I have lost everything...

Slow Show

Right, this is my last go at salvaging the remains of my hard drive.

Long story short: Recently my computer was restored back to the way it was when it was first used, without anyone having informed me, and without my files being backed up >.> I really need one document in particular. That was last Saturday, and today I did a Recuva scan. The document I needed was described as being in 'poor' condition, while most were 'unrecoverable' but it seems to have been overwritten, and wouldn't open in Microsoft Word because it was corrupt. So that's that. A faint-hearted question: is there anything I can do to recover it? I'd even go as far as actually paying for it. I know it's highly unlikely there's a way but hey, if you don't ask you don't get.

Also: I have a USB memory key with the document I've lost stored on it from when it was modified about a year ago, which is a lot better than nothing. The USB device is not recognised by my computer anymore, when I plug it in it's described as having 'malfunctioned' and it doesn't show up in My Computer. Anything I can do?

Sorry if these questions are completely hopeless and the answers to them are very obvious, I'm not very informed in this kind of thing.

ArtyM

Hey
First things first, stop using the drive immediately. Using the drive reduces the chances of recovery.
You can try some of the higher end data recovery softwares that are available to buy online - but you need to either put your hard drive in as a slave in another computer or attach it externally to another computer if you have a caddy or suitable connector.
If it is a very valuable document you can go to any of the data recovery companies in Ireland. They can retrieve data from even severely damaged drives so can very likely help you. BUT.. they are not cheap. You could be looking at a few hundred euro.
Good luck, Post back with your progress

Voodu Child

The first thing to do is stop using the computer immediately. Don't turn it on, don't use Recuva, don't use it to research data recovery.

Jarren

.

Spacedog

Take your corrupt doc file and open it in notepad (wordpad if it's too big) here you will find a load of gibberish characters (this is meta data and corrupt portions).

Scroll through it and try to find any remaining readable text recoverable from your document. copy the text and paste back into a clean word document, and spend a the time re-formatting the text, tables paragraphs etc.

This is the best any professional recovery company will gladly charge you up to thousands to do.

Also give the person who reinstalled your system without asking you if you'd backed your data a kick in the bollocks. He deserves to be killed in my opinion.

Slow Show

Thanks for the help guys, but I really don't have the money to do anything really outrageous, and the stuff only had sentimental value. I mostly lost a few short stories as I write a bit in my spare time, a few projects and a diary I've kept for nearly five years, which is killing me inside. I did have some of the documents backed up but as I said in my OP, that's self-destructed too and there doesn't seem to be anything to be done about it.

Slow Show

Spacedog wrote: »

Take your corrupt doc file and open it in notepad (wordpad if it's too big) here you will find a load of gibberish characters (this is meta data and corrupt portions).

Scroll through it and try to find any remaining readable text recoverable from your document. copy the text and paste back into a clean word document, and spend a the time re-formatting the text, tables paragraphs etc.

This is the best any professional recovery company will gladly charge you up to thousands to do.

Also give the person who reinstalled your system without asking you if you'd backed your data a kick in the bollocks. He deserves to be killed in my opinion.

The document was...well...massive. And on a quick scan all I can see is gbberish, and what I would find probably wouldn't be worth the effort. Unless I'm completely mis-reading the situation. Also, it was password protected, so being able to take parts out of wordpad doesn't seem very plausible.

PapaQuebec

My company specializes in data recovery and the biggest problem I find is that people "have-a-go" themselves with low-end or even free software. This can seriously diminish the chances of data being successfully recovered!

Capt'n Midnight

www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

if the drive starts making noises then you are looking at ddrescue on a linux bos and it gets messy since you have to mount a file as a filesystem but a lot cheaper than having it opened in a clean room

Firblog

Download Hirren's boot cd from http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ (link to download is halfway down the page highlighted in green). Follow the instructions to make a bootable disc. (Do this from another pc, as said above, DON'T use the one you need to recover) Then you set your laptop to boot from cd, and choose mini xp when offered the options.
This will start up a mini version of the xp operating system, from where you can choose different programs to try to recover the lost files on your hard drive.

Kinetic^

Firblog wrote: »

Download Hirren's boot cd from http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ (link to download is halfway down the page highlighted in green). Follow the instructions to make a bootable disc. (Do this from another pc, as said above, DON'T use the one you need to recover) Then you set your laptop to boot from cd, and choose mini xp when offered the options.
This will start up a mini version of the xp operating system, from where you can choose different programs to try to recover the lost files on your hard drive.

Using his own PC with the disc will not make any difference. The CD is loaded in to RAM and used from there. As long as he doesn't recover the data to the same drive he should be fine.

Firblog

Was advising him not to do the downloading & burning of the recovery software on the machine that he wants to recover the data from; you are very correct in advising not to save any recovered data onto the drive he's recovering data from. I'd advise attaching an external usb hard drive.

Capt'n Midnight

Firblog wrote: »

Download Hirren's boot cd

Can you remind us all when they removed all of the non-free software from that CD ?

Because otherwise it's still full of warez :mad:

Kinetic^

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Can you remind us all when they removed all of the non-free software from that CD ?

Because otherwise it's still full of warez :mad:

I actually think he did remove the illegal stuff due to community pressure or is going to. Not had a look at it in quite some time though.

Slow Show

Firblog wrote: »

Download Hirren's boot cd from http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ (link to download is halfway down the page highlighted in green). Follow the instructions to make a bootable disc. (Do this from another pc, as said above, DON'T use the one you need to recover) Then you set your laptop to boot from cd, and choose mini xp when offered the options.
This will start up a mini version of the xp operating system, from where you can choose different programs to try to recover the lost files on your hard drive.

What are the chances of this being a success, if such figures are available? I'm just so tired of trying everything, I just don't want to waste time on something that probably won't even work. And if the files are overwritten is it not...well...game over?

And I'm a girl by the way.

Firblog

I've used the various bits of software on that cd a few times to get data back for people, mostly photos. If you haven't been using the machine then I'd say you'd have a decent enough chance of getting data back. Can take a while, perhaps 24 hours, but I'd give it a go.

Ben Bledsoe

Try to get your data back with the help of bootable data recovery program. You only need to insert the bootable disc which will do the rest of process by its own.. Try Stellar Phoenix which comes with a bootable disc as well or any recommended program for data recovery