So...I blew up my install...again.

[mdkmaster]

Yep. I sure did.

 

Main Skyrim directory? Gone.

 

Multiple backups of the entire Skyrim directory (and all installed mods)? Gone.

 

Over 600 merged mods, and subsequent mesh and texture directories? Gone.

 

Custom meshes and textures? Gone.

 

Yep, the list of destruction sure is long. I still have my save games though. That is a plus, I guess. I copied a clean copy of Skyrim back to the install directory. I was a little concerned when I checked the version of the exe. It was 1.3 something or other. I had to run a file check, and now its back to the 1.9.32, whatever the latest shit version is that broke mfg (I can't bring myself to actually look at it just yet).

 

I think i'll mod it back up again. Probably not to the extent that it was before. Its so depressing looking at a 10 GB install directory, when a few hours earlier it was around 50 or so.

 

Its not even like it was a technical issue, a dead drive, or something beyond my control. I was just a fucking moron, being fast and loose (as usual) with my data. I cleaned a few drives and wasn't paying attention when I was hot swapping, and boom, I took out the drive with carelessness. As if that wasn't enough of a kick in the balls, yeah, you guessed it, I fucking cleaned both backup drives as well.

 

So far since i committed this act of stupid. I have stared at my machine, smoked, re-installed a base install, smoked, stared, smoked, smoked, and now i'm admitting my stupidity.

 

Hope everyone else is having a better day than I am.

 

MDK

[gregathit]

Any now you fully realize the value of maintaining that periodic backup and putting it where you won't delete it.  You can compress the backup to save HD space.

 

I do feel your pain.  The worst part is you'll have a hell of a time rediscovering half of the mods you probably had installed......if they are even still available. 

 

Hang in there. 

[mdkmaster]

Oh, I was already fully aware. I had 3 drives for live installs. I still have all my downloaded mods. What I don't have is all the custom work, it happened to be stored on two of the drives that got wiped. I mean, I lost about four dozen live installs that I just copied and pasted into the main directory when I wanted something different.

 

I had everything carefully labeled and stored away. Redundancy wasn't the issue. Stupid was my main problem. I accidentally put the drives next to a pile of drives to be cleaned, those drives were to be put back into use after being zero'd and formatted. Normally I'm quite careful about things like this. Today, just wasn't my day.

 

Although, to your point. I guess i'll be much more vigilant in the future. I'm thinking on making a few hard copy backups with full mod lists. That way I won't be set back so far if this happens again.

 

MDK 

[Zquad1]

yeah I hear your Pain I also did something similar a few months ago, now I have a 1 terabyte external HD devoted to Game Mods. so even if my computer takes a dump, I'll still have everything saved on the external HD.

[quin666]

Seriously act like this when lose Skyrim, FOVN and PS3 harddrive get corrupted.

We make mistake, but damn hurt see years worth data go bye bye in second.

[Deedlit]

i just learned my lesson sometime ago also, SD Disk + ShiftDelete its not your friend at all when you do a mistake and select data folder also, tried stopped that, but bit useless the speed of sd disk its a bad thing when you try stop a delete haha, because of that im unpb user now, and doing every week at least 1 backup.

[ToJKa]

That's what i love about Wrye Bash. All my mods are BAINs, the installers folder backed up to another hardrive. I can have fully modded Skyrim up and running from scratch in less than half an hour. Same applies Oblvion, and to Fallouts too, though i have some mods with more complex installers as Fomods for them. Been too lazy to BAIN them.

 

Hell, sometimes when encountering a persistent issue i just nuke the install and start from scratch before trying to locate the problem

[Forgotten1337]

Yeah, it sucks.  I recently had a similar problem where I removed some mods I was no longer using and updating a few and it totally destroyed my game; had to do a clean install.

[Deep Red]

My hard drive died about half way through last year as well. Lost just about everything I had in that drive. Fortunately, I had a brain cell or two and able to upload a few crucial things to media fire. The save files are what hurt the most though. Making a character that you're satisfied with is a lot harder than it sounds. I too feel your pain.

 

This isn't counting the amount of times I've broken my installation with my reckless mod-installing habits either lol

[mdkmaster]

Well. I guess I have an addiction. I now have 4 new installs. Two mostly modded, with all bsa files unpacked, and two mostly modded without any bsa files unpacked. I guess only modestly modding a single new install isn't working out so well, LOL.

 

As for losing characters, its not really an issue. My main (shown in another thread), LOOKS like its a single character. Its not though, I can replicate the same design using pretty much any race. In the pictures i've posted, she is a lovergirl, a skychild, and a nord (I think theres one more race that she has been as well, but I don't remember for sure). I don't use a program to copy and paste the face either.

 

I'll probably continue spamming new pics of her. Who knows, maybe i'll work on some new world spaces to tie up some of this modding addiction I have going on.

[Tepi]

The beauty of Mod Organizer, you will never break your skyrim installation. Its still possible to break a save but thats solved by saving often and having lots of em.

[Monsto Brukes]

The beauty of Mod Organizer, you will never break your skyrim installation. Its still possible to break a save but thats solved by saving often and having lots of em.

 

 

Absolutely. . . Mod Organizer doesn't overwrite files or create dependancies on file install order. It installs everything completely and fully, segregated to it's own directory, then injects the list at game-load time in the order that you specify. . . just check the shit you want to load. Want to try something different? Create a new game profile and check a whole different set of mods.

 

It really is the way to do it. In my sig.

[mdkmaster]

Yeah, I played with mod manager before. I like the idea. I like the setup. I like how it organizes and stores mods and profiles. It does make the install abit larger by not having direct overwrites, which is fine. I'm just not a fan of how it handles scripts. I run enough custom scripts that a direct install has trouble handling it. Mod manager just will not do it. Just too many call backs to an extra directory structure.

 

Now maybe i'm just doing it wrong. I'll admit, I do stupid things. A lot. I'll even drop my current install, and give it another go (only because i'm getting annoyed trying to use NMM when they can barely keep their site running).

 

Actually, its a rather good idea. I will give mod manager another go. 

[Monsto Brukes]

Yeah, I played with mod manager before. I like the idea. I like the setup. I like how it organizes and stores mods and profiles. It does make the install abit larger by not having direct overwrites, which is fine. I'm just not a fan of how it handles scripts. I run enough custom scripts that a direct install has trouble handling it. Mod manager just will not do it. Just too many call backs to an extra directory structure.

 

Now maybe i'm just doing it wrong. I'll admit, I do stupid things. A lot. I'll even drop my current install, and give it another go (only because i'm getting annoyed trying to use NMM when they can barely keep their site running).

 

Actually, its a rather good idea. I will give mod manager another go.

 

Ah yes . . . custom scripting can be enough of a pain in the ass . . .

 

but. . . and it's a

BIG BUTT . . . 

 

 

 

 

It can be managed.

 

For example with SKSE, I just drop the scripts into the real data dir. I've a couple other mods that didn't run quite right when fully managed by MO... so i dropped the scripts in Skyrim/Data then let MO manage the ESM and BSA and it all runs fine. 

 

I don't do it a lot, only I think 2 maybe 3 mods... wouldn't want to do that a lot or it kinda defeats the purpose of having MO to begin with.