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Data recovery software
JackNco - 14/11/06 at 09:00 PM

Hey all
Im fairly good with most PC stuff but i haven't dabbled in this in years. and there i was just bored and wasn't after anything specific i was just playing about.

And this place seems to be a mind of information on computers. generally puts me to shame.

Anyway some one i know has managed to format his computer reinstalling windows n forgot to back up a load of stuff so what softwares good in the world of data recovery?

Thanx in advance

John


mackei23b - 14/11/06 at 09:12 PM

As far as I know if it was a 'full format' the data is gone, if it was done as a 'quick format' then there is a chance that the data could still be there.

I have used 'recovermyfiles' software before to take data of a corrupt unreadable flash drive before.

If you do a search on the internet you'll see a number of software recovery packages, some will let you read the drive as far as the file names, but to open the files you need to pay the registration fee. But at least at that point you have a good indication that there is still some data that can be read.

Hope this makes sence, I'm sure some-one may give a better answere than this.

Cheers

Ian


JackNco - 14/11/06 at 09:36 PM

Cheers

As far as im aware no windows format will destroy the data on the disk, just the index. but ill have a read in to it i guess


givemethebighammer - 14/11/06 at 09:57 PM

This works

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

I recovered over 2Gb of photos from a machine that had been fully formatted and Windows reinstalled on. They were customers wedding photos, he hadn't backed them up and forgot they were on his laptop when he brought it in for repair + reinstall.




JackNco - 14/11/06 at 10:00 PM

Bet u got a good tip!


JackNco - 14/11/06 at 10:01 PM

Ya that looks like it might do the trick. ill let u know when he drops it round cheers


givemethebighammer - 14/11/06 at 10:12 PM

quote:
Originally posted by JackNco
Bet u got a good tip!


Nope, he was an accountant ! We recovered loads from the laptop and in true accountant style there was nothing interesting at all, not even any mildly dodgy stuff in the internet temporary files directories

sorry if this offends any accountants who are either reckless, interesting or both!



ps the software takes quite a while to recover everything and you will need a second hard drive to recover anything to. It's best to put the drive into another working machine as a second HDD and run it from there.


Humbug - 14/11/06 at 10:13 PM

I have used this successfully before (free!):

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm


viatron - 14/11/06 at 10:26 PM

We use a variaty of tools and have just finished today recovering 80 gig of data from a broken raid array, pm me if you struggle. Also did a job last week excatly as you are faced with and got about 90% back, cardinal rule is do not boot from the hard diskyou are trying to recover from, even just booting it can generate temp files overwriting your data with even more layers of crap rendering them even more difficult to recover.

Mac


JackNco - 14/11/06 at 11:29 PM

quote:
Originally posted by givemethebighammer
quote:
Originally posted by JackNco
Bet u got a good tip!


Nope, he was an accountant ! We recovered loads from the laptop and in true accountant style there was nothing interesting at all, not even any mildly dodgy stuff in the internet temporary files directories

sorry if this offends any accountants who are either reckless, interesting or both!



ps the software takes quite a while to recover everything and you will need a second hard drive to recover anything to. It's best to put the drive into another working machine as a second HDD and run it from there.


Ya i know what u mean, most have none but i used 2 work ina computer shop that will remain nameless n saw some VERY dodgy stuff on other ppl computers. would be boasting about doing that though its illegal!

As for a second drive ill be sticking both drives in my system and recovering to a second 40GB drive on mine, ill just recover his my documents folder and anything compromising i find

Cheers for all the help guys. ill let u know if i find anything interesting

John