Creating a new or blank folder structure from a text file

While cleaning up and organizing my drives, I ran into a situation where I wanted to replicate a folder structure, but not copy any of the files. I'm going to move the files to a new location, but want to keep working and not wait for the folders to copy. Turns out there are a couple of easy ways to accomplish this. For the first method, create the directory structure you want using a plain text editor. This would be done by creating the path to lowest level folder you may need. You don't need to list all the interim directories. If I were to list: "Game Folder/Assets/Icons" it would make all three folders. If the folder name contains spaces, enclose the entire line in quotes. This is a great way to create the same folder structure over an over again for something like a website or coding project. Next, open Terminal, switch to the new Parent folder where you […]

O&O DiskImage 11 Pro For Just US$ 10 – World Backup Day!

Well, this is one heck of a sale. If you don’t already have a backup program in place, or you need to upgrade, O&O DiskImage is a solid product and this is a fantastic price. I don’t believe they’ve ever offered it for this low. DiskImage does more than just back up files, it’s also a tool for disk cloning including the system files, disk images to make a complete copy of the entire disk and can create a recovery disk. About the only thing I don’t like is their new UI. They continue this trend of making an interface drawn by a child. It’s so juvenile as to distract from the power of their application. Some may like it, but I’m not a fan. O&O DiskImage 11 lets you back up an entire computer or single files whenever you want – even while the computer is being used. In the event you should lose your personal data it can […]

Over 10 TB and 600,000 files recovered

The Great Disk Recovery of ’15 is almost complete and so far I have recovered over 10TB worth of data which accounts for over 600,000 files. It’s taken days and a couple of new drives added to the scheme, but ALL the data has been salvaged. All the movies, music, documents and pictures have been recovered and are all viewable once more. Whether or not this was a system glitch or some user error on my part, the fact remains 5 drives had damaged partitions and weren’t recognized as readable by Windows. A simple "undelete" wasn’t possible so it was a pretty serious SNAFU. But GetData Recover My Files has done a perfect job of getting those files back. I even saw files I deleted 6 months ago that could still be recovered. In fact, some of them were because it was easier to select the entire volumes rather than hunt and peck over a couple of folders. Good heavens […]

How do you recover 10TB worth of data from damaged partitions?

It’s pretty much inevitable that a hard drive is going to crash and take all your precious data with it. It’s also inevitable that you’re going to select the wrong file or folder and click the wrong button which sends your data into a black hole. It’s pretty easy to recover from accidentally deleted files. The Deleted Items folder can save you and programs like Recuva can dig deeper and restore your files. But what happens when the Partition Table is utterly mangled by Windows itself and the drive is no longer seen as readable? What do you do when you plug in that 5TB external drive and Windows sits like a dumb oaf and doesn’t show a single file? Well, this is what has just happened to me. Windows has corrupted the partition and file table of 10TB worth of hard drives that are now considered unreadable. Tens of thousands of pictures, documents, ISO images and music files have […]

Making and Burning ISOs on the cheap and easy with ImgBurn, VirtualCloneDrive and Daemon Tools Lite

I like cheap. I like easy. When you combine the two, you have my interest. And so it goes for making ISO images. Since it’s only 2015 and Microsoft has just figured out how to write an ISO image, clearly you’re going to have to fend for yourself. But fear not, there are plenty of ISO apps out there. Sad part is, most of them want a king’s ransom in payment which just chaps me to no end. However, before you spend good gaming money on making ISO images check out these tools for creating and mounting ISO images for free and for less than $5. First we’ll look at cheap. To mount and image I’ll go with Old Reliable, VirtualCloneDrive. This comes to us by the fine folks over at Slysoft who are known for their prowess with DVDs. Install this free tool and mount multiple disks just by double-clicking. This is great for mounting images of Windows, Office […]