I Dreamed A Dream lyrics

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dream to shame

He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me
And we'll live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be!
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Today i was facing a new type of scenario, where my friend has lost all the data and files, which was a collection of past three years. yes.. you read it right... all the efforts and documents collected over the period of three years. When it comes to data, just like wine, the older it is, the golden it is. But whatever it is, how many years it is, all data are just data, combinations of binaries stored somewhere. Most of us, when a file gets deleted accidentally or unintentionally, we just try to live with missing it forever, than trying to find a way to recover. Even if we think otherwise, there are lot of File/Data Recovery Softwares available now. And with those, you just do recover the files, just like that.

But consider the following scenario:

> You've Win2000 installed in your machine

> You wanted to upgrade to WinXP (or Vista, etc). So, you asked someone (A Computer Administrator / Support Engineer from the Software/Hardware Provider) to install WinXP

> He just comes and installs WinXP and leaves. (everything is good till now..)

> When you login to your system, you find your D Drive "EMPTY"!!!!!!!!!!!! (What!!!!)

All the files and folders inside the D Drive is gone now. He does not have to touch D Drive, at any cause. But, he did choose to format and partition D Drive also, and the innocent OS Installer, obeyed the master and formatted D Drive. The entire drive is gone, adding to that, you have a completely different OS Version on your machine now.

I faced this challenge today, from one of my friend. And my friend was so much concerned, as there was no backup taken ever, and decided to write these files to DVDs just yesterday, and this tragedy happened today. My friend called me immediately, hence i could tell her few very little , but very very very important, things to follow, in order to , atleast try recovering files.

"Try!!!!!"

"is there any way to do that????"

well... i'm now typing these lines, as the files are getting recovered and copied to another drive, with the exact folder structure as it was.

coming to the precautions.. (here, i'm referring to the things to take care, after this tragedy happened and for successful recover of files)... also these are the constraints, for recovering the files/data successfully...

> Make sure that no files/activity is done involving the formatted Drive. Any new files copied to that drive, will overwrite the previously formatted files, resulting in unsuccessful recovery of those files infected by these new files.

> thats it.. no other constraint. i would actually give more stress on the previous point.

Once the above constraint is met, you just need an extra storage space, to store/copy the required formatted files. I would suggest an External HDD, with atleast twice (just in case) the space required to backup the data.

Just download a command-line utility called TestDisk. (i know, you're waiting for this s/w or utility name to be mentioned...). Its completely an Open-Source Software with GPL. This is not just for File/Data Recovery, it does magic and wonders, plays very well with your storage and partitions. It really an awesome tool and has features for both novices and experts. Let me give you a short intro about this Magician called TestDisk:

Whats TestDisk?

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

What can it do?

Fix partition table, recover deleted partition

DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box),

Actually, this is the second time i'm using this software. First time, my C Drive got corrupted (because of the security feature in Vista), and while trying to format C Drive, since my D Drive was the extended partition of C Drive (all Dell Laptops comes with this kind of configuration, when you ask for separate D Drive), D Drive also got formatted. My situation then was far worse than what happened to my friend now. That time, i had a laptop, with nothing in it, no OS, no partitions, nothing. just a blank 60K worth piece, having lost my 250GB of files. Even to run this software, i need something.

so, this is what i did then, 

> download this software in my External HDD

> insert bootable OS CD

> go to the command prompt option, while booting

> invoke this TestDisk Utility

> Try to partition the corrupted partitions, and caz of the security feature in Vista, it wont allow to partition/format few areas in HDD (reserved for the system safety)

> No luck with partitioning and couldnt write MBR, hence switched to Recover Mode and recovered all my 250GB of data.

so, next time, use this tool, but take utmost care while using. A Very big warning from me, on handling this software, and misuse, would make you to throw your computer to trash.

(about the subject, what to do.. nothing but the twitter effect.. ;)  )

This one is a cross-post, of a very good post which i read today. i dont know the author, but me and him has one major thing in the common list (i.e) watched "Kolangal" serial. I really dont know, how i managed to watch few episodes of it, when my mom is here. i dont have any other choice, than watching it. utter crap it was. one such person, who got blessed by watching this serial, has made a commendable work , in penning it down in words (i still believe, words cannot describe the amount of satisfaction you get as soon as that serial ends).

Few words/sentences i totally enjoyed in his post were:

read it and get mokcha (the only way to heaven, if u had ever made the sin of watching this crap)