anyone else ever lost a lot of data off a hard drive

On an older computer that still used IDE hard drives, I had a couple of Maxtor hard drives. Anyway I was doing some maintenance on the computer and decided to unplug all power and data connection to the drives.

So when I was all finished, I plugged the hard drives back in and turned the computer back on. My hard drive with all the maps I had just created for Doom, not available. I checked and the hard drive that had all of my games on it, wasn't showing up.

Turns out, I plugged in the data connection and forgot to plug the power back in for the hard drive. So I turned the computer off, plugged in the 4 pin Molex connector to the back of the hard drive, turned the computer back on, the hard drive would no longer show up in windows.

The weird thing is, the BIOS would see the hard drive was there, but not windows. I still have the drive, but yea, I lost a ton of amazing stuff. That Doom map I had made for the first Doom game, can never be redone. It was a one of a kind map.

Yes I lost the first year or two online cause my old machine fried my harddrive (it had some fluff build up in the vents so it overheated the machine) and I didn't back anything up back then.
乂º︵º乂

I lost a lot of family photos once. It was kinda heart breaking. A faulty USB stick.

No. I have multiple backup systems in place.

Not yet ... that's why I have one external drive mirroring the other

I think there is a saying that goes something like "if your data is not in three places, it doesn't exist"