[DISASTER] As If My Life Couldn’t Get Any More Interesting…

Posted 3 years, 10 months, 7 hours, 9 minutes ago by Tonedeff

Water raped my studio in the rectum on Tuesday night. Sans KY.

In a twist only Stephen King himself would’ve been able to conjure up, one of my upstairs neighbors decided it would be a good idea to thaw out some meat with hot water in his kitchen sink while leaving the stopper in it…and then leave the apartment.

The results?

Basically, it rained on my entire fucking studio. Water came through the floorboards and basically made a bee-line through my ceiling and completely drenched my entire system, cords, monitors, speakers and worst of all – my external hard drives.

I had to gut the entirety of QN5 Manor, which had taken me literally months to set up. Anyone who’s built a recording studio before knows how much of a pain in the ass it is to get everything set up, wired efficiently and working together. It all had to be pulled out to avoid any further leaking and to remove the absolutely drenched floor rug underneath.

Thank god my niece was there when it happened…otherwise it woulda been even worse. Miller Lite provides us with comfort in times of panic.

Soaked Drives. Fuck.

My external hard drives are waterlogged. There’s literally big bubbles of water all inside of their cases. It’s pretty much safe to assume that I’m absolutely fucked if these drives don’t work anymore and there’s any corruption to the data on them. Considering water + electronics = evil (in the form of electric shock death or data death), you could say that I’m pretty much ready to jump off of a cliff. It’s more like QN5 = QNFried.

When you consider that literally everything I’ve created is on these drives – unfinished projects, songs, beats, lyrics, mixes, illustrations, albums, financial shit, etc etc – you’d understand my willingness to drink myself into a coma or lunge into freeway traffic with a blindfold on. Real talk – if I could list the contents of these drives in bullet form I would – but there isn’t a blog on earth that could hold that amount of text without imploding. I ALREADY had a ton of shit to get done this week as is, but this puts me COMPLETELY out of commission in multiple ways. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck Fuck. fuck……..fuck.

So, at the moment, I have a fan running at a stack of soggy external hard drives. My hope is that I can turn them on after the weekend to check if they still turn on and then check the data if they do. Granted, I’d have to do all this via the Mrs.’ laptop, cause I have no idea if my computer (R.I.P. Milo?) even works anymore. I just gotta wait it out and eventually rebuild the room.

Fucking hollerate.
Tone.

PS. Please keep voting for Substantial @ MTVu. Voting Ends Friday @ Noon.

Category: General

53 comments

Amen said on Jul 17, 2008:

Give us your upstairs neighbor’s e-mail address and we’ll Mallory the fuck out of him. I kid, I kid.

I’d hate to say something useless like “That sucks, hope everything works out,” but it’d be honesty. I don’t know how things work with electronics and studio equipment, but if there’s some type of insurance plan for that stuff, then I hope you have it. God forbid you lose all the data, and the value of the equipment too. Good luck, man.

Lux said on Jul 17, 2008:

As long as they were not powered on while wet then the likelihood of salvaging the electronics is fairly high. I have had my experience with soaked electronics and have managed to salvage quite a few. Sorry to hear that. Hope it works out.

Lux

Nino said on Jul 17, 2008:

That sucks BALLS man. See, you start drinking even a little, before you know it you console yourself in beer. If you need further consolation, LeeF and I are down…we got bars on lock!!

On the drive/pc issue, I’m sure we can do something to extract the info/ rebuild the pc. On the real though, hopefully it’s not so bad.

On an (very stupid I might add) aside…wouldn’t “dethaw” mean he was freezing it?

jimson11 said on Jul 17, 2008:

I might have to disagree with leting them sit and dry before turning anything on. Found on computer world: “Among the biggest revival missteps, said Reinert, is to thoroughly dry a hard drive doused in water or some other type of liquid. Instead, Kroll recommends keeping the drive wet and immediately placed in a Ziploc bag for protection. “If it’s wet, keep it wet. If it dries out, it leaves residue on [the drive’s] heads and platters that are more difficult to recover,” he said.” Not sure if he means keep it protected so you can bring it to a CleanRoom.

Tough to say either way since I’ve brought cd players back to life after the drying idea, but never had to revive a wet hard drive. Usually if the hard drive wasn’t working, I’d say take it out of the external case and hook up an external kit but I’m not sure if that would make it worse.

Worst case scenario might be the CleanRoom idea aka taking apart the hard drive which will cost a couple grand but maybe that’s covered by insurance or could be sued for?

I know you don’t exactly have a budget for this shit and it wouldn’t solve your current problem, but perhaps setting up a remote backup unit somewhere away from your house and backing up that data every night could be a solution. This isn’t a sales pitch, just trying to help!

Good luck!!!

thugged0utcubscout said on Jul 17, 2008:

Damn tone I feel your pain.Hopefully everthing works out for you.I had a issue with my cpu crashing.Lost all my rhymes and It was the worst(had some nice bars that will never return again)It just feels like your 2nd brain just died..Again I hope everything turns out good.

Krafty said on Jul 17, 2008:

I know certain places can do recovery’s of corrupt drives. The problem is however, the larger the drive the more expensive it is to recover. My friend Chris looked into it recently (because his drive crashed and it had non-replaceable information) they wanted to charge him around 800 bucks to recover a 200gb hard disk.
I think situations like this maybe avoidable in the future if you switched from external drives to internal drives in hard drive stack cases. I think this for several reasons.
1. Its more coast efficient. Externals coast more then internals.
2. It secures the drive a lot better because it provides closer for it.(this is in my opinion).
You don’t even have to sacrifice portability with stacked drives.

Also maybe if a vegetarian moved in above you it could be avoided.

Krafty said on Jul 17, 2008:

http://www.restockit.com/StarTech-com-InfoSafe-Dual-3-5-Drive-ESATA-To-SATA-HD-Enclosure-Storage-Enclosure-2-Bays-SATA-300-(47352B).html?source=froogle

one example

Bosoxfanpw7 said on Jul 17, 2008:

Wow and I thought I had some bad luck when I found out today that i have to pay 800-1200 to get my MacBook screen fixed! I hope everything isnt completely fucked…

Lip? said on Jul 17, 2008:

lyrics saved on those drives might be lost

Lip said on Jul 17, 2008:

wow my comment fucked up. i had a “noooooo” at the end of that ^

karakakashk said on Jul 17, 2008:

Damn, all I can say is good luck. This sucks large amounts of ass.

worm9103 said on Jul 17, 2008:

yeah… this could be the worst news i’ve heard in a while

can’t chris rhee do something!?

Domingo said on Jul 17, 2008:

FUCKIN DAMN!!!!!! WOWWW!!! NOT COOL MAN BC I KNOW YOU GOT THE WORLD STORED ON THEM DRIVES….SORRY HOMIE…

d2wud said on Jul 17, 2008:

shit man – thats harsh dude. hope you get your drives back up and running.
You could prob send the drives somewhere and they’ll be able to save everything.
I believe even physically damaged (smashed) drives can even be saved to some extent.
i know the feeling of loosing HDDs – fucking gutted i was.
Good luck tone!

Upnup said on Jul 17, 2008:

That sucks. Sue your neighbour.

houstonz said on Jul 17, 2008:

This is terrible news.. My first thoughts are.. a) sue your neighbor for doing stupid shit and in the midst of it ruining likely thousands of dollars worth of your posessions and b) jesus christ. Good luck, though, man. I’m sure there’s some technical way that at least the harddrives and all their information can be saved.

McFly said on Jul 17, 2008:

Damn, good luck Tone.

pej said on Jul 17, 2008:

Wow, that really sucks. I’d suggest looking into the price ranges for professional data recovery though (maybe get some estimates), before trying it on your own.

Also, not to be Captain Obvious after the accident already happened (really), but starting from today, you definitely should get some backup jobs running daily, preferably to a computer not located in the same building as the sources. This is especially important when the data is of such importance to you and your business.

I really hope everything works out for you. You’re the person least deserving of this that I can think of.

bk said on Jul 17, 2008:

That’s actually a pretty straight-foward lawsuit if you wanna take that route.

thomax said on Jul 17, 2008:

That’s fucked up Tone, no two ways about it.

I’ll be joining in on the worldwide crossing of fingers, hoping you’ll be able to salvage most of the sunken treasures.

kontrast said on Jul 18, 2008:

god damn, thats horrible man i dont even know what to say… i’ve lost data before, its one of the worst feelings, and it wasnt even close to that magnitude

good luck salvaging the drives, if they wont work after drying, id imagine a recovery specialist could get some of the data back

mike said on Jul 18, 2008:

“That’s actually a pretty straight-foward lawsuit if you wanna take that route.”

I’m a strong advocate of going this route too. If Tone wasn’t contributorily negligent–I say “if” because I don’t know what’s generally expected as far as renter’s insurance goes, etc–it’s a pretty cut and dry issue of proving his neighbor failed to take reasonable care. And come on. Leaving your fucking plug in while the sink’s running? If I were the building owner, I’d consider this grounds for eviction.

As far as damages go, you’ve got the price of the actual equipment involved, time lost, potential revenue lost, emotional distress. Courts are expensive in terms of time and money, but if the expected reparations outweigh that, then hey…

Thing to remember too is that the court system is there to incentivize independent bargaining…not just punish. So the threat of a lawsuit could effectively get this guy to start cooperating if he decides to be difficult. If he’s reasonable, you probably wouldn’t even hit trial.

But this is all, you know…in theory.

Weolracso said on Jul 18, 2008:

Mallory did it.

del preston said on Jul 18, 2008:

That is fucked up. But I wouldn’t lose hope yet! My friend has a PS1 that is at least 10 years old, that got completely drenched once, maybe about 7 years ago. He dried it out and I was playing Tony Hawk 2 on it a few weeks ago. Anyway, your hardware is in my thoughts (pause).

Nino said on Jul 18, 2008:

OK…

1 – I disagree with Krafty…internal vs. external…not much of a difference….IMO externals are protected to a similar level as internals. Tower case vs. plastic case..no diff.

2 – data recover call V…he’s good & won’t charge an arm and a leg.

3 – I disagree with Pej…offsite storage is not required unless you’re a HUGE company. We have it at our office, and it’ s mad expensive!! Thousand a month!! I recommend a RAID 1, I can set that shit up at minimal cost on a drive located somewhat remotely from the pc., I think, need to confirm with V, again…damn that bastard!! I have a RAID 0 but they both in the tower.

Sincerely,
-NeeFicles the Wise

mykraphone said on Jul 18, 2008:

damn tone let me know if i can help with anything

maf said on Jul 18, 2008:

this is so fucking sad, I hope your work can be recovered somehow.
fuck!

The Scribe said on Jul 18, 2008:

The world is fucking ending and your drinking a LITE beer? You’ve got some will power, man. Much respect.

Nova said on Jul 18, 2008:

You unlucky motherfucker.
Hopefully the losses are minimal, as long as they weren’t powered on and if let dry COMPLETELY before turned back on, you should be good for the most part.

I think…… Sorry to hear this mayne

irongrrl said on Jul 18, 2008:

Don’t know what to say… other than I’m SOOOOOO sorry.

LiqwidMerc said on Jul 18, 2008:

FUCK. Your neighbor should pay for that shit. That’s FUCKED up.

I shudder to even think what you’ll feel like if those drives don’t work…I know how I’d feel if that happened to me dude, and similar things have. It sucks. Hope it works out.

Peace,
J

tony said on Jul 18, 2008:

That’s FUCKED UP!! You can’t let your neighbour get a way with this tone!

Scott_A said on Jul 18, 2008:

Tone.. I totally understand how you are REALLY feeling right now.

http://www.lolpix.com/_pics/Funny_Pictures_60/Funny_Pictures_6015.jpg

But seriously, that’s fucked up.. Hope everything works out well for you and the studio.. You gunna put that shit on the insurance?

Bakke said on Jul 19, 2008:

ROFL @ Scott’s picture…

On the real though, this sucks.. I’m joining in on the finger crossing and hope for the best.

Goddy said on Jul 19, 2008:

Damn tone… I’ve gone through similar situations. Never to that extent though…. And right after I read this blog post one of studio monitors died on me. You’re contagious.

I think this would be a good time to setup a “Help save Qn5″ paypal button and ask blueschoolers for donations to help ressurect the studio and pay for data recovery. We cant have our favorite rap heroes out of commission.

Ryan said on Jul 19, 2008:

I’m sorry, I hate seeing bad things happen to good people, especially good people who make good music. I bet that you can recover the data though. If you can’t dry em out enough, then the platters should be recoverable, just not cheaply. If the fan doesn’t do a thorough enough job, try burying them in rice, their filters should keep the rice on the outside, and the rice will draw the remaining water out quite nicely. If that doesn’t work, soak in demineralized water and repeat the fan/rice. I’ve used demineralized water to save more cell phones that I care to count. And while external HDDs aren’t the same as cell phones, circuit boards are circuit boards and I can’t imagine the water harming the platters in the HDD. Good luck Tone, lets hope that this can get taken care of so that you can do what ya’ll do best.

MystykO1ne said on Jul 20, 2008:

FUCK!!! This is happening to a LOT of people lately it seems…and like Ryan said, it’s definitely happening to an individual who doesn’t deserve it IN THE LEAST. I really hope they work when you attempt to turn them back on and test them out, although depending on how they react when you do, it’s probably better to limit your attempts as much as possible, for too many can further damage the data. That neighbor of yours needs a swift kick to the lower back with a steel toed boot. And I just happen to own a quality pair of Wolverines if you need my assistance.

My external 500GB harddrive just died a week ago (with TONS of rare music on it, including QN5 shit, that I KNOW will be close to impossible to find at this point), so I looked up these cats called DataSavers ( http://www.drivesavers.com ) and sent my shit to them. I’m looking at $1700 tops if they’re able to retrieve everything, but it’s worth it to me given I have family photo albums that are irreplacable on there. I’m with Goddy and will contribute heavily if you decide to go the route of sending it to someone like them or having V do it, whichever. I’ll let you know Monday when DataSavers is supposed to call me if they were able to save my shit since they’re supposed to be the industry leaders when it comes to data recovery. Best of luck and wishes to you man. Peace.

-Benjamin

bry said on Jul 20, 2008:

New York City – Corporate Headquarters

http://www.werecoverdata.com/
1270 Broadway Suite 510 (32nd-33rd St.)
New York, NY 10001 MAP

Office Hours: Mon.-Fri. 9:00am-6:00pm
Tel. 212-594-5946
Toll Free 866-400-DATA (24/7)
———————————————————————————————————

Walk in, present drives, get a phone call within 12-24 hours with the solution fee once their D.R.S look into the drive.

This is what we use all the time. I have already called them to check what the recovery fee could range from. No matter how many GB to recover a drive ranges from $500-$2,000.

MystykO1ne said on Jul 20, 2008:

Bry for the win…

They would make more sense since they’re in NY. Either way, hopefully it doesn’t resolve to this, but at least he has Blueschoolers steppin’ up with possible solutions if it does resort to having to do that. ::thumbs up::

maf said on Jul 20, 2008:

keep us updated, Tone :/

ron vicente said on Jul 21, 2008:

you should use online hard drives for crucial shit like beats. expensive, but worth it.

Witless said on Jul 21, 2008:

Man, that…that’s a drag. I’m all for the “Blueschoolers save QN5″ fund — those drives must be the damn lifeblood of the label. That is, of course, if your idiot of a neighbor doesn’t agree to pay for the recovery. I might be inclined to just throw the word “lawsuit” around until the fucker digs deep in his wallet soul and ponies up the bucks.

2 by four said on Jul 21, 2008:

i still got 2 years of law school left, otherwise i would take on that shit pro bono haha….. hope that shit is salvageable, cuz QN5 does not need any more delays with the music ish

Tony Benjaminz said on Jul 21, 2008:

Damn, sorry to hear that brotha! I went through that a couple of years ago. Hope you can recover your work. Back then I didn’t HAVE external drives so I lost EVERYTHING! Give me a holla if you need help on those projects!