Hard disk data recovery *Solved & Fully Recovered*

[KBC]

I'm ready to give the processes a go, any final fix on the best (maybe costliest) tool for recovery!? Sure, I'll try all of them mentioned, but curiousity's killing messssssss.

 

[MattW]

Try free ones, then see what you recover. Just make sure your computer goes nowhere near that tech guy again.

I know I got all my stuff back with a free tool, the only difference is it may have options for taking even longer to do a more in depth scan. You may also get files that don't have names, or have missing letters.

 

[KBC]

Cheers mate. I searched around in Youtube and google for a while and came up to this:

SpinRite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SpinRite seems to really good, but there are few listed in the alternatives section. Me thinks SpinRite needs more twists and turns to recover the data, okay! I'm up for it all, but the alternatives seem to do the job too.

Few advises needed on that, and I'm gonna go straight away to recover my data!

Thanks tons!

 

[MattW]

That's not the sort of thing you want. That's for if the hard drive has literally crashed (usually followed by clunking noises).

Recuva - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is along the lines

 

[KBC]

Oh, jeez. Thanks for that matt. Kshitiz posted that earlier and I've downlaoded it. I'd try it for sure. Thanks once again!

 

[sohum]

I'd suggest giving FindNTFS a spin, too (link posted in my first post on this thread), if all else fails. It's not got a pretty UI but it's pretty brute force. I think it directly reads the hard disk and tries to detect partition tables and then just reads those partition tables to get a list of files.

 

[KBC]

I'll give everything a go Sohum! I'm up to do anything to get the data back. Your A, B, C method is what that looks reliable i reckon. Connect the 80 GB HDD i want to recover the data from, and the 1TB External HDD (have the SATA port! ) to another PC with an OS installed and start the recovery process from there with the target being the 80 GB HDD and the desination of the dump, the 1TB HDD.

Time taking process i presume, meh, I don't ever care. But I PRAY for this day the power won't go!

Thanks for so much help guys! I can't find ways to repay you!

 

[KBC]

Okay, we're doing the recovery. Just had a silly and again an out of the possibilites question (maybe).

Is there still a chance or godfather of a technique to get the overwritten data? Seems like my mind's corrupted. But i couldn't help asking. 'as Better posting the question than keeping it entertained.

I wonder how those hiQ companies manage to recover their data as if nothing happened.

 

[sohum]

I wonder how those hiQ companies manage to recover their data as if nothing happened.

They have daily backups and operate on RAID arrays, usually.

 

[MattW]

Is there still a chance or godfather of a technique to get the overwritten data? Seems like my mind's corrupted. But i couldn't help asking. 'as Better posting the question than keeping it entertained.

If the exact spot on the disk where the data was has been overwritten you can't recover, but deleting/formatting is not overwriting remember. How much have you got back from the programs so far?

 

[KBC]

Jeez! I nearly have almost all the data in the first 80 GB HDD recovered! One partition has been fully recovered, another one, obviously, the C: which has the OS, does have all the data, but many of them are deleted, but recovered. The files are all scrambled though, they come in seperate coded folders, and it's a pain to check them one by one, and rectify if there's all the data. But technically yes, by properties, all the 80(+) GB has been recovered.

The C: is under the hammer though, I'm recovering with Getdataback.

Here's the link of the top #10 software for recovering data.

Data Recovery Software Review 2010 - TopTenREVIEWS

So Technically speaking, There is absolutely no chance IF the data is overwritten, no matter what we do or whoever we take it to? Yes? If that's it, i might want to smell the reality and jog on. But if not, I'm standing all up for it.

@sohum: Yeah mate, the backups are most genuine in every company. But they sometimes possess like magic tricks to recover data with no relevance to any backups however. Interesting how they do.

If this doesn't happen, it'd i'd think, should i go for those Solutions people again?

EDIT: Not those picks again! Shouldn't say that but they worked really hard, but the format they did was the blunder of all time.

 

[MattW]

There is absolutely no chance IF the data is overwritten

None at all, once the physical part of the disk it was on is overwritten it is gone. Just the thing is because of disk fragmentation, there is no real relation between where a file is placed on disk and its location, so a new file could be near the start and and old one at the end.

The files are all scrambled though, they come in seperate coded folders, and it's a pain to check them one by one, and rectify if there's all the data.

I was lucky in that regard, I lost a drive that was my media one, so mostly music and video, so most of it was easily retagged. I'd sort by file size, and then think about the types of stuff you have and what sizes the files are that you made.

But they sometimes possess like magic tricks to recover data with no relevance to any backups however. Interesting how they do.

RAID is a bit different to a backup, it is fully redundant storage (in some configurations), in that every single file is stored on two hard disks, so if one dies, you just continue with the other one. That also gives you double the chance of having recoverable files if you do delete.

Last time I was involved with important backups, they were a bunch of date coded tape backups.

Utilising that external HD a bit more would be ideal, but otherwise don't mess with partitioning. You can reinstall windows over the top of the old copy, and the built in repair function of setup works wonders in my experience (and rollback has saved me many times). Make sure you have a Windows setup disk available, and I'd also strongly suggest a Linux Live CD, which would have allowed you to boot off a disc and copy files yourself over to the external drive before taking it to a computer person.

That said I'm talking as someone whose last backup is two years old (with a handful of important stuff on discs or usb drives).

 

[KBC]

None at all, once the physical part of the disk it was on is overwritten it is gone. Just the thing is because of disk fragmentation, there is no real relation between where a file is placed on disk and its location, so a new file could be near the start and and old one at the end.

That's probably the case i end up finding many old files that i haven't seen in ages when i search thru those folders. Not a big deal with the recent data, but the bigg loss i think could be my documents and settings folder, which happens to be around 8 GB!

I was lucky in that regard, I lost a drive that was my media one, so mostly music and video, so most of it was easily retagged. I'd sort by file size, and then think about the types of stuff you have and what sizes the files are that you made.

Yes, that is a painful job! Should probably throw away some more hours bringing them in order.

RAID is a bit different to a backup, it is fully redundant storage (in some configurations), in that every single file is stored on two hard disks, so if one dies, you just continue with the other one. That also gives you double the chance of having recoverable files if you do delete.

Last time I was involved with important backups, they were a bunch of date coded tape backups.

Utilising that external HD a bit more would be ideal, but otherwise don't mess with partitioning. You can reinstall windows over the top of the old copy, and the built in repair function of setup works wonders in my experience (and rollback has saved me many times). Make sure you have a Windows setup disk available, and I'd also strongly suggest a Linux Live CD, which would have allowed you to boot off a disc and copy files yourself over to the external drive before taking it to a computer person.

That said I'm talking as someone whose last backup is two years old (with a handful of important stuff on discs or usb drives).

Many co-incidents! The last of the backups/format i did was way back in 2007, but you can guess the gravity of the loss of files I've had, and I did a pretty good job packing stuff seriously into 160 GB, if they weren't, I think they could've taken half a terrabyte, sure!.... I will have to check out all the DVDs i've written the data in.

Oh gosh, wish i thought about this topic 10-15 days ago........would've been actually closed by now. Oh well........

But there shouldn't be much damage done i strongly believe, when the guy put the HDD in my hand, it'd about 5 GB occupied in the C: Drive, and that only of XP. I can't come to conclusions, but i sure believe there should the data i'm looking for in there. But still it worries me because Documents and settings and user accounts are auto reset when installing XP. I don't understand why the hell couldn't he have dumped the User's documents when asked in XP Setup.


Part 1 of the operation is nearly done, D: has KB to KB recovered, the second thing is Another 80 GB HDD.

Thanks for all help guys, I've managed to save most of it at least.

 

[sohum]

@sohum: Yeah mate, the backups are most genuine in every company. But they sometimes possess like magic tricks to recover data with no relevance to any backups however. Interesting how they do.

There's no such thing as magic, at least not in disk storage technology. Companies, if they want to protect themselves against disk failure, employ backups and RAID. That's pretty much it. If you want more safety, make redundant backups.

Apart from that, they have to use the same processes as everyone else to recover data--they don't make special disks for companies.

 

[KBC]

Yeah. I'm a little worried now, C: is not recovered as much as i expected. Testing my luck out.