Recovering hard drive data. Willing to pay.

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 02:13 PM

My brother in law has a laptop that he kept all his important data on. I do not know all the details but someone in the family did a system restore on the computer. Is there a way to recover this data or is it really gone? Are not there companies that can recover for a fee? Thanks.

VINMAN · 01-24-2006, 02:25 PM

We just had that same problem on one of our comps. Was quoted a price of $1300 to recover the data!

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by VINMAN
We just had that same problem on one of our comps. Was quoted a price of $1300 to recover the data!

Ouch! Do you recall the company?

FrayAdjacent911 · 01-24-2006, 02:30 PM

If the system restore formatted the drive... the data may be bye-bye... depends on what was overwritten. If it was simply installing over the old/broken OS, the data might actually still be there.

You can check with DriveSavers. If the machine is a Dell, and you mention Dell referred you, they'll give you 10% off, IIRC.

Moses · 01-24-2006, 02:32 PM

Is this about the Grid Girls?

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 02:38 PM

Thanks, I actually have his laptop in front of me. Is there a way top see old data in DOS or something?

I'm sure he has some grid girls in there and I promise to share

dd74 · 01-24-2006, 02:49 PM

Some porn is just damn hard to lose, eh?

If he's running XP, system restore can restore while keeping personal files or it can format the entire drive, which, in that case, means everything's gone.

Where's your brother? If the machine boots up, and he's there, have him look through his hard drive to see if his documents are there. If not, I hope he's performed back ups...

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 02:53 PM

No he gave it to me to see what I could come up with. No backup was done. I do not know how it happened but it did.

I was hoping some service could recover from latent drive imprints or some other cool sounding process

BTW, I guess it's tax info he's looking for.

dd74 · 01-24-2006, 03:01 PM

I'd start googling, my friend, and find someone - there has to be data recovery in MI. Then I'd fill out the FedEx forms. - It's 2one hour to deadline in your parts, before they stop accepting packages, right?

slodave · slodave's Garage

Most system restore disk automatically format the drive and install a fresh image. Not much of a chance saving old files at this point. What brand name is it?

Dave

VINMAN · 01-24-2006, 03:03 PM

Was from some company in NYC. Dont remember the name. Ended up trashing the drive.

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by slodave
Most system restore disk automatically format the drive and install a fresh image. Not much of a chance saving old files at this point. What brand name is it?

Dave

It's a Sony Vaio.

TerryH · TerryH's Garage

My understanding is usually anything not overwritten can be salvaged if the drive isn't damaged. A system restore may have re-written on top of the old data which may mean it's gone forever.

My neighbor had me over to his house to clear his digital camera of photos because it was full and all new to him. Week earlier I had shown him how to download to his computer. I asked him twice if he wanted all his vacation photos removed and he said yes. After I deleted everything from the camera, he asked if they went onto the computer!?! I told him they are just "Gone!" And felt that sinking feeling in the pit of the old stomach... The moron hadn't transferred the photos to his computer yet.

I found a freeware program that I installed on his machine. Completely free (not the bait and switch) and it worked like a charm resurrecting the 240 jpgs that had been erased.

emcon5 · emcon5's Garage

www.ontrack.com

Prepare to open your wallet wide.

By "System Restore" do you mean reload the operating system with the factory disk image, or do you mean the Windows XP system restore tool?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302796/en-us

Tom

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 03:16 PM

I'm trying a recovery program now.

P.S. it was the XP tool.

slodave · slodave's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by lendaddy
I'm trying a recovery program now.

P.S. it was the XP tool.

If it was the XP system restore. The data should be ok. Make sure that the recovery program saves any salvaged data to different drive. If you try to save recovered data to the samw disk, you might actually re-wipe out the dat and for good.

Dave

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 03:26 PM

Thanks, I'm using a flash drive to run the program from and save the data to. Hopefully it is big enough, if not??????

slodave · slodave's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by lendaddy
Thanks, I'm using a flash drive to run the program from and save the data to. Hopefully it is big enough, if not??????

If it is not big enough but you can recover the data. Turn the computer, get a bigger storage device and try again. Only turn the computer on sparringly. The more it gets turned on and off, the more likley data will be lost.

Dave

lendaddy · 01-24-2006, 03:38 PM

Thanks,

Christien · Christien's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by slodave
Only turn the computer on sparringly. The more it gets turned on and off, the more likley data will be lost.
Dave

This is good advice - windows writes and rewrites data to its page file, which could overwrite some of the data to be recovered, so the more windows operates, the more could be overwritten.

I do not envy your brother in law one bit. This happened to me once, due to a virus. It was the only night in my life I've ever been unable to sleep due to stress. Luckily I was in university at the time and had access to techno guys who were able to recover enough for me, although I remember calling around to a few data recovery places, and their prices were lower than what some folks are saying here (maybe $2-300)

Good luck.

Chris