Data Recovery Software???

[Guest]

[stuartguthrie]

Hey all,

A friend of mine has just brought her computer round to me in an absolute panic because her husband has deleted a three year supply of digital photos that have never been backed up.  Anyway I have checked and nothing is in the Recycle Bin and I have been telling her about data recovery software but have never had any experience with it myself. Does anyone know what I can recommend to her? Also, how likely is it that it will work? I have told her not to touch or turn on her computer in the fear that she may write over the deleted data. I know it's not really my problem but I feel so sorry for her - everything has been taking on the digital camera and now she has lost it all. 

All suggestions and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Stu

[sandydlc]

Hey all,

A friend of mine has just brought her computer round to me in an absolute panic because her husband has deleted a three year supply of digital photos that have never been backed up.  Anyway I have checked and nothing is in the Recycle Bin and I have been telling her about data recovery software but have never had any experience with it myself. Does anyone know what I can recommend to her? Also, how likely is it that it will work? I have told her not to touch or turn on her computer in the fear that she may write over the deleted data. I know it's not really my problem but I feel so sorry for her - everything has been taking on the digital camera and now she has lost it all. 

All suggestions and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Stu

Hi Stu!!

Having just gotten back a large amount of data from my crashed MacBook Pro drive, I can share my experiences that hopefully will help your friend.

First of all, unless you know what you're doing, I wouldn't try to recover the data yourself.  You can actually damage it beyond recovery if you do the wrong thing.  I found a service that is the most cost-effective company I've ever gone through for data recovery.  They will evaluate your data and let you know what they can and cannot bring back for you. If you have specific files/file extensions, they'll work extra hard to get those recovered.

Go to www.myharddrivedied.com   Their evaluation fee is just US $50.00.  Then the fee varies depending on how large your hard drive is and whether they're able to recover any data.  I had them put my recovered data on an external drive (which I had to pay for) but now I have this really cute little WD external that matches my OQO!!

Anyway, if the data is really important, I would go to the experts.  I think I ended up paying around $750 to get my data back, but the local companies in Seattle wanted nearly $2000 for the same service.

Hope this helps.

Sandy

[stuartguthrie]

Hey Sandy,

Thanks for your reply - I have printed it out and will give it to her. In all honesty I think that as much as it is, $750 would be worth every cent to get her photos back (which include her wedding and baby's birth!). I guess this is another lesson why backup is so important.

Thanks heaps,
Stu

[kyone]

I've used http://www.recovermyfiles.com/ and found it to be very effective.

After an experience like this she will certainly learn to backup from now on...

[sandydlc]

I know that there are many data recovery programs out there, and many that work very well, however after an extensive conversation with Scott at the data recovery company, he recommended that customers *not* attempt to recover their files on their own.  He says it can damage the data beyond recovery.

So, considering the importance of the pictures that your friend lost, I think it would be worth the cost of data recovery.

Just my two cents.  Good luck and keep us posted!!

Sandy

[kyone]

You only need to use data recovery companies for physically damaged hardware.

Data recovery is not that difficult if you have just accidently deleted the files.  The person only needs to find someone with relatively good technical understanding of computers and good software.  Unless you are rich !

I had accidently partially formatted my HDD when I realised I need some information from it.  The software I used as above in my previous post claimed it could technically get information even from a fully formatted HDD.

When I did the recovery I got back everything I needed.

[stuartguthrie]

Hey all,

Thank you for the advice and for the links. I'm going to give these programs a go on my OQO as I'm very curious to see how they fair, but I'm going to give it a miss on my friend's computer just incase something goes wrong. I think Sandy's correct in recommending that I leave it to the professionals since this data is so important. I'd feel shocking if I did anything that made even one picture unrecoverable.

Thanks heaps for everything - I'm going to go and have a play with these programs on my OQO.

Stu

[Dave P]

One other suggestion. You might want to get an external hard drive enclosure (I used Apricorn to make an old HDD into a portable drive but there are a number of manufacturers), pull the drive out of her PC, and put it into the enclosure. That way you won't have to worry about the OS accidentally overwriting some of her data. The enclosure will allow to drive to be accessed via USB from another PC.

[kyone]

One other suggestion. You might want to get an external hard drive enclosure (I used Apricorn to make an old HDD into a portable drive but there are a number of manufacturers), pull the drive out of her PC, and put it into the enclosure. That way you won't have to worry about the OS accidentally overwriting some of her data. The enclosure will allow to drive to be accessed via USB from another PC.

That's exactly right.  This is what will be suggested when you use the recovery software.  This way no matter what you do it will not cause further damage.

[stuartguthrie]

Stu

Acronis is best...but this is free and works awesome. 

http://www.download.com/Pandora-Recovery/3000-2094_4-10694796.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10865321

You welcome! 
Chris

Hey all,

A bit of an update. Unfortunately  my friends could not afford to go ahead with sending their hard drive across to a data recovery specialist, so with their approval we figured that giving the Pandora Recovery software that Chris mentioned a go was better than nothing. Well... what can I say but wow!!! The software recovered 15,000 picture files (no joke!). I'm unaware of what was on the computer before but I'm told that at least 90% of the photos would have definitely be successfully recovered. Needless to say, they are so happy! While I still very much agree with Sandy that issues such as the one that my friends experienced are best left to the professionals, if for some reason this can't be done or you're not willing to spend the money, then this program that Chris mentioned is definitely worth trying.

Thank you all again.

Stu

[trf]

Recovery options are amazing.  I formated a drive and installed a new operating system on it and then realized that there were files that we did not back up.  After some research I located a couple of programs and recovered the files from the drive even after a format and the loading of a new OS.   As has been mentioned be careful with discarding your old drive if there are sensitive file on it.  You must use special formating options to actually erase a drive completely.

[stuartguthrie]

Recovery As has been mentioned be careful with discarding your old drive if there are sensitive file on it.  You must use special formating options to actually erase a drive completely.

I could definitely see that being an issue after this exercise. Do you ever remember a couple of years back the Australian Navy discarded a whole pile of laptops and someone sold them on eBay with top secret data on? In the end the Navy had to track down all the sellers and buy them back.

Stu

[sandydlc]

I'm glad to hear that everything worked out for your friend Stu!

What's even better is that we all know about some new recovery options also.