Disconnected

                I will start by thanking all those contacting me and asking about my well being. I have gone quiet for the last month or so and not by choice but it all came rumbling down at once and I got disconnected from the regular schedule.

Unlike previous years when we would wind down and chill out for the last weeks of the year working on templates, libraries etc. we have been buried with work to a level where we had to work from home in any spare time and throughout the holidays.

On a separate level I decided to build a new computer for my trusted laptop was getting old, about 5 years now, and while it would still load and run Inventor, it was getting slow. The research, ordering of components, build up and software installation took about a month as well adding to the already busy schedule I had. On a personal note a lot has changed since I built my previous computer, especially in layout and manufacturing techniques for cases and the air flow is much improved but BIOS settings are incomprehensive now. It used to be that the only thing you could change in BIOS was time and date and now it's like servicing my car, I need half an hour to figure out which wrench to use.

Air flow is much improved nowadays, nice and clean layout.

Most importantly though, and what kept me from posting was the crash of my portable hard drive that I carry around with me everywhere and that holds everything I need for daily work. I have a tone of files there, CAD stuff, kits, libraries, templates, etc. but most importantly the blogs and about 50 drafts half way through. When I solve something or find a trick worth mentioning I create a new draft with 50-100 words, post some images and quick animations to capture the idea. I find this much faster than starting fresh every time. I was lost without the drafts and have focused on recovering the data there instead of creating new stuff from scratch.

Managed to recover all my blog drafts.

The hard drive didn’t crash and it doesn’t have bad blocks but the Master Boot Record (MBR) had been affected and I couldn’t read the partition table anymore. You‘ll say: “that’s easy to fix, just use recovery software or a MBR rebuild program” and you’re right but this was no ordinary drive but an encrypted one. Recovering from an encrypted drive which has lost its partition table is much harder I’ll tell you that but I’ve managed to get it all back and I am at full speed again. I think windows 10 on the laptop decided to initialize the drive and change its partition table from MBR to GPT (GUID Partition Table), it corrupted the layout and so the encryption software had problems locating the partition to decrypt.

Some other events like my son’s birthday along with all holiday preparations and visits have kept me away as well but it’s all gone and now I have a lot to catch up. I missed all the posts from Autodesk University, the forum, and all the blogs and I have been following. For those that follow me on G+ and other platforms, expect a flood of links and posts as I process them all.

Once again thank you for the kind messages and warm wishes, all the best to you all and a prosperous new year.

ADS