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Hard disk recovery?

Axtman

Axtman

Supporting Member
Mar 3, 2008
2,570
4,688
Seattle, WA
#1
Long story short. I had a computer that kept rebooting. So I took it to Staples for repair (BIG MISTAKE). They said that they needed to reinstall the operating system and drivers AND would back up my hard disk. Well guess what they forgot to do?

So now I am trying to find a service or software that will hopefully let me recover at least some of my files.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 
#2
There is an excellent computer store in (South Hill) Puyallup WA called Creative Computers that repair, and build new custom computer systems. These guys are highly knowlegeble, and have an excellent rep sheet. 1-253-848-6911.

My hard drive fried 2 weeks ago, and they built me a (slightly used case, and DVD drive) new system with XP for $250 that's working fantastic (for XP).
 
#7
I have used Active File Recovery from LSoft with success in the past. It's not free, but if your files are valuable (emotionally or financially), it may be worth the investment. It was for me.

-Mike
 
#9
Strat-Mangler said:
I would suggest that in the future, you use a RAID in mirroring mode. That will essentially keep a to-the-second copy of everything you have by writing all the data in real-time on 2 different hard drives.
Click to expand...

RAID 1 (mirrored drives) will keep the data copied on 2 drives but won't save you if the OS becomes corrupted and is on the RAID volume. A bare minimum configuration for a production server would require 4+ drives configured in multiple RAID volumes so you could lose a drive on the OS or data volume, replace it and move on. This type of architecture is not cheap and isn't seen too often in consumer systems for that reason. Even with all of that, unless you snapshot, there is no fail safe for corruption of the OS.

Just backup your important stuff for safety.
 
#13
Strat-Mangler said:
True. I was under the impression that an OS partition wouldn't be a necessity to recover files from a RAID, but I stand corrected.
Click to expand...

This isn't necessarily untrue. Think of a mirrored set of drives as a safety net at the hardware level. A NAS in a RAID 1 configuration is a beautiful thing if the controller is intelligent enough to rebuild a drive.

RAID (REDUNDANT ARRAY of INDEPENDENT DISKS) can do things like mirroring for redundancy or striping for performance. You can even do combinations of stripes and mirrors for both. However, disks and controllers are expensive. I have seen some consumer grade external HDDs/ NASs that will do a basic mirror. Not sure how easily they'll rebuild a drive. A good RAID controller will allow you to hot swap a drive and will rebuild the new drive auto-magic-ly. :) All of this occurs at the harware level so the OS is virtually unaware that the drives are in a RAID.

Here's a wiki for the geeky types....
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
 
#14
Axtman said:
Long story short. I had a computer that kept rebooting. So I took it to Staples for repair (BIG MISTAKE). They said that they needed to reinstall the operating system and drivers AND would back up my hard disk. Well guess what they forgot to do?

So now I am trying to find a service or software that will hopefully let me recover at least some of my files.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear this. If taking your disk to a third-party, always ask for the backed up data, before they start any new install. If nothing else, you should confirm that they got everything. I have used OSForensics a couple times in the past. Never had amazing success, but was able to recover a friend's family photos, after they had an experience similar to yours.

Backups, as others have mentioned, will be your friend going forward. My network backs up to a server in the house, nightly, and the server backs up off-site, using Carbonite. I have only ever had one disk failure, where I was not able to access the data, but I was able to download all data to a new disk, without issue.

There are lots of off-site options, and I can't say Carbonite is better than any others - I have only tried a couple. I just happened to be an early adopter and have an unlimited amount of storage, for very cheap money, so I have stuck with them. Not sure what the performance hit would be on a production machine, but I have never noticed it bothering the server here. I mostly worry about client data and recording files, but it is nice to know that everything exists in at least two places.

Good luck tracking down your data.
 
#15
Buddy...you have my sympathy. i hope you can recover all your data.

as others have said...back up back up back up

i recently got a bunch of error msgs on my harddrive and called geek squad....they told me my hard drive was failing. i rushed out and bought a 1 TB external harddrive and backed up my two discs...C: & D:. i then took my computer to best buys and had geek squad re-install my harddrives onto new harddrives which i purchased.

i then (using the new 1tb external which i purchased) installed full copies of my C: drives onto 2 new harddrives which i also purchased.

admittedly, the cost was @500.00 for all, BUT....i now have 3 copies of my c: drive which i can plug into and boot should my main c: drive fail. since i don't really use my D: drive except for some files here and there, i disconnected it. should i ever require anything that is on it, i will simply re-boot my computer after connecting my d: drive.

that, I think, is the way to go.


davesignatureII-1.png
 
#16
Another way to go about this is to use RAID1 and a third, smaller HDD with the OS and nothing else on it. Set up the BIOS to boot from the HDD that has the OS on it but keep a copy of the OS on a separate CD-ROM and on the other HDDs as backups. Since smaller HDDs are cheap, having another smaller one with the OS is a good way to recover on the fly. Then, backup all files regularly.
 
#18
hdracer said:
It can be done but it can be very expensive.
Click to expand...

^^^This. And, if your local Data Recovery Guru is anything like the guys in my town (TekServe, in NYC) they charge by the size of the drive, not the amount of data stored (or lost).

So, when my 500GB drive that only had 1.5GB of data on it crapped out, they offered to try to recover it (no gurantee of success) for a minimum charge of ~$800!

Fortunately, that was my backup drive, so I just bought a brand new 1TB drive for $100 and backed everything up again onto that.
 
#19
there are some tools you can use. if using windows and you used the libraries that windows has automatically, music, pictures, documents... these are usually easier to recover

Basically when something is deleted it's foot print remains on the HD until that physical space on the HD is saved over again with something else. This foot print can be located... and the file can be recovered most of the time.

There are programs that you can install on the computer that can recover the files you can do it yourself... you will have to do some studying on File Recovery software and learn how to use the software. Save your self some cash and learn something.


BTW im a hack... i have no formal training or work in the industry... what i posted above is an oversimplification... but i think you will get the jist
 

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