Harddrive crashed ..... lost pictures

[cpgoose]

Crap-ola.....any suggestions would be great.

All of a sudden, my pc froze, and I had to do a reset. It wouldn't
reboot, and the harddrive kept "dinging", so I knew something was
screwy. I opened up the case, and pushed the cable into the harddrive
(as well as the motherboard) a little harder, and it rebooted decently.

Then I go to the pictures folder, and all of the folder names were there.
So I thought everything was ok, until I opened a folder. All of the
picture names were these weird symbols, and nothing would open.
When I clicked on a file, it says it didn't exist.

I had my pc parititioned, so I reinstalled windows on C, and D has the
pictures. Is there anything I can try to get these pics back?

I need to backup more often.

[cpgoose]

Ok, just a quick update to anyone reading this......

I called a data recovery place, and he said it sounds like the hard drive's
heads since it was "ticking". He said they'll need to open it up and fix
that. Since it's an "evasive" procedure, the flat rate is $1,300.
After I got up off the floor, I called Maxtor, and they said they don't
do data recovery (it's a Maxtor drive). He said to try and get the data
back first, before I send it to them for diagnosis (or perform self-
diagnosis).

Ay caramba. The IT guy at work said to bring it in, and maybe we can
slave it....and maybe the Master will be able to read it.

Does anyone have any ideas or had this problem before?

Thanks

[Doggiedaddy]

Ya, back up your s**t from now on!!!!!!!!!!!!! An expensive lesson we all have to learn. I stager full machine BU with ASR on a dozen machines every week on external firewire drives. I have been burned too.

I feel your pain.
Dd

[cpgoose]

hey....what's ASR? I'm curious how other people perform their backups.

GOOD NEWS! Someone suggested to me to make the hard drive a slave on another computer and see what happens. So I tried, and IT WORKED! For some reason, I can see everything. So I'm backing it all up, and sending the drive back....they better replace it!

[Doggiedaddy]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;818903

Dd

[Faustus]

I do tech support for a living, I get this almost daily. You can play around with different things trying to get your data back, but likely a recovery service is the only way out at this point. They are so expensive that only someone needing to recover corporate or fairly big company data can afford them.

Sadly the time to backup is over. Anything important I personally backup on CD. For example my extreme movie manager database, I'd hate to have to reimput all that. Burned it to a CD for backup just the other day.

[adam]

flaystus I've found the exact opposite to be true. I had the exact same thing happen to me once, lost some valuable pictures after a hard drive crashed. I bought a program called R-Studio Undelete for $50. I was able to recover the pictures and could have recovered much more. I have a large hard drive and usually don't come close to filling it, so alot of those sectors are not getting overridden. I was very suprised that I was able to access and recover files that I had deleted about a year prior. This was after multiple formats and reinstalls as well. Every once in a while I will accidentally delete something I need. I just fire up R-Studio Undelete and get it back.

Even if the hardware is damaged, you can still usually recover any data that hasn't been overwritten. If the drive is very damaged, well then that's another story.

[defense]

@adam, it sounds like you're experience was just one of a fortunate nature. I don't think these expert HD recovery companies would charge an absurd amount if it were so easy. I also don't doubt you recovered your pictures, but I know that the couple of times i've had issues, I just didn't settle for a partition and format of my HD.

I did an entire "LOW LEVEL FORMAT" writing 0's and 1's back to the drive...I don't think even any of those recovery companies would be able to retrieve data after a low level format. Even with a regular format, I wonder what the ratio of success is for people that use it. Do you have any idea?

[adam]

Those companies can charge an arm and a leg for two reasons. First, if you are going to go to them it is because the data is crucial, and worth the money. Second, they can guarantee data recovery in most instances, and can and may have to completely disect the parts of your hardware to do so.

For every day use programs like the one I use are perfectly adequate. Like I said, this was not a one time thing. I've recovered lots of different kinds of data on lots of different occasions. These data recovery programs actually quite nicely.

No I seriously doubt R-Studio Undelete could recover files after a low level format but I think the last thing you would do when you discovered you have lost a file is to do a low level format. Like I said, for normal use it works fine. I don't know what the statistics are for other people, but for myself I'm still at 100% success. For $50, its at least worth a try before you go out to one of these expensive professionals. I know that the pictures I initially lost were worth well more than $50 to me, so it was definitely a good investment.

[flaninacupboard]

Defense, a low level format wouldn't stop data recovery. these companies will take your hard drive to pieces and eith place the platters in a working version of your drive, or in more complex cases will need to use a more advanced "multipurpose" reader. this can tell what state a certain part of the disc has been in for a long time. i.e. if the data you were trying to recover was written a month ago and you did you LLF yesterday, the residual magnetic polarity would still be obvious when examined on a close enough level. it's even possible for them to recover data from platters that have been removed and stamped on or set fire to etc. how do you think governmental organisations can recover so much data from criminals computers? you really think people who are into computers are stupid enough to dump files in the "recycle bin" and be done with it?

[gmatov]

I have read, not sure where, that the government requirement for "sanitizing" a drive is at least 7 overwrites of 1s and 0s.
Here's a link to an interesting article on the subject:

http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/859843.asp?cp1=1

After some looking, I found this, which is a little scarier, tho', maybe ,outdated:

http://www.modecideas.com/faq45.htm

[defense]

@flaninacupboard, that's definitely interesting that one of these companies could recover data when a low level format was done. I had read somewhere that this would completely override all sectors...etc.

I am not into HD's and only know what i've learned, but the only reason I did the LLF was because of issues I had, which weren't resolved with a regularl format. I rectified those issues with the LLF and haven't had any more in over a year. I wonder how difficult it would be and how time consuming it would be to get the information off the HD..especially if it is a HD with 100 GB's and has been partitioned 20 times or more. It almost seems impossible, but i'll take your word for it.

I do remember seeing something on the Discovery Channel a while back where this guy that murdered his wife wrote a step by step instructional on how it would dit it in like word perfect or something...and saved it...but then decided to "fully" delete it. The ONLY evidence the police had was that disk..and they knew it was a long shot..but tried them one at a time..and sure enough...after a ridiculous amount of time and effort....they put together the deleted pieces...and saw the murder plot. I remember how intense and time consuming they said it was....and that's with a 1.44 MB floppy.....I know technology has made its advances...but 100 GB HD to try and find a letter like that..how long would it take?.....twenty years?