Help- It's The End Of The World To Me

[ajarnmark]

Do not copy or format your source drive. Your data should still be there, at least some, if not all. I would predict about (80%).

It happened twice with me and both times it was not my fault. Once my staff formatted a client's HDD and installed windows on that without confirming from client. Later client claimed to have lost the most valuable data (focking liars) and threaten to not to pay the bill of about $7,000 for my services.

Later in Thailand, in my office, a filipino IT guy was so lazy, so I fixed the computer by myself. Later on the boss told me that she has the most valuable data on my HDD (I thought then why did u give me that computer?). However, I was able to recover all of the data, coz I didnt copy anything on the drive.

When you do cut and paste, then data is still on the HDD but the address is removed from the directory table, however, if you copy something else on the same drive, it will result in loss of data permanently, coz your moved data becomes orphan in HDD and can be overwritten anytime.

I used http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

You can try and see, how it works. BUT you HAVE TO do it on SOURCE DRIVE, i.e. LAPTOP and NOT on the usb drive.

[lor]

In cases like this it is always best to try and recover files from the HDD but you must remember never to add/copy/delete or do anything to the files on the HDD untill after you have recovered the lost files. In your case you did a system restore. This could have overwrote much of your lost data and made it unrecoverable. I presume you have already looked in the wastebin. The next stage is what has already been sugested. Use a data recovery programme and hope they have not been overwrote. Also remember when recovering the files DO NOT recover onto the same HDD you are searching! You need to use a different drive or partition.

Good Luck

Chris

[whimsy]

I'd say that there is at least a 50% chance that all the files are still on the usb hard drive and that they are recoverable.

If these suggestions don't work, then someone who really knows what they are doing should still be able to get at least some of the files back from the notebooks hard disk as others have suggested, Sounds like this may not be a job you should attempt yourself. Maybe offer to pay someone to do it. One of the forum moderators Reimar may know someone. You could PM him.

Try this first on your sons desktop PC and if no good, try with the notebook. Windows can take quite a while to 'recognise' a USB device the first time it is plugged into a particular USB port, particularly on old slow computers so give Windows a chance to set it up (say up to 5 minutes)

1, External hard drives use quite a bit of power so it is important to plug Both USB cables in. Sometimes not all USB ports deliver the same current. If the desktop has USB sockets on the back of the case, choose two of these first, they often have more power. On the cable from the external drive case there are two usb plugs. Usually 1 is for auxiliary power, plug this one in first. Look and listen to see if the drive is spinning and lights flashing. Then plug in the other USB cable and wait for Windows to find the drive. If it does, try to access your files.

2. If this did not work, repeat step 1 with each combination of USB sockets on the desktop PC. Sometimes Windows 'locks' out 1 socket if it sees a particular USB device fail on that port, but it still works with other sockets.

3. If this still did not work, the repeat step 1 with each combination of USB sockets available on the notebook.

4. If this still fails. The problem could be the case that the external drive is in or the cable it came with. Check that the cables are plugged in at the drive end firmly.

5. Buy a new external drive case and have the vendor transfer the Samsung drive across. Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 again.

6. Try step 1 again with yet another Windows XP PC, perhaps at an internet cafe or at Panthip.

7. If none of these work, then it is likely that the external drive has indeed failed in some way. Take it along with the notebook along to whoever you trust to try to recover the data for you and hope for the best. Or try to do it yourself if you are confident using one of the links others have provided. I like the sound of the one ajarnmark recommended.

If you REALLY want the data, then there are specialist data recovery service firms (possibly overseas) who will almost certainly be able to retrieve most, if not all of the data from one or both drives as long as they get to it before Panthip backyard mechanics trash it completely, but it will probably cost a lot. Google for them - data recovery service Thailand

Good luck.

Edited May 28, 2008 by whimsy

[nikster]

You can't trust any IT "experts" in pantip with your data. They may know what they are doing or not, a recommendation IMHO is not worth anything.

Recover the data from the source drive would be my advice. The reasoning is: The source drive (on the laptop) is working fine. Because of that, you can use any number of undelete programs and have a good chance of recovering most of it. The USB drive is likely screwed and there is no way of telling how badly screwed it is. It could be recoverable or not, but if you want your data, go for the laptop first.

[zaza]

Hi guys (again),

Thanks for wishing me good luck (which it seems I had) and all your helpful replies.

I had the luck to meet one of the real IT experts (not Pantip ones)who is specialized in retrieving (lost) data, who had first tried to check the hard drive ; and he found out by a program he was using that the one I had brought a long with me is a brand new one which never had been used before ( it seems the Pantip guy replaced my Samsung drive with a Chezk one) when they failed to figure out what to do.

Then he'd installed a program to retrieve deleted programs and files on the notebook which took quite long time to be installed. Then it started to work and it happened it showed many files and data that were (above) my limited IQ ;so I don't know in details how did he recognize them , anyways, then he opened the notebook HDD( BTW;I learned how to do it myself too ),removed it and plug it to his laptop and only then we (HE) found out we can retrieve files that were lost in another program.

I was enormously happy to get old pictures back and I didn't ask him to recover my music library (mp3 and wav files) but the most embarrassing thing which had happen that the first recovered video file was kinda of porn stuff (surly not for me ) that's when this IT expert who had tolerated my (stupid) inquiries and nonstop questions (what is this and what is that,....) for a whole long 3 hours seemed so shocked and surprised of what kind of "notebook" is this...

I can never payback that man for the work he had accomplish though ; it seems you should never lose faith in real experts who are not just bragging wanna-be IT lads.