Be Wary of Flash Drives! (Full Version)

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J P Falcon -> Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/17/2012 9:34:18 PM)

Well, I am going to expose my stupidity by stating that I was using a 8 gig flash drive to keep a back up of my games and serial numbers. I guess you can figure out what I'm about to say as the fragile piece of crap, crapped out. I took it to a pc store where the tech said there was nothing that could be done. So I have been hunting around my various hard drives, hoping to find other copies of the setup and serial numbers, especially for some of the older games that I currently have uninstalled. Luckily, I have managed to find many of them but there are cases where I find a notepad doc of a serial number but no setup file and visa-versa. The games I am missing that bother me the most are:
Grigsby's American Civil War (Have set up no serial number and forgot to register back in 08), Battle Academy (installed so I have the game playable and registered but I cannot see and method on the download page to redownload the set-up file) and two Battlefront titles. Anyway, lesson learned as I will not use flash drives for this again....



parusski -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/17/2012 10:00:46 PM)

I recently had the same problem with a 32 gig flash drive. A couple years ago I stopped backing up my Matrix games using multiple formats. That mistake has been corrected.



SLAAKMAN -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/17/2012 10:10:34 PM)

Falcon,
Curious if Data Recovery can retrieve it from flash drives. Have you called them?

http://www.datarecoverylabs.com



J P Falcon -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/17/2012 10:21:03 PM)

Thanks SLAAKMAN I'll check, but from what I was told, with a hard drive, internal or external, you have the ability to open them without harming the disc so that it might be possible to recover the data.....flash drives on the other hand do not survive being opened.....



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/17/2012 10:31:47 PM)

Data recovery is very expensive and usually never guaranteed. If it was a hard drive you could have pulled it and extracted the info using a USB to SATA and then treat it as an external as long as the platters weren't bad. But with a flash drive? If they were pictures the money may be worth it but for only a few games at worst you might be out a couple hundred dollars. A Couple years ago I lost TONS of personal family pictures when I didn't them back up. These days I run an internal 4TB RAID system and back that up still to two separate externals. It kills me to think of what I lost. Pics of my dog who has since passed and just a lot of good memories from those lost photos.

Good Luck





J P Falcon -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/17/2012 11:24:20 PM)

What I do not understand is that I have Battle Academy registered and I had thought that one could redownload the game from the members page... is there a specific place to look?



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 12:10:45 AM)

Yes there is. Go to My Orders on the right side of the page. I would assume you bought it straight from Matrix?



nim8or -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 1:14:32 AM)

I can always go back to look at the order confirmation emails to obtain the serial numbers as well. Is that a possibility for you?



J P Falcon -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 1:18:01 AM)

Not on my Grigsby ACW game which I purchased in 2008. That's one of the few I failed to register.



carnifex -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 3:57:13 PM)

Flash memory is very cheap these days - it runs less than a dollar per gig. If you back up critical files on a flash drive, you should just buy two or three and have redundancy. There's no way all of them will fail at once.



nim8or -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 4:26:40 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: J P Falcon

Not on my Grigsby ACW game which I purchased in 2008. That's one of the few I failed to register.


If you purchased online you should still have the serial number in a confirmation email, even if you didn't register the game with Matrix. Store purchases are another matter, but then you would have a physical serial number somewhere in the packaging. Different email address? Now that is a more difficult problem (if you lost the email account entirely).



J P Falcon -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 4:53:41 PM)

I cannot begin to tell you how many pc's, internet providers and reinstall of Windows I have had and done since 2008. I'm afraid emails from 08 are long gone.....



bradfordkay -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 5:03:18 PM)

Flash drives are best for transferring data between computers: i.e., temporary data storage. If you want a separate backup drive for your computer you should look into an external hard drive.



PipFromSlitherine -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 7:15:36 PM)

If you are having trouble redownloading a game, then submit a ticket to the help desk and we will get a link to you asap. We are committed to allowing you to redownload your games whenever you need to.

A more automated system is coming soon.

Cheers

Pip



JudgeDredd -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 9:58:23 PM)

^Class input from a class company. Glad to see the forum is being monitored [&o]



nim8or -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/18/2012 10:46:36 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: J P Falcon

I cannot begin to tell you how many pc's, internet providers and reinstall of Windows I have had and done since 2008. I'm afraid emails from 08 are long gone.....


Understood, I've been there myself in the past. One of the many reasons I use a gmail email account for all purchases, so I can hold on to valuable information regardless of hardware, providers, etc. Best of luck to you; it looks like Pip & Co. will be coming to the rescue soon [:)]



H Gilmer -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/19/2012 2:02:01 AM)

I was going to say that Matrix will work with you as I just recently went through the same thing. They are pretty good about knowing who you are and trusting you.



J P Falcon -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/19/2012 3:17:49 PM)

Thanks for everyone's advise...I'll send out a support ticket once I finalize what piece of each game (setup-serial number-or both) I need....thanks again.....



Slick Wilhelm -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/19/2012 4:53:39 PM)

I'd like to reinforce the excellent advice that nim8or gave you regarding a gmail email account. I've had the same one for about 8 years, and I've been through many OS installs and PC rebuilds in that time. I've never lost any email yet. I create a folder called "Matrix Games_Slitherine" and put all my order confirmation emails in there.

I've also noticed that when you purchase a game now through Plimus, the game become automagically registered for you in the members' area. You no longer have to manually register a purchased game.



J P Falcon -> RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! (1/19/2012 5:01:51 PM)

You are right, and add to that that Windows no longer supports Outlook and you really do see a need for a gmail account...thanks



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