Data Recovery

[oneh2obabe]

Girlfriend calls me Saturday night and said she got a "fatal error" message so tried to do a system restore 5 times with no luck. She did a "restore to factory settings" - said it didn't give her a chance to backup her files before starting the restore process.

Is there any way she can get back any or part of her files? She's more interested in recovering her pictures than anything else.

[dirtrider]

I believe there are a number of recovery programs as well as professional recovery service comp. however,.....you might want to try this program if the OS was window based

http://www.filerecoveryafter.com/factory-reset.html

[oneh2obabe]

Thanks. Have sent it to her.

[Symbonite]

Can she get back into windows.

If not do you have another machine you can hook up the computer to..

If not then you will have to bring it in to a computer shop that can do it.

If that cant be done then you will have to send it to a data recovery center. one place is called CBL Data Recovery Its in Ontario and they do everything from Hard Drive Crashes to Raid Recovery To the old zip, Jazz, Floppy cards

www.cbldatarecovery.ca

WARNING...not cheap but they do free estimates.

Just depends on how important Your data Is...

[oneh2obabe]

Said the computer is up and running after the restore to factory settings. All she's done is read her e-mail and play a couple of games. Sent over the link to the restore program but told her to phone a few computer stores, tell them what happened and see if they think it's okay to try the program or bring in her computer for them to look at.

[LoneWolf_53]

Will be interesting to hear the outcome. It's my guess that she's SOL since she did a restore.

The best approach would have been to yank the hard drive out, attach it to another computer and grab the data off of it before doing the restore.

I've yet to see any of those data recovery programs live up to their hype.

[GordonH]

Will be interesting to hear the outcome. It's my guess that she's SOL since she did a restore.

The best approach would have been to yank the hard drive out, attach it to another computer and grab the data off of it before doing the restore.

I've yet to see any of those data recovery programs live up to their hype.

Yep...... always backup all important personal stuff, be it a flash drive, external hard drive or a cloud service.
Yes some may cost money, how much is saving pulling your hair out worth and loosing chariest memories (as well important documents).

[Woodenhead]

The files would still be on the drive, just not indexed any more - those are recoverable. However, if she did a restore & has been using the computer since, they will be getting overwritten randomly. If she wanted them back, she should have left it alone until getting some concrete answers. Too late now.

Also, what GordonH said.

[Scadam]

There might not be a lot left, but if there is any try an undelete program. The best one I've used is this:

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

It can't perform miracles, but it will show you any and all recoverable files, as in still physically recorded on the hard drive even though you've nuked the indexes that would identify them and made them functionally invsible to the OS (ie. factory reset, quick format).

[crookedmember]

Mini Tool Power Data Recovery was able to recover everything off a trashed disk for me. And it's free.

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

[monroe]

The files would still be on the drive, just not indexed any more - those are recoverable. However, if she did a restore & has been using the computer since, they will be getting overwritten randomly. If she wanted them back, she should have left it alone until getting some concrete answers. Too late now.

Also, what GordonH said.

oneh2obabe sorry, a bit late to be asking but did your aquaintance send their hdd out for a recovery attempt? If so can you please share some detail of their experience please :-)

Woodenhead has laid out exactly what would have happened. 3rd party software is most likely useless. No MFT, no go (especially after a restore). Any remote chance of a partial recovery after restore would have been severely minimized by using the pc to any degree.

[oneh2obabe]

oneh2obabe sorry, a bit late to be asking but did your aquaintance send their hdd out for a recovery attempt? If so can you please share some detail of their experience please :-)

No she didn't. Waste of time and money now as she's been using the computer on a daily basis. Convinced her to buy a couple of 32g thumb drives (1 for pictures, 1 for files) a few weeks and suggested she back up on a weekly basis. Still in the package.

[LoneWolf_53]

^^ Sounds about like all the people I've done my best to educate on the importance of backing up. They basically just yeah yeah you, then go right back to ignoring the advice and crying a river when their hard drive fails.

I don't know what it takes to get people to understand that hard drives are a mechanical device and it's not a matter of "IF" it will fail, but rather "WHEN" it will fail, because you can be assured that eventually it will.

I guess to most their pictures aren't really as precious as they make out.

[monroe]

No she didn't. Waste of time and money now as she's been using the computer on a daily basis. Convinced her to buy a couple of 32g thumb drives (1 for pictures, 1 for files) a few weeks and suggested she back up on a weekly basis. Still in the package.

Lol awsome. Stay on her.

Let her know the next time it happens and she attempts a recovery it could get expensive.

Retrieval and rebuild of deleted files being less costly than an actual failure still could have cost in the range of 3-400$.

[fluffy]

I had an issue with my computer a few months back that myself and a couple others assumed was a software issue, bad copy of the OS, when in fact the hard drive itself was on its way out. By the time we clued in the drive had failed completely. The tech who worked on it for me found some sort of software that let him recover the information but it took about three days to copy the info off the drive. I'll see if I can get the name of the program. I also heard that putting a failed drive in the freezer for a while might get it operational long enough to transfer the data, but these are last ditch efforts for a relatively non-functioning hard drive.