Can I pull old binds off the server? Lost my saved files...

[Vulpoid]

I had a hard drive fail on an 11 year old laptop, and lost a beloved text file of binds I had created for over a decade!
Is it possible to save to a text file binds that I have applied to characters on the server?

I would love to have them again. The good news is I splurged on a new rig and can't wait to get back into the city!

Thank you for any help.

[Luminara]

/bind_save (just creates a saved bind file with the name keybinds.txt in the default installation location) or " /bind_save_file filename.txt " might do it.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Bind_save_(Slash_Command)

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Bind_save_file_(Slash_Command)

[Vulpoid]

32 minutes ago, Luminara said:

/bind_save (just creates a saved bind file with the name keybinds.txt in the default installation location) or " /bind_save_file filename.txt " might do it.

Thanks, I will try it!

[WanderingAries]

Make sure to do it per character (assuming different for things like MM) and move those files right away for archiving because the next character will overwrite that. DON'T load binds until you've got everything saved first or they go poof with what's in the location.

[Greycat]

Yeah. /bindsavefile helps.

 

(I have a folder of binds backed up since... early on live that I still use. Especially for Kheldians and Masterminds. )

[Ironblade]

Well, I'm late to this thread but here's my two cents.  I think the most efficient way to handle this and help you reorganize the binds would be as follows:

 

Say you have 3 characters: Albert, Barry and Chuck.

Load Albert.

Do /bindsavefile c:\temp\albert.txt

Load Barry.

Do /bindsavefile c:\temp\barry.txt

etc.

This will give you a series of files, each identified by character, than you can then organize, compile into one file, whatever you want.

 

 

And now, the rant I give once or twice a year about the importance of BACKING UP YOUR FILES.  And don't let this be something you can forget or that requires a judgement call.  Make it completely automatic and back up EVERY bit of content you ever created whether it be photos, Word documents, etc, etc.

 

What I do, in every computer I build, is make sure I have two drives.  You can get a small internal hard drive for $20-$30.  You can also get an external drive.  You can leave a USB drive plugged in and back up to that.  It's extremely unlikely that two drives will fail at the same time - except from external events like a lightning strike or your house burning down.  For that, you need to have an off-site copy.  Make a copy on a USB drive once a month or so and take it to your office, your brothers house, safe deposit box, etc.

 

Do a search on YouTube to see if you can find the call to tech support from the guy whose laptop drive crashed and lost his doctoral thesis that, in his words, was "a f***ing year of my life".  Now figure out a way to not be that guy.

[Vulpoid]

37 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

the guy whose laptop drive crashed and lost his doctoral thesis

Not quite that bad, but I am the original poster, and the drive had a word.doc  journal I had kept for over 20 years and letters from the woman who became my wife 11 years ago. 

It was a big loss. I got a SATA to USB cable, but so far no luck. Now I have a new intel I9, 4 TB and a Nvidia 3080 TI so the tears are hi res at least.

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, Vulpoid said:

I got a SATA to USB cable, but so far no luck.

 

Put the HDD in a Ziploc bag (name brand, not a cheap store brand, you want quality for this), seal it up and stick it in the freezer for a few hours.  Then try extracting the data.  You'll only have a few minutes before it begins to warm up again, so don't dawdle.

 

It's a trick which worked for me several times in the past.  Heat caused HDD platters to expand slightly, causing just enough offset to prevent the R/W heads from finding sectors, and freezing the HDD kept the platters in their normal geometry long enough for the heads to find and read the data.  That was what murdered IBM's HDD line, the Deskstar (AKA Deathstar, because the goddamn things died so fast).  Don't know if it still works, considering the advances in HDD technology over the past decade (no damn clue what they're making HDD platters out of these days, but just about every material known responds to heat in some way, so i suspect it's an ongoing issue with HDDs), but as long as the drive is protected from moisture (thus the Ziploc bag (NAME FUCKING BRAND!  don't cheap out!)), it won't hurt to try.

 

The other possible solution is a board swap, but you need exactly the same model and make of the HDD.  It'll work if it's a firmware problem, or resistors/capacitors are shot, or the board developed bad traces, etc., but the replacement board has to be from an identical drive.

[Vulpoid]

10 hours ago, Luminara said:

seal it up and stick it in the freezer for a few hours.  Then try extracting the data. 

Thanks! I will give it a try... even if I destroy it, I will not be worse off. Thanks again.

[Shred Monkey]

8 minutes ago, Vulpoid said:

Thanks! I will give it a try... even if I destroy it, I will not be worse off. Thanks again.

 

Holy smokes dude... I'm fully invested... Does Luminara's advice save this poor man's lost memories?  This is some real life Superhero stuff here.... you gotta come back and tell us if this worked.   

[Vulpoid]

1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:

Does Luminara's advice save this poor man's lost memories? 

I think it is an SSD, so I am unsure, but I am totally in and can't wait to report back.
Worst/best case scenario is this bizarre cryogenic experiment will grant my computer super powers. Will they be used for good ..or EVIL?

[Marshal_General]

There are places you can send a dead drive to and unless its totally FUBAR, they should be able to retrieve your data.

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, Vulpoid said:

I think it is an SSD

 

If it is, then ignore everything I wrote.  SSDs have no platters, no R/W heads, so the freezing approach won't work.  Well, unless the problem is broken traces, but that's unlikely unless it was positioned above a high output heat source (CPU, GPU, PSU heatsink), and if it were, it would've failed years ago.  And the data is inside the flash memory chip(s), which are soldered to the board, so there's nothing to swap.

 

SSDs, being composed of flash memory, have a maximum life determined by write cycles.  One can only write data so many times before a transistor burns out, then the sector becomes unusable.  Most manufacturers do two things to extend flash memory lifespan: first, they code the firmware to move data out of bad sectors when write failures are detected; and second, they reserve a small amount of memory for those data transfers.  So there's built-in leniency and fault tolerance, but 11 years is beyond even the highest manufacturing standards for anything I've seen or read about.  If it is an SSD, it has to be toast at this point.  Literally.

 

Of course, 11 years ago, SSDs weren't common, so you may still be working with a standard HDD.  If so, freeze it and see what happens.