Author Topic: Kind of OT.... (Read 584 times)

Scot · « **on:** November 24, 2001, 10:18:00 AM »

Experten,

I'm not sure of the circumstances but I have a problem and need some help. My Mom somehow "cleared" off her hard drive. Her system looks as if it was "new". There are no other folders ohter than what came on her system located on her C drive. Disk space says her drive is clean. She was having trouble installing a program, some message came up, she partially followed the directions, paniced and boom... nothing. It appears she did not reformat, and did not re-install W98SE. However, I think she might have did a restore < she lives in Detroit and this was all I could get over the phone >. Needless to say, she is crushed since she has <had> all of her Geneology data on her system. < Yes, I have told her about backing up her system

>

Assuming she has not reformatted her hard drive, are there any programs that allow you to go in and recover files? She does not have any Norton's type SW on her system now < just Antivirus >.

Thanks in Advance,

Scot
3./JG2

[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Scot ]

Lephturn · « **Reply #1 on:** November 26, 2001, 07:20:00 AM »

Yep, sounds like she did a "restore". IE, wiped the drive and re-installed the thing as it was new. Yuck.

Problem is not only did she erase the drive, she likely wrote data over top of some of it.

It could all be recovered certainly. It's a question of how much it would cost. If you really want that data, tell her to stop using the machine... shut it off now. Then look up data recovery services in your area, and see what they would charge. This is likely an easy one, since the drive is not burned or destroyed. The price could be reasonable depending on the situation, although it depends what the data is worth to you.

Oh yeah and buy her a CDRom Burner to back up that important data on in the future!

Scot · « **Reply #2 on:** November 27, 2001, 01:30:00 PM »

Lephturn,

Yep, she did it all right

. I think she will just chalk it up to experience and let it go at that.

Thanks <S>!
Scot
3./JG2

bigUC · « **Reply #3 on:** November 28, 2001, 04:05:00 AM »

There are some shareware utilities available which can hopefully restore some of these files:
GetDataBack

I have had some success using this. It actually recovers most of the files... Just don't write too much to the HDD before trying to restore the files.