Did you try doing a search for file with the letter bak in them?  I've
noticed the editor in 3.1 seems to create backups, so if you got a file
named this.pov, there might be a file called this.pov.bak.

-Mike

Ken wrote:
> 
> Rick wrote:
> >
> > try opening you swap file with word pad you may find the pov file in there
> > some where or try scandisk, it may well find some lost clusters, save them
> > if any, these also may be be your missing files..
> >
> > Rick
> 
>  First things I tried. Nope ! By the time I got to the swap file it
> had already been flushed and scan disk reported no lost clusters.
> Nor did I find anything in the temp directory or, or, or ...
> 
> It is lost and gone for ever oh my darli'n Clementine...
> 
> --
> Ken Tyler
> 
> mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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Mike wrote:
> 
> Did you try doing a search for file with the letter bak in them?  I've
> noticed the editor in 3.1 seems to create backups, so if you got a file
> named this.pov, there might be a file called this.pov.bak.
> 
> -Mike

  Had it turned off. It's not a bad feature when all you are working on
is small files of a couple of thousand bytes but I have been playing
with some large mesh files lately and just can't afford to have several
2 - 6 meg pov files cluttering up my already bulging hard drives. The
same is true for the auto file save feature. When you have a 6 meg file
open you don't want it stopping you during your editing to write all of
that data to the disc. To back up 6 meg files every 5 min. or so to safe
guard a 1k addition until it's done does not make much sense compared
to the wear and tear on the equipment that occurs as a result.

  I am almost positive that when I had to manually shut the file shut down,
either the Pov editor or Windows, attempted to write the buffer back into
the file for some reason, and the only thing there for it to write that
was left was nothing.

 I like that last part "...the only thing there for it to write that
was left was nothing. " a happy little coincidental oxymoron.



-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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I'm afraid that's a little bit late, but did you try to read the hard disk
blocks by a direct call to low level IO functions, starting at the block
where youre file starts (if, as I understood the file exists but is empty),
if you're lucky only the firsts bytes are gone.

Hope WE don't lose thi great image

Philippe

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Ph Gibone wrote:
> 
> I'm afraid that's a little bit late, but did you try to read the hard disk
> blocks by a direct call to low level IO functions, starting at the block
> where youre file starts (if, as I understood the file exists but is empty),

Could you be more specific (simplistic)? Windoze has nuked my files in this
manner before; what tools would you use to read the contents of individual
blocks?

Margus

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norton utilites (Norton Disc Doctor)


-- 
//Spider 
( spi### [at] bahnhofse ) [ http://www.bahnhof.se/~spider/ ]
#declare life = rand(seed(42))*sqrt(-1);

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>Could you be more specific (simplistic)? Windoze has nuked my files in this
>manner before; what tools would you use to read the contents of individual
>blocks?
>
>Margus

There exists some commercial tools for that (Norton sells one certainly),
but you can use DEBUG which is a DOS command that you find on your disk : it
is not an easy one (its just like writing assembly code) and you have to
know the adress of your file first. Honestly I haven't done this since years
(I used PCTOOLS at that time)

Philippe

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Ph Gibone wrote:
> 
> >Could you be more specific (simplistic)? Windoze has nuked my files in this
> >manner before; what tools would you use to read the contents of individual
> >blocks?
> >
> >Margus
> 
> There exists some commercial tools for that (Norton sells one certainly),
> but you can use DEBUG which is a DOS command that you find on your disk : it
> is not an easy one (its just like writing assembly code) and you have to
> know the adress of your file first. Honestly I haven't done this since years
> (I used PCTOOLS at that time)
> 
> Philippe

  I used to use Norton utilities for this myself but that was when HD's
were only 10 - 20 megs and looking at the entire contents of the drive
were easy to visualy search through. At 1 gig or more that possibility has
long since passed away as an option. I don't have that much time on my
hands.

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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Hmm, I remember the few times I've rewritten my FAT and MBR with a hex-editor..
those were the days... *laugh*

Ken wrote:
> 
> Ph Gibone wrote:
> >
> > >Could you be more specific (simplistic)? Windoze has nuked my files in this
> > >manner before; what tools would you use to read the contents of individual
> > >blocks?
> > >
> > >Margus
> >
> > There exists some commercial tools for that (Norton sells one certainly),
> > but you can use DEBUG which is a DOS command that you find on your disk : it
> > is not an easy one (its just like writing assembly code) and you have to
> > know the adress of your file first. Honestly I haven't done this since years
> > (I used PCTOOLS at that time)
> >
> > Philippe
> 
>   I used to use Norton utilities for this myself but that was when HD's
> were only 10 - 20 megs and looking at the entire contents of the drive
> were easy to visualy search through. At 1 gig or more that possibility has
> long since passed away as an option. I don't have that much time on my
> hands.
> 
> --
> Ken Tyler
> 
> mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

-- 
//Spider
        [ spi### [at] bahnhofse ]-[ http://www.bahnhof.se/~spider/ ]
What I can do and what I could do, I just don't know anymore
                "Marian"
        By: "Sisters Of Mercy"

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Really nice horse, it's a shame you've lost the code.  Presumably you'r
not using 95 or NT, or you could try a find containing text from the
tools menu in Explorer, and search for the name of an object that you
remember from that particular file.  You never know where windows puts
files.

Steve

Ken wrote:
> 
> It was in the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless evening, in the autumn
>  of the year, the sky overcast threatening rain, and the wretched cold penetrating
>  to the very core of my body, that I happened upon the ill fated house of Beauty...
> 
>    This is an image of a scene I have been working on 3 day's now for my sisters
>  birthday. I got the scene to this stage and saved it as a jpg for reference
>  purposes. I made a couple of changes and added a bunch of spheres to make a
>  string like water curtain effect around the statue.
>     I must have been a little over enthusiastic with the ambient values for the
>  spheres and their number. I already had the 72 colored spotlights highlighting
>  the ceiling and the light buffers started consuming enormous amounts of memory.
>     After rendering for 15 min. my hard drive started groaning and thrashing
>  in an unatural way. Concerned I stopped the render using the windows task manager  
 because Pov
> had stopped responding. When I restarted Pov the file and all of it's
>  contents were gone. This will remain an unfinished and unreproducable work -
>  a fatal beauty if you will.
> 
> --
> Ken Tyler
> 
> mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net
> 
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  [Image]

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Steve wrote:
> 
> Really nice horse, it's a shame you've lost the code.  Presumably you'r
> not using 95 or NT, or you could try a find containing text from the
> tools menu in Explorer, and search for the name of an object that you
> remember from that particular file.  You never know where windows puts
> files.
> 
> Steve

  I am running win 98. The problem is I'm pretty sure where Windows put the
file and that's never never land or commonly called the zero byte file.

 I still have the horse by the way. It is the loss of all of the Pov script
that I am lamenting. I had nearly 350 lines of hand typed and positioned
objects, textures and lights. My memory's pretty good but not that good.

SIGH !

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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