Thread: Winders got me good - help or advice please

Check this page http://www.runtime.org/ it has all the programs you will need to recover your data.

cheers

If at all poosible, stop using the computer ASAP.

The files should still be on the original drive, unless they have been overwritten. Best choice is to build a drive image of the orig drive to a larger drive (not the 500 ext. but a different one) This freezes the drive so files don't get overwritten.
You can then use data recovery s/ware to recover the files from either drive, doubling your chances.

By any chance, can you access another computer. If so, pull the original data drive from the case and install it into a drive case and connect to the second computer. Install the drive image and data recovery software on the second computer and use it to store an image of the entire original drive. Then you can mount the image and let the recovery software work through it sector by sector recovering and reconstructing the data. If anything is obviously missing, do the same thing with the 500 ext.

I recently completely recovered the data from a crashed XP boot drive for my SIL using this technique and O&O disk image trial (from a magazine disk) and R-TT R-Studio recovery software from R-TT.com. You can download a free eval version of R studio which will do all of the searching, linking etc and tell you what is recoverable, then pay $75 to activate the recovery section if you think it worthwhile, based on what can be recovered.

Can copy both the imaging and recovery software to a DVD and post to you if you send a PM with address, can also loan a drive housing for 2.5 or 3.5 IDE drives if that helps.

The above sequence can recover data even after a reformat etc because the actual data normally remains on the disc until the space is required. Deleting only changes the file name in the index tables to indicate that the file can be overwritten if the space is needed, it does not delete or overwrite the actual data.

Hope this helps

Mate go to the Ad-aware site check the free download and run it, along with the free spybot search and destroy, these are free programs to remove unwanted crap from your machine , google this forum for them and you will find out why you need them , even the best anti virus ( and I hope you are running a good one , preferably not a norton ) will miss stuff that these pick up , and they can cause you the types of problems you are experiancing, my only other tip is to get a good registry cleaner and you have to buy this as the free ones , IMO are crap , will cost you $50 or there abouts from hardley normal , officeworks etc , I found registry mechanic to be good
This wont recover your files but might stop future problems in the same area

Thanks gents, I also got a few PM's too. Looks like I am going to have a lot of headaches if I really want those files If you look at the time stamp on my posts, you'll see that I don't get on here until late at night.

I tried the recovery program that malb recommended, and it was the best yet - it just took 10 hours, seemed to find the files, then deleted them from its listing as I watched . Maybe I'll have to fiddle with its settings, but at 10 hours downtime for each search..........

Ashore, yes I run Adaware, Spybot, Zonealarm (which has its own problems with virus definitions) and the Iolo suite - Registry Mechanic's big brother. At this time I'm guessing that I've found some Windows idiosyncrasy rather than some dweeb cracking my firewall & deleting the files remotely as all the files on C: have been left alone, just the files on the external USB drive went missing. Guess I'll have to try to find a new IDE drive to make my D: again after the last one died - that was the problem the USB drive was supposed to solve.

Have you plugged the USB drive into another another machine, to see if you can see the files?

Originally Posted by bsrlee

I tried the recovery program that malb recommended, and it was the best yet - it just took 10 hours, seemed to find the files, then deleted them from its listing as I watched . Maybe I'll have to fiddle with its settings, but at 10 hours downtime for each search..........

.

Its probably too late now if you didn't quarrantine the drive, but my approach was aimed at getting the 'deleted' files off the original disc, with the external as a last resort.

As I said, I recovered a complete crashed 120GB drive this way a few weeks ago using my technique. However it depends on stopping using the drive so that you don't overwrite the data areas that have been marked as reusable. The recovery software reads the entire disc sector by sector, and compiles the table of contents from that. I recall the scan phase taking about 18 hours for the disk I recovered.

If you find the files you wanted to recover in the list, but then disappearing, the data area containing them was probably being overwritten by the computer as they disappeared. I suggested pulling the drive and mounting it in an ext case and creating an image on another drive as a means of avoiding that happening, i.e limiting drive activity on the original drive to read operations. As mentioned this needs another computer, (or a different drive with an XP install in the original computer) to carry the image and recovery software, the down loaded install modules, temp install files etc, so that this doesn't overwrite what you wanted to recover.

The drive that I worked over had had a head crash and I managed to get 100% of data back of the drive, plus an extensive compilation of 'deleted' files that could be recovered if I had the need to. Once I had the recoverable list, I had the software recover the whole lot to a new folder on a seperate drive, and then did a spanned DVD sized zip of the recovered files, burnt that to several DVD's and shipped the lot to the owner with instructions on how to open the set, locations for hidden data like email and address books, and instructions for verifying data.

Result, 100% satisfaction. All emails, addresses, office files, photos, geneology files etc recovered and fully working with the creating software on a sister machine.

This is also a symptom of a failing or overtaxed PSU in the main computer. It's amazing how much power a few peripherals can suck.

Is the external drive independantly powered?

Do you have other USB devices plugged in that you can remove to reduce load on the PSU and try the HDD again?

XP is getting increasingly flakey (just like my Mum) - it now refuses to run the print spooler, even after I reloaded the spooler driver from the original CD. I tried reloading XP from the install CD - it loaded onto D: instead of C:, then rebooted from C:. At least in blundering around I found I somehow had been 'given' a bunch of gay & dodgy chemist ads which I did not see come in my emails - which makes me suspect that my firewall was leaking at some stage & 'someone' may have gotten in & stuffed around with my files....Grrrr.

I found the switch in the recovery program that I had missed before to recover the deleted files, so I will have to give it another go when I get the re-install of XP to work - the missing files were on an external USB hard drive which has its own power supply, so nothing ~should~ have been written to it.

At least I have found out where my mobile phone has been holidaying & I will get it back tomorrow night - it has NOT been a good week, just got back from getting some CaT scans for a kidney stone.