So as per my posts about the effort to recover files, journaling for files includes all the information about where to find the file, the history of where it has been etc. But there is more information connected to files and folders than even that. I’ve had issues with files taking forever to show in a folder and it’s always blamed on end user for having too many thumbnails. Except it happens with icons too. Too many files lol is not a serious answer.

Instead what happens is some program is triggered and/or stalled while those thumbnails are loaded and if you clear them then they all suddenly appear. So it’s not that you’ve got too many files it’s that one or more of them is holding the rest up. I can’t find any specific information but my suspicion has been raised a few times. One was that the pdf editor I loved created its own sort of journaling file right in there with my documents, and everywhere I had a copy of that file. Yeah. And it was a broken file. It never actually updated when I moved a file out of the folder.

And the built in sort of journaling related file did the same. So I had to batch delete all of them. They were misleading apps as to what files to look for, causing them to keep looking rather than give up. Over the years we’ve also had databases of thumbnails inside the folders that are no longer used, and I still have to batch search and delete those.

So then my second suspicion was raised when I got errors that if I moved a file the path would be too long. The full path was under 50 characters from drive letter. But my fresh install did autoselect my computer name and that sucker was as long as allowed which is like 15 characters. Shortening that shouldn’t affect things but the pretty path as displayed in the folder? Yep, from desktop (that’s 7 characters there) to This PC to my drive name through each folder to the file. And I suspect that’s the path at issue. Okay. But it doesn’t explain why the same file, same drive, same folder structure, would be fine in one folder and not the other.

So then comes a humdinger. I needed admin permission to move some files (like a scan I did through my printer and not the third party app the full and custom install comes with) that I created as this same user for some reason. Now both of these issues result in a dialogue box explaining the error. So these interrupt the movement (and journaling) of these files.

Ownership did work recursively, but permissions did not. That is fortunately possible from the first subdirectories and then yes recursively.

I swear I never had any issue like this with the pro version I initially installed. I don’t know when this broke, but it shouldn’t have. I might be able to see if I can figure that out.

Anyway. So I’m still struggling and yesterday I was ready to throw it all away. There is a limit I can do each day due to pain, but also focus. And this has stolen far too much time. I hate how I don’t have the day to even think any more. It used to be that I could at least mull ideas over once pain stopped me. Now I can’t even watch a tv series because it requires investing memory to the plot. And focus to even get through a show. I’m not a social media scroller really. But I’ve had to start destressing by watching things I don’t need to dedicate to memory. I stick to a few accounts, only checking in on news I need to know.

So I am very good at managing stress, and using my free time. But my on time? That’s being stolen by all of this tech fail and my poor body being so limited by the damage in my Achilles. One would be tough but you have many more options for being able to move. But both? And it’s not like my RA has gone. I have retreated in the last few years but it’s more complicated than I think people can really imagine.

If you have limited time for your mind to focus and learn then the instinct is you can use your body. But I can’t, and vice versa.

At least for right now I know that my consolidated back up drive is safe. It’s allll mine. And I can try to sort each individual drive later. So I know how to try to get control of what I can. It’s that in this case that control should have been there from the start.

I thought my two original ssds had failed. Nope! Wow! So I’ve now got 5 ssds backed up including the dinky little one my OS is on. I was able to wipe the boot partition on the one I used for so much of my work which means I’ve finally managed to work my way back in time to that point where I bought the ssd that developed bad sectors. Which is great.

I’m still at a bit of a loss as to what computer I used between the fire and my current build. Definitely used some little netbooks, but I spotted a tower that rings a bell but I won’t have the info. It might be in a receipt as it would have been part of a bulk replacement of… all our electronics.

Anyway, I’m excited as I’ve found my full notes for my first Anne of Cleves presentation and probably a much better system of how I organised my research. With so many copies now of the same files I can take it easy and stop stressing because it really has been so difficult.

I’ve got memory and CPU issues sorted. Not a memory leak, just a lot of bloatware. A heck of a lot. This all did trigger fibro very badly yesterday, and I’m running on empty today, but I now have a really exciting opportunity, well multiple, which needs me to have my work safe, readily accessible.

I’ve managed to semi luck into having my work accepted for conferences but I nearly missed out on this opportunity because I had been so focused on this data loss issue before and after the end of the CFP. So I submitted my paper very late, and my title was to short then too long. So I need this stability to be able to make sure I’m on track to present properly. And I still need to publish my previous papers.

So yes, my NR work is incredibly central to my life for a year or so.

Two days, two days, to check ssd/hdd model numbers against non commercial websites. SMS is a deal breaker but instead of being able to look at a model number and say “aha, this series uses SMS and the other CMS” no, now they’re interspersed. Oh no. Did I create a basic or dynamic disk… nope phew. I just want to create content, you know? But I have a 4T 3.5″ harddrive to get everything off the drives I’m concerned with. But I think the drive that “failed” didn’t. I’ve checked it with every tool there is, and yes. Virtual memory was way too low. And I was right in interpreting a paging error as an error to do with… you know… paging. It matters as well that my physical memory was burdened and that I’ve had to watch processes for a few years now because of how slow folders have been to load.

But what was supposed to be a five minute fly by post had to be delayed because of course suddenly my theme broke and my blog disappeared. So ick, stunt blog page in the meantime.

Element tags used to be lovely and easy, now though I won’t be able to readily export and import my own content should I decide to change CMS. This is already a bit of an issue with social media. Instead of element tags being descriptive they’re now alphanumeric strings. This makes it harder on engineers because while yes you can copy and search for those strings they aren’t intuitive. And while the tags I’m looking at for my own site are descriptive they’re getting really unwieldy, and that’s were errors creep in too.

And this matters because I had to edit the elements and it’s not intuitive.

So a past post I titled a Comedy of Eras? Yeah it’s felt like I’ve passed through a few of them this week.

But there is even more good news, but I can’t share that yet.

Oh thank goodness. The data that was lost was the directions to the files. A simple recovery tool found 800K of them, and I was able to recognise files I deleted deliberately and files that weren’t. So yoink, got them copied at least the images and documents, I’ll need to go through to find the rest.

But what caused this completely different issue to my other disk issues? I have no clue. But I know my printer was trying to connect to an app every single second (filling my error log.) And that device management was trying to connect to a non existent server almost as often (partially filling my error log.) And the errors from my drive interspersed.

Searching for information about each error in the log results in either dismissal (all can be safely ignored) to catastrophic (harddrive is failing) when it’s more about the context.

I haven’t wanted to reconnect any drives but this looks to be a somewhat unifying theory “-disk write caching … may also result in the loss of information if a power failure, equipment failure, or software failure occurs.”

So Occam’s Razor would suggest that this is likely causing data loss, luckily only what was being written (as in where to find files) but I still have no further information to distinguish between equipment and software failure. It would be an incredible coincidence that a new platter drive from a well respected brand is failing when the reason my ssd failed was a firmware issue from the shipped drive that wasn’t patched until after they failed so many of us. No, it wasn’t available to update on first use, and once it started to fail updating can’t rescue it. The issue affected drives manufactured between 2021 to 2023.

It could be a coincidence and my cables are failing. Though I’ve had more issues with USB cables and chips which has resulted in needing to open the casing, and taking drives out to put them in new enclosures.

The biggest problem though is that I’m acting like a data centre as far as all this software and hardware is concerned. My build is for gaming- lots of writing- and this issue has only been the last few years. Yes prior to that ssds failed, but at the end of their lives. Not brand new.

So. New cables. Figure out OS configuration. Figure out how to install older printer drivers (probably from my back up.) And try to not stress buy a new hdd given you need to check specific model numbers to know if they are SMR or CBR because…. of course “SMR as data storage, CMR for recurring write processes.” Ditto not forgetting to check what format the drives are in. Data storage is what I thought I was after but, again, my work essentially is data processing. So the external I backed up to is really to copy huge amounts of data and to then transfer it to another drive, wipe and repeat.

I can reformat it but given it probably has the least potentially corrupted files I’m not doing anything to it.

So the holding pattern remains. Luckily there are no currently time sensitive needs to access it all. And I’m not willing to risk all that new information for my Anne of Cleves and North Rhine work nor allll of the record of my life, family, and friends.

It’s just so much across time and space to lose.

I’ve just lost thousands of files in trying to organise my saved files from my old sites. I have back ups, I do, but at what point do I just give up? It’s been 20 years of my work being destroyed- physical, digital, online, and reputational. It’s my time, it’s my health, and it’s my finances that are all destroyed along with it. I think it’s obvious that I’ve been having a hard time, I just don’t think many people know just how hard. It’s not hesitancy, it’s not an attitude, it’s that every time I try to do something it is destroyed by circumstances out of my control. And contrary to popular belief that doesn’t make it easy to ignore.

And given that what just happened (explorer crashing) has happened a few times this week I know I’ve lost even more. Again, I have backups. But the work I did over the last two weeks is now in question. And frankly not just a waste of that time, but created a waste of time going forward. Much more than the weeks I’ve lost given I need to try to rescue those files, and try to work out why there are no restore points on this drive (greyed out- it’s just not an option, when I tried to set up file history what actually happened was files on my drive with the OS were copied to my back up. Probably writing over files the OS just destroyed) hope like hell that I can recover files, scan logs for what caused the crash (almost certainly won’t find it as errors are often meaningless.)

I don’t think people realise these photos are all I have left of most of my costuming history. Physical and digital. That’s why they matter so much.

And that’s just the stuff I can write publicly about.

So if I’m but sharing here or on IG then it’s because my life has just gotten even more difficult. It’s even harder to see anyone in person so that’s leaving me just so very lost indeed.

I’m incredibly lucky that I did decide to keep my OS on a small hard drive and to keep all my data separately stored and backed up. Because yesterday I got the dreaded black screen of death. Technically I shouldn’t have. I was able to grab my data to do the simplest clean install. But I shouldn’t even have to do that. Still. I know how to.

But it’s just such a drain. I had planned for this weekend to be time to work on my Cleves accessories. To print off my papers as they are and do some physical editing with a big red pen, scissors to literally cut and paste (or tape) because they’ve gotten so big that scrolling the digital copies means I might miss where I’ve written the same thing a few times.

And I do need to fold in the three incredible pieces of evidence which absolutely support why I took down my older research even though at the time it was because I had doubts not certainties. Those doubts got stronger, I thought I had got myself into the weeds, so I even doubted my own perception, which again meant I was even more unwilling to put my old work back out there. But these three pieces are exactly what I need.

So now all that work is safely backed up so I can just keep this harddrive solo while any patches to the update might roll out and might cause more havoc. I keep thinking I should also try and run games off another drive but I’m not going to lie all of this means I don’t have time, energy, pain levels to even have a little fun. I’m dreading this update on my laptop. I have my files backed up there as well. But I also have image editing apps for my pattern book- the surface allows me to draw directly to then use the tools to tidy it all.

Pretty sure that I’ve lost most of my intended audience with what began as a simple paper comparing written and visual evidence of just What The Frock in on Anne of Cleves’ head. But it really is both extremely simple and incredibly complex. I did work out what one major barrier is for those of us who speak/write English as a first language. So once I got that sorted, I also went through as many works I had previously used visually. And oh boy, wow. No wonder there is so much misinformation.

I’ve had to read a lot of academic publishing, as well as informal blog posting, obviously. So I kind of forgot that rules like citations for a statement aren’t required in these works. I have to figure out the specific source from pecking through text and figure captions and bibliographies.

But in doing so it really drove home how important it is for me to not make the same mistake.

So Cologne was doing interesting things before other cities? I might be able to get the date for those things but it then means I have to go look what is written from local sources everywhere else too in case the same biases exist.

But that has also lead to gaps in our understanding too.

I found one of the earliest biographies about Anne of Cleves written in German at a time when local archives were available to the author. But he rejected using them in favour of English sources. Why? He thought local sources would be biased, but not the English.

And a lot of those 19thC authors simply were not interested in the 16thC but rather up to 1500 and after 1600.

When I find biographies or exhibitions of artists depictions of women are simply not in focus. My timeline of depictions of women and girls has got to be properly expanded to include art forms I’ve mostly kept out. Why? Totally different art forms have different aims. And then you have completely different restoration efforts. And then what to do with the trachtenbucher? These are what artists from outside the region interpret. And that is very important as obviously we’re now all on the outside looking in thanks to time.

Anyway. Yes. Simple and complex at the same time.

First a detour- some of my work is being used in wikipedia and wikicommons entries. Only one so far hasn’t included me as the source. But it has put a bit of pressure on me to publish. I have better quality images, and I have new images. It’s slow going though.

But I’ve finally got some incredible evidence that I have desperately been searching for. I can’t really believe I found it to be honest. But I’m still working my way through my physical library, and that’s much harder than digitised files. I think what I have fits in and connects some of these works.

It’s not helped that there is a reason for these sporadic notes here and that’s simply how tired and sore I am. Progress in my calves is slow. The damage is just, a lot. The equivalent of scarring? The thickening of the tissue means it’s not as resilient so it takes care, but dedication, to stretch safely and build muscle. I am more springy in my walking. But if I push it too far I’m back to flipper walking.

It means using the outer muscles to offload to and yes, I look like a penguin in the last legs of their yearly migration. It’s different to my RA John Wayne walk when my hips get inflamed. But it is all about that offloading.

In kitties update, Fluffy actually spent time resting on my legs the other night. He never does that. But it’s what Boo used to do all the time and so I’ve had a flood of emotions about that and missing little Carlo too. And I’ve managed to pat little Missy’s tummy if I can time the pats to pats on her head.