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Be Wary of Flash Drives!

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

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		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....
Post #: 1
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/17/2012 10:00:46 PM   
parusski


Posts: 4467
Joined: 5/8/2000
From: Wyoming, Even Liberals Welcome
Status: offline 		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.

_____________________________

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."- W.T. Sherman

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 2
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/17/2012 10:10:34 PM   
SLAAKMAN


Posts: 2099
Joined: 7/24/2002
Status: offline 		Falcon,
Curious if Data Recovery can retrieve it from flash drives. Have you called them?

http://www.datarecoverylabs.com

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Germany's unforgivable crime before the Second World War was her attempt to extricate her economy from the world's trading system and to create her own exchange mechanism which would deny world finance its opportunity to profit.
— Winston Churchill

(in reply to parusski)
Post #: 3
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/17/2012 10:21:03 PM   
J P Falcon

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		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.....

(in reply to SLAAKMAN)
Post #: 4
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/17/2012 10:31:47 PM   
Missouri_Rebel


Posts: 1474
Joined: 6/19/2006
From: Southern Missouri
Status: offline 		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




_____________________________

**Those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul
**A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have-Gerald Ford

(in reply to SLAAKMAN)
Post #: 5
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/17/2012 11:24:20 PM   
J P Falcon

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		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?

(in reply to Missouri_Rebel)
Post #: 6
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 12:10:45 AM   
Missouri_Rebel


Posts: 1474
Joined: 6/19/2006
From: Southern Missouri
Status: offline 		Yes there is. Go to My Orders on the right side of the page. I would assume you bought it straight from Matrix?

_____________________________

**Those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul
**A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have-Gerald Ford

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 7
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 1:14:32 AM   
nim8or

 

Posts: 317
Joined: 2/5/2005
Status: offline 		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?

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The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
- PLATO

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Post #: 8
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 1:18:01 AM   
J P Falcon

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		Not on my Grigsby ACW game which I purchased in 2008. That's one of the few I failed to register.

(in reply to nim8or)
Post #: 9
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 3:57:13 PM   
carnifex


Posts: 1289
Joined: 7/1/2002
From: Latitude 40° 48' 43N Longtitude 74° 7' 29W
Status: offline 		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.

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 10
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 4:26:40 PM   
nim8or

 

Posts: 317
Joined: 2/5/2005
Status: offline
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).

_____________________________

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
- PLATO

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 11
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 4:53:41 PM   
J P Falcon

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		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.....

(in reply to nim8or)
Post #: 12
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 5:03:18 PM   
bradfordkay

 

Posts: 8183
Joined: 3/24/2002
From: Olympia, WA
Status: offline 		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.

_____________________________

fair winds,
Brad

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 13
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 7:15:36 PM   
PipFromSlitherine

 

Posts: 381
Joined: 6/23/2010
Status: offline 		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

(in reply to bradfordkay)
Post #: 14
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 9:58:23 PM   
JudgeDredd


Posts: 8341
Joined: 11/14/2003
From: Scotland
Status: offline 		^Class input from a class company. Glad to see the forum is being monitored

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JudgeDredd
I AM the Law!

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Post #: 15
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/18/2012 10:46:36 PM   
nim8or

 

Posts: 317
Joined: 2/5/2005
Status: offline
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

_____________________________

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
- PLATO

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 16
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/19/2012 2:02:01 AM   
H Gilmer

 

Posts: 251
Joined: 7/1/2011
Status: offline 		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.

(in reply to nim8or)
Post #: 17
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/19/2012 3:17:49 PM   
J P Falcon

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		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.....

(in reply to H Gilmer)
Post #: 18
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/19/2012 4:53:39 PM   
Slick Wilhelm


Posts: 1588
Joined: 7/22/2007
From: Rochester, MN
Status: offline 		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.

(in reply to J P Falcon)
Post #: 19
RE: Be Wary of Flash Drives! - 1/19/2012 5:01:51 PM   
J P Falcon

 

Posts: 2225
Joined: 11/1/2003
Status: offline 		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

(in reply to Slick Wilhelm)
Post #: 20
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