Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: USRanger on May 17, 2011, 09:18:40 PM
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This week my hard drive crashed. Upon booting, it would get to a few seconds through the Windows startup screen, then die & reboot. I would then get the black screen saying there was an error & would I like to start up in 3 different types of safe mode or start windows normally. There was a 30 second countdown to choose. No matter which boot method I chose (even letting the 30 seconds run out & auto-choose), it never worked. It endlessly went to the Windows startup screen, died & then would reboot. I ended up having to do a system recover that took me back to my pc's Day 1 out-of-the-box state. The good news is it fixed whatever was wrong & now it runs fine again, except I now have an empty pc, besides Windows.
I thought I was good because a couple months ago I had a bad feeling (premonition) and bought an external HD to back my stuff up in case of something like this.
The bad news: Apparently when I hooked my external HD up & told it to copy everything on my HD, it did not include any game files from any game & pretty much 80% of needed programs like photoshop, sony vegas, my AV program, etc.
I NEED MY STUFF BACK!!
Any of you that know me in here know how much I dabble in AH-wise, and can imagine just how much in AH stuff I have. I don't have the heart to start all over from Day 1. Honestly, it may retire me from the game if I would have to do that. We're talking 4 years of non-stop AH creation stuff. :bhead
I've been reading that there are programs I can buy that can get this stuff back off a formatted HD. I just tried a trial version of one of em that let me choose up to 1Gb of info I can get back for free. I chose a couple AH sound folders & it worked. My hopes are up. I :pray this can really work. I'm gonna wait one day & see if anyone responds.
I need to know if anyone has ever done this and/or can recommend a program to use. Help meh! Help meh! I'm in distress! Don't make me kill something!
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I don't know a good restore program, only even tried one a long time ago for a Flash drive. However, I do know if you want to restore data from a HDD (in this case) don't write new data if possible. As I understand (and it could be wrong), when you delete data you have a chance to recover it, but as you write data back onto the disk you overlap where that data was stored. The more you Overlap the less chance you have of recovering it. I have no idea how many times it takes it be gone forever, but until someone finds you a good solution just try to avoid writing new data as much as possible. As you recover data store it on the External until you have everything you need.
Luckily with Programs you don't have to worry unless you mean you're missing the files you made associated with them. Photoshop, Vegas, AV, etc can all be re-downloaded provided you still have your Keys or Serials.
Hopefully you get it sorted out, hate to see all the hard work on Sound Packs, Pictures, and the likes gone.
:salute
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I don't know a good restore program, only even tried one a long time ago for a Flash drive. However, I do know if you want to restore data from a HDD (in this case) don't write new data if possible. As I understand (and it could be wrong), when you delete data you have a chance to recover it, but as you write data back onto the disk you overlap where that data was stored. The more you Overlap the less chance you have of recovering it. I have no idea how many times it takes it be gone forever, but until someone finds you a good solution just try to avoid writing new data as much as possible. As you recover data store it on the External until you have everything you need.
Luckily with Programs you don't have to worry unless you mean you're missing the files you made associated with them. Photoshop, Vegas, AV, etc can all be re-downloaded provided you still have your Keys or Serials.
Hopefully you get it sorted out, hate to see all the hard work on Sound Packs, Pictures, and the likes gone.
:salute
Thanks. I read that too about not putting new data on, so I haven't yet. I don't have the serials or keys to those programs, because I put them in text documents in My Documents! :bhead
Still holding out hope of at least getting my AH stuff back. :o
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GetDataBack
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
It'll let you try before you buy to make sure it's going to work for you. It worked in my case. Good luck.
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Thanks much. :salute
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I think you want to undo the system restore. Probably you should have used the Windows Repair feature from the installation CD.
Anyway... once you get sorted out you are going to need SpinRite.
http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
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Cool thx. I didn't have a Windows installation CD though. It came partitioned on my HD (it's an HP from Bestbuy).
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HandyRecovery works well for me. http://www.handyrecovery.com/
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I just tasted something really nasty after reading that Ranger.
If you used the regular Windows Restore to restore to a previous time I think you should undo that and then run SpinRite either from a CD or USB thumb drive. If you used an HP utility to restore from an image I think you are probably looking at great difficulty.
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My advice is to get a new hdd, install windows there and try to plug the old hdd in. If it won't show up in disk management then you're pretty much screwed. You can try to freeze the drive and see if you get lucky getting it to run one last time.
If the hdd is burned i.e. it doesn't even spool up (you can hear if you listen closely while starting the computer) then you still have the option of getting an another similar drive and replacing the controller board from the working drive to the bad one.
If the disk is just corrupt (you can hear it runs and it shows up in device management but you can't read anything from it), software like getdataback can help you but even then, install a new drive, install OS on it and whatever you do do not do anything but READ from the old harddrive. And forget about spinrite etc. harddrives come cheap just toss the old drive to the bin, just a question of now or later when it fails again.
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Negative! Do not freeze your HD. What a terrible suggestion!!
SpinRite will probably fix it if it isnt working under the OS. If it doesnt fix it then there is no hope. I have had people bring me drives that are supposed to be 'bricked' but SpinRite got the drives working. Of course if one is gone that far you get the data off and toss the drive but name one other program that can do that! It would cost you thousands to send a drive off and have data recovered otherwise.
The purchase of a new drive is probably needed anyway and I would go one further and suggest getting Acronis True Image Home 2011 and cloning your HD as it sits (after undoing the restore) to the new drive. Do not get the "free" version available from Western Digital. It is not a complete version and does not have complete functionality.
Suggesting that he 'forget about SpinRite' is only going to cost him more lost drives. SpinRite will prevent drives from dying. Use it regularly.
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The HD is working properly since I reformatted. I can can see the lost data is there using a trial of one of these programs so hopefully ill get most back. I was just wondering if one of these recovery programs was a standout. Thx for the advice all. Gonna give it a go when I get home. Fingers are crossed.
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Don't wait too long. Don't install too much. All that "data" has been pooled back into the "available space to over-write" category on the drive. That means any writing to the disc has the potential to over-write part of all of some other file you want to recover.
The more you wait, the more you do, the more you install, the greater the chances of writing over and permanently losing that "lost data" -- it's only "lost" right now because you haven't overwritten it. As soon as you do, it won't be "lost" -- it'll just be "gone."
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Negative! Do not freeze your HD. What a terrible suggestion!!
If it would have been physically damaged this sometimes allows up for one more spool-up to recover data. Far from terrible. However I missed the part where he managed to reformat the drive (why on earth?) so it's obviously working.
SpinRite will probably fix it if it isnt working under the OS. If it doesnt fix it then there is no hope. I have had people bring me drives that are supposed to be 'bricked' but SpinRite got the drives working. Of course if one is gone that far you get the data off and toss the drive but name one other program that can do that! It would cost you thousands to send a drive off and have data recovered otherwise.
R-Studio costs about 40 bucks and it can recover data from a formatted or partly corrupt filesystem.
The purchase of a new drive is probably needed anyway and I would go one further and suggest getting Acronis True Image Home 2011 and cloning your HD as it sits (after undoing the restore) to the new drive. Do not get the "free" version available from Western Digital. It is not a complete version and does not have complete functionality.
Suggesting that he 'forget about SpinRite' is only going to cost him more lost drives. SpinRite will prevent drives from dying. Use it regularly.
Probably? Getting a new drive is his _only_ option. If he installs anything over the old drive (operating system, anyone?) he WILL lose his data permanently. I doubt spinrite is going to perform any miracles on hardware defects ;) it can play tricks on the spinners at max, doesn't prevent them from losing surface or controller from going bad.
Edit: Sigh, it seems he already installed the OS again. This is the last thing anyone should do when wanting to recover data.
FIRST RULE OF RECOVERING DATA: DO NOT USE THE DRIVE TO BE RECOVERED FOR ANYTHING BUT READ OPERATIONS --AFTER-- BEING INSTALLED TO A RUNNING SYSTEM AS SECOND DRIVE. WHATEVER YOU DO DO NOT INSTALL THE OPERATING SYSTEM ON THE FAILED DRIVE AGAIN.
The OP should shut down his computer immediately to prevent further data loss, get a new hard drive, install OS on it and then try to recover what may or may not be left from his data.
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USRanger, check your PM
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I have used recovermyfiles. The program worked for me. My experience with recovery programs, they give you free trial, but to recover the lost data the program finds you have to buy the program.
It is possible your boot information became corrupted on your hardrive and therfore could not boot to Windblows OS. I have put in the restore disk (your windows disk) and goto repair and use check disk. I haver also used a program and have booted off it to get the computer to DOS instead of going to windows and used chkdsk.
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What's that linux distro that's so small it fits on a single bootable CD-ROM?
Knoppix? Is that the name?
Great disc to have on hand just in case. Doesn't harm your drive, doesn't install. Just boots.
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USRanger, E-Mail sent.
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If it would have been physically damaged this sometimes allows up for one more spool-up to recover data. Far from terrible. However I missed the part where he managed to reformat the drive (why on earth?) so it's obviously working.
Yes... what you are reacting to is a belief that the hardware controller board is bad which is probably not the case. I believe he had a simple data problem that could have been repaired by Windows Repair. The freezer method you mentioned is a "voodoo" trick to try and mend thermal damage to the electronics which is not a good remedy because hard drives generate so much heat the freezer method would be undone almost immediately and certainly before all the data was recovered. If I am correct that the hardware itself is intact and this is just a matter of a few lost sectors nearly bricking the drive then SpinRite would fix it.
The whole point is though that everyone should be running this program once a month on every drive they have. It really will prevent drives from dying.
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Yes... what you are reacting to is a belief that the hardware controller board is bad which is probably not the case. I believe he had a simple data problem that could have been repaired by Windows Repair. The freezer method you mentioned is a "voodoo" trick to try and mend thermal damage to the electronics which is not a good remedy because hard drives generate so much heat the freezer method would be undone almost immediately and certainly before all the data was recovered. If I am correct that the hardware itself is intact and this is just a matter of a few lost sectors nearly bricking the drive then SpinRite would fix it.
The whole point is though that everyone should be running this program once a month on every drive they have. It really will prevent drives from dying.
I watched the spinrite informercial and Gibson doesn't make any claims it will prevent them from dying, you just get an early alert on w h e n. Last time I checked spinrite didn't have data recovery features, now it seems to have. However I really don't like the whole concept of recovering something to the same media that itself caused the problem in the first place. That seems a bit retarded to me.
If a hdd fails on me once before its mtbf it's with most certainty going to fail soon again before rated mtbf. I consider this kind of hardware waste.
Oh and to the original poster: If you really want your data back I hope you're not reading this from your computer that has the formatted drive in it. Every pixel you browse on this UBB is writing over your data
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No you didnt listen to it at all. Twice in the video he says it will keep your drive from dying. In fact the very first thing Steve Gibson says is "... and long term maintenance too because it will keep your drive from dying."
Sorry Ripley you are (once again) factually wrong.
EDIT: Also specifically mentioned in the video? That data recovery is part of SpinRite.
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No you didnt listen to it at all. Twice in the video he says it will keep your drive from dying. In fact the very first thing Steve Gibson says is "... and long term maintenance too because it will keep your drive from dying."
Sorry Ripley you are (once again) factually wrong.
EDIT: Also specifically mentioned in the video? That data recovery is part of SpinRite.
It will keep your drive from dying unexpected, yes. I'm not factually wrong (again). Also specifically mentioned in my text: now it does have data recovery.
Gibson explained twice in his videos that when you run spinrite you should keep an eye on the error rate which is typical for the hdd model. Normally the errors are corrected by ecc algorithms. But if the error rates start to increase, it's a sign the drive is about to fail.
How often should SpinRite be run for preventive maintenance?
This is mostly a matter of personal taste. For example, how often should you backup your data? However, a general rule of thumb would be that SpinRite should be run every two or three months. Running it more often provides greater safety at the expense of the time consumed. Running it less often provides more opportunity for new problems to go undetected until they become severe. Once every few months should be often enough to catch and detect any early trouble.
Note the absolute lack of promise of fixing the drive and emphasis on early detection.
I think you're confusing 'restoring the drive' to fixing singular bad blocks of a filesystem. The first it can't do simpy for physical wear and tear, the latter it can do by analysing and correcting the filesystem on its broken parts.
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No Ripley. You are assuming the process would go unimpeded as if the operator were blind to the information the program delivers. Yes if the operator is stupid and doesnt pay attention to the warnings the drive will die. If instead you run the program and see the problems spiking then no the drive will not die because you will purchase a new drive and move your data.
With your method the drive will die and the user is crying wishing he had SpinRite. No other program does what SpinRite does.
Again... wasting time trying to wake you up!
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My personal opinion, which means nothing,have a recovery plan for when something goes wrong. Drives are getting cheaper all the time.
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No Ripley. You are assuming the process would go unimpeded as if the operator were blind to the information the program delivers. Yes if the operator is stupid and doesnt pay attention to the warnings the drive will die. If instead you run the program and see the problems spiking then no the drive will not die because you will purchase a new drive and move your data.
With your method the drive will die and the user is crying wishing he had SpinRite. No other program does what SpinRite does.
Again... wasting time trying to wake you up!
So essentially you backed down on your claim on spinrite fixing the drive. The user won't be crying anything if he performs regular backups like everyone should.
I agree with you that spinrite will inform you sooner about failures. Two caveats: You need to perform a process that takes several hours, regularly - and it costs 80 bucks. This time and money is more wisely spent getting an automatic backup system if the user lacks one.
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No you are misunderstanding. SpinRite will fix Rangers problem. Ranger doesnt have a drive that is broken. What he has is a drive that had trouble booting. Those two are mutually exclusive. This is a problem that SpinRite can fix. Also... if sectors are inaccesible because the OS is failing to read a few bits then absolutely SpinRite will fix it but thats not what Ranger reported. Unfortunately the first thing he did was a mistake and may have cost him quite a bit of data.
So yes you are operating under a false premise. Sorry you cant keep up.
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I've always used Recuva (http://www.filehippo.com/download_recuva/)
I've recovered many files using this free program. Have to admit that the audio files recovered never quite sound the same, but as far as
my data files, most were recovered and intact.
Good luck Ranger
Coogan
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No you are misunderstanding. SpinRite will fix Rangers problem. Ranger doesnt have a drive that is broken. What he has is a drive that had trouble booting. Those two are mutually exclusive. This is a problem that SpinRite can fix. Also... if sectors are inaccesible because the OS is failing to read a few bits then absolutely SpinRite will fix it but thats not what Ranger reported. Unfortunately the first thing he did was a mistake and may have cost him quite a bit of data.
So yes you are operating under a false premise. Sorry you cant keep up.
If his problem was just a corrupt boot then most likely he would have been able to fix his problem without spinrite, by going to windows recovery console and running fixmbr / fixboot free of charge. Or by reinstalling windows without format, free of charge. Or perhaps simply by running chkdsk /r on rconsole :) No need for spinrite there and no need to spend 80 bucks.
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2cents of opinion that dosn't matter, I would rather take 80.00 instead of buying spinrite or another HD software program and buy a extra HD and use either a full back up, incremental, or a differential backup. ( or ghost, acronis and make a shadow copy)
I would rather make a disaster recovery plan then to sit and run a program to see if my hardrive is going to die, I have to many irons in the fire to sit and analyze my HD. (thats just me though)
I have used chkdsk to fix corrupt data on the boot, because my computer would not start.
The problem ended up being memory corrupting my drive.
I am not saying that chkdsk will fix all problems either.
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Thanks for all the info folks. I now have Spinrite & will give it a whirl this weekend. As you can see from my lack of posts in this thread (or any other), I'm staying off the pc except for a quick visit to this thread once a day until I fix what can be fixed. :salute
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If his problem was just a corrupt boot then most likely he would have been able to fix his problem without spinrite, by going to windows recovery console and running fixmbr / fixboot free of charge. Or by reinstalling windows without format, free of charge. Or perhaps simply by running chkdsk /r on rconsole :) No need for spinrite there and no need to spend 80 bucks.
Looking forward to more reports Ranger. :salute
Circular argument Ripley. The problem is he has bad sectors or could have which is possibly why the drive wouldnt boot until it was fixed. Steve is correct in the video that the vast majority of people will not buy SpinRite until they absolutely need it and then they become converts. Until you panic about the potential loss of data you cannot understand and will continue to respnd the way you are. I have seen SpinRite fix a drive that Windows reported as unbootable. UBCD (Linux) and so many other tools were tried and failed. SpinRite fixed the drive and allowed access to the data. Having said that I will also say no the drive wasnt trusted anymore but it never would have gotten to that point if SpinRite had been used all along.
@cattb... chkdsk is junk and part of the systemic problem. It has its (limited) uses but it will not tell you if a drive is about to die. Good luck with that.
The entire point is that the more tools you have at your disposal the less likely you are to experience catostrophic loss of data and overall downtime. Not only maintenance tools but an adequate backup plan are essential. That includes onboard backup... external backup... and online backup (as a suggestion).
But dont worry it always happens to the other guy and not you. Right? :aok
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Thanks for all the info folks. I now have Spinrite & will give it a whirl this weekend. As you can see from my lack of posts in this thread (or any other), I'm staying off the pc except for a quick visit to this thread once a day until I fix what can be fixed. :salute
Ranger please make sure you do as I suggested before running SpinRite. You need to undo that restore if possible or you won't get much back.
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Get a linux live cd I used Ubuntu to recover some files on a non booting OS it runs from the CD. Plugged my phone in to usb slot and copied the files i needed to there easy.
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@cattb... chkdsk is junk and part of the systemic problem. It has its (limited) uses but it will not tell you if a drive is about to die. Good luck with that.
Your right, very correct ( except for the part of junk, it is a tool, limited). It has worked for me though, but not all the time through years and some of the problems I have had.
Not only maintenance tools but an adequate backup plan are essential. That includes onboard backup... external backup... and online backup (as a suggestion).
).
Yup, the backup plan....................
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Looking forward to more reports Ranger. :salute
I'm looking forward to the message where he reports that he finally did the only correct thing of buying a new harddrive and running data recovery on the formatted drive. Every 'report' untill then is DESTROYING HIS DATA MORE.
Circular argument Ripley. The problem is he has bad sectors or could have which is possibly why the drive wouldnt boot until it was fixed.
Circular how? The computer boots to system recovery just fine using the installation dvd. Chkdsk /r will fix bad sectors 99% of time.
The entire point is that the more tools you have at your disposal the less likely you are to experience catostrophic loss of data and overall downtime. Not only maintenance tools but an adequate backup plan are essential. That includes onboard backup... external backup... and online backup (as a suggestion).
With an incremental backup plan running no data will be lost unless both the backup media and the original media die (lightning strike, burned house..) But I'm sure spinrite will prevent even that, right? :aok
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Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.
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Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.
triple post
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Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.
Triple post
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Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.
So you ran out of arguments. Which is understandable considering you're mainly self promoting instead of doing correct steps to prevent data loss for the original poster :aok
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No Ripley. I came to understand that you are ONLY here for an argument since you seldom have any significant contributions without arguing. In fact... you usually circle back into agreement with contributions already given by others just like you did in this thread. You are irrelevant.
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No Ripley. I came to understand that you are ONLY here for an argument since you seldom have any significant contributions without arguing. In fact... you usually circle back into agreement with contributions already given by others just like you did in this thread. You are irrelevant.
You're out of your mind lol! All this after Your advice contained the cardinal error of not dismounting the drive to be recovered immediately? :D
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Your right Ripley. I most be out of my mind because I continue to try to help people on this forum despite remarks from people just like you.
Here is your original advice:
My advice is to get a new hdd, install windows there and try to plug the old hdd in. If it won't show up in disk management then you're pretty much screwed. You can try to freeze the drive and see if you get lucky getting it to run one last time.
If the hdd is burned i.e. it doesn't even spool up (you can hear if you listen closely while starting the computer) then you still have the option of getting an another similar drive and replacing the controller board from the working drive to the bad one.
If the disk is just corrupt (you can hear it runs and it shows up in device management but you can't read anything from it), software like getdataback can help you but even then, install a new drive, install OS on it and whatever you do do not do anything but READ from the old harddrive. And forget about spinrite etc. harddrives come cheap just toss the old drive to the bin, just a question of now or later when it fails again.
This indicates that you did not even read the original post. Ranger said after his system restore that the disk was working fine. Giving advice the way you did after (again) clearly not even reading what he had to report means that you should keep your advice to yourself. You are doing nothing more than pontificating upon your great computer knowledge (great to you anyway).
Clearly Ranger had a disk problem. Probably he used something like an HP or Dell original day return feature. If he used Windows System Restore he should go the route I suggested. This is precisely what I said after Ranger clarified what he had done.
Im guessing you missed this reply:
I just tasted something really nasty after reading that Ranger.
If you used the regular Windows Restore to restore to a previous time I think you should undo that and then run SpinRite either from a CD or USB thumb drive. If you used an HP utility to restore from an image I think you are probably looking at great difficulty.
Clearly I thought at least that he has an HP (not sure why) however the indication here is that what others had already said would help him down the right path if he had in fact used something like an HP restore function.
For someone that is so enamored with his own significance you continue to make the most obvious mistakes. You are irrelevant.
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Your right Ripley. I most be out of my mind because I continue to try to help people on this forum despite remarks from people just like you.
Here is your original advice:
This indicates that you did not even read the original post. Ranger said after his system restore that the disk was working fine. Giving advice the way you did after (again) clearly not even reading what he had to report means that you should keep your advice to yourself. You are doing nothing more than pontificating upon your great computer knowledge (great to you anyway).
Clearly Ranger had a disk problem. Probably he used something like an HP or Dell original day return feature. If he used Windows System Restore he should go the route I suggested. This is precisely what I said after Ranger clarified what he had done.
Im guessing you missed this reply:
Clearly I thought at least that he has an HP (not sure why) however the indication here is that what others had already said would help him down the right path if he had in fact used something like an HP restore function.
For someone that is so enamored with his own significance you continue to make the most obvious mistakes. You are irrelevant.
I admit I didn't read the full description at first. I made an assumption that someone who wants to keep their data wouldn't format their functioning drive and install stuff over it. Still my advice contained the only correct procedure for data recovery i.e. unmounting the drive and submitting it for read-only operations.
Your actions have caused the user to irreplacebly lose data by not stressing out he should not do _anything_ with the drive after the point where he realized he wants his data back after the format. Your suggestion to 'undo' windows restore in his situation is cardinal mistake number 2! It would cause massive writes again over his formatted data! You do realize that formatting the drive leaves all data on the drive intact unless you write new stuff over it?
For someone who doesn't seem to know the first basics of the topic at hand and claiming expertise on the basis of purchasing a software without even understanding what it does and how it works, you're pretty arrogant.
I'm done posting this stuff anyway. I hope the original poster has now stoped using the drive and bought a data recovery software to restore whatever there's left after the cardinal mistake of new windows installation and reading the false instructions given by a certain few in here.