there. As I often do, I "tried once more". And miracle! The disc booted! So without hesitation I made a full image backup into one of the HDs, and a bootable CD to recover the image (Macrium Reflect free version, so useful over the years). After that I examined the SSD and I don't remember what program I used it said it was in poor health.

I went for the new SSD, booted from the recovery CD, transferred the image, and I had the system just like the previous day. Maybe some data was lost. Minimal consequences. The old SSD never booted up again. I still have it somewhere. But whenever I see somewhere someone telling that they put the SSD in the fridge to cool it down and then it lived enough to recover stuff, I believe it. I still believe it would boot if it's cool (room temperature).

I wish your story would finish like mine. Really. I know that gut feeling. It's quite horribly terrible.

Aftermath: I set up a few things. A little program (Create Synchronicity) to create mirror copies of important folders in an HD that had no important folders. I had daily copies, but after a severe mistake I made both daily and weekly copies. And every first of month I would do some cleaning so the backups would be smaller, then I'd make mirror folder refreshing, then compressed copies of those folders, already neatly arranged to do so, add an image of the system drive, and put into a pendrive. I have done it for +5 years until this one, because this year I mainly don't care about anything much anymore. I've still done one or two in the way. The daily and weekly copies are still being done automatically. In these years I've had to go back to one of those copies, either of the folders or of the system image, so yes the effort is worth it.

As I said I only use three programs. Create Synchronicity is somewhat outdated but it does what I want in the way I want. Programmable copies of certain folders. I also use the free version of Macrium Reflect 7. You can make a recovery CD or USB of your system, with your drivers and everything, to boot up and inspect an image or transfer it to a drive. It also can mount an image as another disc so you can inspect and copy from it all you want. It respects UAC but never got in the way for a single user computer. And finally 7zip to make the compressed copies of the folders. It's all redundantly redundant but in a way that minimizes losses in case of disaster.

Your loss is very bad, and I've heard similar stories. The thing is, will you learn? Also, as NeverOnline remarked, you can create more. You might do things inspired or close to what you already composed. Yes you lost your creation, but you can create more. I wish you the best.

In 2021, my first M2 SSD died, after 3 years of service, with no S.M.A.R.T. warning. I turned off my laptop at night, and it couldn't boot back on the next morning.
In BIOS, I still saw the disk, but with a live USB, the disk had trouble reading data. It just hanged there.

I bought a replacement SSD and an SSD case. I placed the faulty SSD in the SSD case to check it.
It turned out something was wrong with the disk's controller. It was very hot while staying idle. I didn't remember it was hot this way normally.
I could see the file and folder structure, but I couldn't neither read from nor write into it.

It was a system disk. No important personal data here, and I had backups. All were good, right?
It turned out I made a critical mistake. I didn't try to practice recovering the data before. For some reason, I can't figure out the recovery process 🤦‍♂️.

Finally, I decided to reinstall Windows and software from scratch instead of fixing the data recovery.

So the lesson here is that you need to do backup regularly. You also need to practice data recovery, at least one, to have an overview of what is needed and what the steps are.
Ideally, you should try practicing recovery on another empty partition, not your working partition, and then check if the computer can boot from there.

I'm sorry for you, but we as IT workers say: no backup, no pity

I mean, it can be cost intensive to have a full backup of your full hoarding, but most stuff (like movies) can be redownloaded. Please just make backup of your photos, documents etc. - they are rather small in size and it's fine if you have the data on two sites. (in case of fire etc.)

This also applies to cloud services, you still need to have two storage sites, like local -> cloud. But not just cloud, the providers claim they have reliable backups, but they can and will also fail.

I have a 8TB NAS and i do a 100% backup with 2 other 2x 4TB drives and different computer at a different site. But i want to scale backup and just backup important stuff, to have more space avaiable. I can redownload torrented movies.

Photos not yet on my NAS are on my mobile storage, on Google Photos and on Icloud. A bit too much, but that doesn't hurt.

About recovering from a damaged drive, yeah it's possible. But that doesn't cost hundreds, more like thousands. Just do it, if you can afford it and if the data is that important

For automation use stuff like rsync on Linux and robocopy on Windows + task stuff like cronjob (linux) or the windows task scheduler.

I also despise shitty external hard drives, because they tend to get too warm, have shitty air flow. Then they fail. It's no problem (2 sites storage rule), but it can be annoying and expensive.

Would rather just buy a HDD and some possibility to slot it into your computer with SATA connectors.

I'm so sorry to hear of your misfortune, while I've never had anything to lose on the order of magnitude that you obviously had, a catastrophic HDD failure is always something I feared. I came too close one time, when an old computer booted up and I heard the ominously bad sound of a failing mechanical HDD. Fortunately I had time to get all my critical files off before the drive failed for good a couple of days later. Even now without substantial internet I still try to backup new or important files to an external HDD at least every couple of weeks, unless I forget of course. But we're only human, it's easy to let things slip when everything is going well, doesn't help when the worst comes obviously.

We can only hope that professionals can recover something at least, I can only hope this doesn't curtail your creative endeavours too much in the future. If nothing can bring back the work you've done, then at least you can begin anew with a safety net. Thank you for the giveaways in what must be a tremendously stressful time.

Oh man, I feel your pain. Something similar happened to me yeaaaars (it was actually decades) ago and I lost old photographs I was in the process of restoring. I have automated backups ever since.
I am sending you good vibes for recovery of your precious data but remember what you created is inside you. You might not think you can recreate it and you probably will not recreate it exactly but you can create again. So breathe and let the music flow through you.

on the other hand, now you can approach the project from a new angle with different vision and who knows, maybe it will be even better than before

I learned the hard way as a kid that all data is temporary, except when it's not (but it actually still is). And by that, I mean that you should always assume your data will eventually be lost from every device or service you use. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. This is why backups are important - assuming data from your local disk can be lost tomorrow, have a backup that could also be lost tomorrow, but either way you'll have a copy. Even cloud services, as infallible as they may seem, are just big local disks albeit with added backups and protection.

Lastly, if you have automatic backups CHECK YOUR DRIVE/APP/SERVICE REGULARLY! It's so easy to setup automatic backups, then assume that everything's good while the service failed at some point and you haven't been doing any backups for months.

Backblaze or Crashplan are my backup solutions of choice. I have TBs of data backed up to the cloud.

Hoping you roll a 20 on that d20...

You cannot reverse what happened but the experience is still in you. You can create something even better.
--Mitsukuni

Agree with this 100000%. Everything that was lost came from you. It was within you. The same 'magic' is still within you. What you create going forward won't be exactly the same -- it can't be -- but it will have the same spirit. Your spirit. Don't let one failure define your whole story.

Wishing you the best!

My thumbs are pressed that the 5% chance will suffice and you get your files back!

After having several storage discs fail on me in my PC time, I
A) stopped using partitions and use one full drive for a specific thing, so then when that one drive fails, I only lose one thing, not all (for example, music on disc B, games on disc C, programs on disc D and so on)
and
B) I bought a 2-bay NAS which I am using as RAID 1 (so that if one drive within the NAS fails, I still have the second drive) and constantly sync important folders from the PC to the NAS (one way). This is no backup, tho, since all the data still is at only one physical place, but it's better than doing nothing

I am currently going through a similar situation and it sucks. I for the most part didn't lose irreplaceable data like you did, so I am not feeling it as hard, but what I lost was a lot of time and effort.

You would think I would have learned my lesson the last time it happened. I think it was around 2005-2007 when a HDD died and I lost over 4000 pictures and videos that I took. I used to enjoy taking pictures of things, but after that happened, I realized I rarely went back and looked at them anyway and lost the desire to continue after losing everying, so I gave up and don't really take pictures of anything anymore.

Now, more recently, I only had one 4TB external drive that had all my stuff and it mostly wasn't a backup, it was just a mass storage drive where I kept everything. The stuff I lost isn't that important, but it sucks because it was basically my life. I spent countless hours on a regular basis for probably over 15 years with these files and now they're gone. It also wasn't just the 4TB drive that died. When the 4TB drive died, it wasn't completely dead. I could sometimes get it to connect to the computer, but it would take like 15 or 20 minutes of trying before it would initialize and connect. Then when it was connected, I was able to recover some of the data, but about 1/3 of the files were corrupt or unreadable. I was able to get about 2/3 of the files copied after countless hours over the course of a couple months and put them on a new 8TB drive that I had temporarily installed inside my computer while I was copying the files. I was working on stuff and procrastinated about removing the 8TB HDD to put it in the external enclosure and the power went out to my house and immediately turned back on. I flipped the power switch on the back of the computer and and unplugged it to try and prevent any damage from power surges. When the power was stable later and I plugged the computer back in, the new 8TB HDD was dead.

Now I am working on getting two 8TB drives to have two copies of everything and maybe getting a UPS for my computer, but the issue is that I lost all the files. I did temporarily copy the files onto a bunch of smaller HDDs while I was trying to get them off the 4TB before I had the new 8TB. Those drives were formatted though, so they are erased, but I haven't written over them. I might be able to use some kind of recovery software to get the files off the formatted drives, but I am slowly losing the ambition to put any effort into it anymore.