data recovery - formatted drive

[mr2mk1g 10]

Anyone want to recommend a good data recovery program for image files that have been lost on a re-formatted hard drive?

So I ask my mother 5, maybe 6 times if she's got absolutely everything she wants to keep off of her laptop before she goes through an install. “After we do this anything on there is gone forever”, I say.

"Yes", she assures me, "I've taken off all the documents I need". So I send her a brand new, sealed copy of Win 98 version 2 so that she can re-install everything. I spend at least an hour or so talking her through things over the phone. Then she gives up and sends me the laptop so I can complete the install.

She got the OS on… but wouldn’t listen to me about how it’s best to install programs. I put most of the programs on she needs in one night in front of the TV. Half her hard drive is now full.

So today I get a phone call from my mother who has just realized she left on every digital photograph she ever took over the last 8 years on the laptop. No she’s never backed anything up – I only gave her a CD burner half way though last year.

So... anyone got any recommendations?

[SkiD_PL8 0]

If you have allready been putting things back on the drive I would say for the most part you are out of luck. The data recovery services I know can get data back off of a formatted drive, but pretty sure once new data is put on the drive you are screwed. Maybe they can still get data off the half of the drive that still has nothing on it but I will try to find some more info.

Greenie in training.

[beowulf 1]

There are lots of data recovery programs out there. You will need to take that hard drive out of the laptop an hook it up as a slave to another computer. You will need to do this right away and not let her continue to use this till you have recovered as much info off of it as possible. The longer you wait and continue using it the less likely you will be able to recover anything. Do a search on data recovery.

I have used one called GetDataBack with very good results. It is kind of cheesy program but it worked for what I needed.

by the way one thing that I have learned in working on peoples computers is that always assume that have not backed up anything no matter what they say. I always back up their computers before formating. It has saved my ass lots of times.

[AggieDave 6]

Good luck since you've been overwriting sectors like crazy.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[wildblue 7]

You're probably screwed, but I'd start with http://www.ontrack.com/ - they have a 'demo' you can download and it'll show you what it can salvage. I know it works for deleted files, I think it'll find formatted volumes too. You can also Google 'unformat' - you get stuff like this to try http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm?source=google11

it's like incest - you're substituting convenience for quality

[mr2mk1g 10]

Yeah, thats what I figured - the problem is that's gonna be a pain in the arse as it's a laptop drive.

Anyone know a program that runs on the machine itself?

I figure the empty section of the drive ought to be just as recoverable as any untouched drive.

All depends on where on the drive the photo's were. I've already told her there's a low likelyhood of retrieving anything much... anything I do get will be a bonus.

[beowulf 1]

You don't want to run it on the computer. You can but it will degrade your chances of recovering everything. There is a USB adapter that you can plug a laptop hard drive into any computer. It is very cheap. I bought one for about $20 usd. I would suggest picking one up.

Look up external hard drives and you should find kits for using regular hard drive or laptop hard drives.

[Bouda 0]

yeah i would say screwed is a good term to use

Look what i made at work today mom!! Put it on the fridge
http://www.bouda.moonfruit.com

[mr2mk1g 10]

Yup, that was the very term I used when I spoke with my mother.

[jdhill 0]

Photorecovery works well, even if you've reformatted... if you have been re-using the disk though, you may be out of luck.

J

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

[beowulf 1]

have some faith it is still possible to recover information. How long has she been using it since you formated?

[LouDiamond 1]

first off you have to ask your mom how important the pics are. Dunno if you can put a price on memories but some people really want to get stuff back. One that isn't cheap but is very good at getting back things thought long ago lost is ENCASE

I have used it in work related incidents with amazing results. it might be a little more than your looking for but then again, it might not.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[mr2mk1g 10]

That's my point - all my mother did was load the OS. I stuck on a couple of programs that near half filled the drive and turned the machine off. That's all that's been done to it. I figure nearly half the hard drive will never have been touched and so ought to be recoverable. I'll have to whip the drive out tonight - I've got a USB hard drive port already... not sure if it'll take a laptop drive though.

I just wondered if anyone had a preferred program to use other than the first ones to come of Google.

[beowulf 1]

cool
You should be able to recover the info that was written over. There will still be a ghost of the info under the current data. Just because it was over written doesn't make it unretrievable. I have been surprised by the amount of data I have been able to recover on hard drives.

[SkiD_PL8 0]

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I'll have to whip the drive out tonight - I've got a USB hard drive port already... not sure if it'll take a laptop drive though.

The connector on a laptop drive looks just like a PCI card connector only smaller it is not pins like a normal hard drive so if the USB adapter is not for a laptop HD specifically it will not work.

Greenie in training.

[PhreeZone 20]

Pick up a 2.5 to 3.5 inch drive converter. It costs about $15 and lets you run laptop drives in a desktop. You want speed and stability here.

Its going to be hard, but possibly not totaly impossible. Windows has a bad habit of writing to the same sectors during installs so for the most part the OS should'nt have overwrote too much extra data. The programs is where the issue is. Software often will install just in random sectors (not really but it seems like that) and then it runs from there.

Only thing that might save you is that laptops tend to write into very large magentic sectors with a very small head. The potential to have originally filled a sector with a 1 and only be partually over wrote later with a 0 is there. I've saved more then one exec's laptop that way. Sure they lost some stuff but I could save some too.

Ontrack and some other firms are the way to go when its mission critical and the data is needed now.

MilSpec requires the entire drive to be wrote as all 1's and 0's I think 5 times before hard drives can be discarded due to that possibility of overlapping data

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[op5e 0]

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You should be able to recover the info that was written over.

Is this an educated response or just an asumption?

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One that isn't cheap but is very good at getting back things thought long ago lost is ENCASE

I do not think the poster has 3000$ for this program or ONTRACK to recover some personal photos. I do not even think most police have this money and I believe this is the softwares target audience. There is other software available that you do not have to sell your second born, and some of it is better imho.

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Its going to be hard, but possibly not totaly impossible.

I personally think of it as luck rather than being hard as it requires you to download a program and press a few buttons with little to no knowledge or skill . It can be impossible for the poster to recover the files he requires depending on what occured on the computer between the format and now.

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MilSpec requires the entire drive to be wrote as all 1's and 0's I think 5 times before hard drives can be discarded due to that possibility of overlapping data

Some specs require you to melt the harddrive platter I believe. I think its more complex reason than "overlapping data" (but you know this). Did you recovere stuff that was overwritten or just recover missing files PhreeZone?

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You don't want to run it on the computer.

This is partially true. You can use bootable CDs and then save the restored files to external media. You can use software that runs in memory and then write to external media, since you have already done so much, booting the OS wouldn't damage it that much more. But for this problem I would recommend using "ide (2.5) to usb" or "2.5 to ide (3.5)" and put it in another computer, as this is easier to walk you through.

I will send PM to poster.