Data Recovery ?

[FNQ Bunyip]

OK I screwed it big time ...

we got a new tv the other day and I was stuffing around with memory sticks to see how much I could record on to one and I also had the portable hdd there checking I could watch a few movies I had on there .. anyway it seems as I have mixed up what I was trying to do and have formatted the hdd with the TV and it has deleted all my music and scanned photos ...

I have tried a couple of free downloads , Recuva & Pandora Recover , with no luck although they say there are files there but they are BUK files and I can't open or restore them ...

Anybody in the know care to offer their wisdom ??


cheers

 

[stillscottish]

I've been using Active@ file recovery recently on a drive with a cactus master file table.
It isn't really doing it for my loss but yours is simpler and it could be useful.
The full version is a TORRENT of help h34r:

 

[FNQ Bunyip]

Thanks Campbell , will get back too it today , still kicking myself in the ass

cheers

 

[Airgead]

There are companies that will recover stuff for you but that's going to cost you some $. Serious $ in some cases.

If you want to go down that path I can giove you some names but they are all in Sydney... If you do want to use professional recovery, the first thing they say is to not fiddle with it yourself, it can make their job harder and thus more expensive for you...

Cheers
Dave

 

[zxhoon]

first step, do not write anything at all to the drive as this will only write over your data... software changes so often its been a while since I had to use any so won't make any suggestions, but as long as nothing has been written to the drive you should be able to recover most of what was on it, also recover to another drive not your wiped drive and worst case if you do not modify the drive in any way as Airgead has said you can take it to someone to recover it for you...

good luck!

 

[joshuahardie]

I have used WinHex with some success. I can't say I found it exactly simple to use, but yeah it saved my bacon once or twice.

 

[FNQ Bunyip]

MMMMM thanks guys ,, It has had TV recored over it , I'll play with it over the weekend and if I cant get anything it will be a long week re ripping the vinyl and cd collection .. will pick up another drive today when I go too town ...

thanks for the tips , but I'm not going to pay for it , its only time only 2500 tracks or so and 3000 odd pictures to scan ,, agghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


cheers

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Oooooohhh... I has written onto it, then you will loose what has been written over...

You may be able to recover the rest, but some will be gone forever

 

[user 384]

Nothing to add to the suggestions about recovery, my only advice is to remember to decide on a practice that works for you to back-up and synchronise your data. I have a very large music collection all as FLAC files. Meticulously tagged and all with cover art. This is stored on a NAS for streaming throughout the house. I have one back-up on a separate computer and second back-up on a portable hard drive kept locked in my work office (so even if the house burns down I have a back-up). I do this with all my essential data. Synchornising across all three back-ups takes some effort, but as the data doesn't change very often, it's OK. Certainly less effort than having to copy rip all those CDs again.

Everyone, repeat after me........Back-up and Synchronise.

 

[Fourstar]

Everyone, repeat after me........Back-up and Synchronise.

... and keep a copy in the cloud. Drop box is useful for this. :icon_cheers:

 

[user 384]

... and keep a copy in the cloud. Drop box is useful for this. :icon_cheers:

I use Dropbox for my research papers and Mendeley for maintaining my citation library. Both are extremely simple and effortless to use for back-up and synchronising data that you change regularly.

However my research isn't confidential and the paranoid part of me prevents me from using the cloud to back-up sensitive data.

Cheers
MAH

 

[mje1980]

Last year we spent 1800 bucks on recovering photos from a hard drive after it crashed. They were in melbourne, and at first you pay a small fee for them to look at it ( and postage, were in NSW ). Then they'll give you a quote on how much they think it will cost ( no guarantees though ). We went ahead, and got all our photos back. I went through our local pc shop so i couldn't tell you their name, but im sure there would be other companies that do it. 1800 bucks was nothing to get back our kids baby photos.

 

[Airgead]

Yes... as MAH says.. backups.

The three most important things you can to to prevent loss of data - backups, backups and backups.

The cheapest way is to pick up big USB drive (you can get a 2tb drive for a shade over $100 these days). Most come with some software to automate backing stuff up. Use that drive for backups and backups only. Or you can get a NAS box to back up multiple PCS. Or you can back up to the cloud (security may be an issue though).

Whichever way you do it, just do it.

Cheers
Dave

 

[FNQ Bunyip]

well after a bit of sniffing around in the missus's laptop I have found most of the music , its just not tagged properly , so that will save a bit of work ..

The portable HDD was only for backup , thats why all the tracks were fully labeled and set out the way I wanted it ,

its just a big screw up on my part , I'm not keeping up with the technology as well as I used to ,lol ,, trying to many new fangeld contraptions at once and not looking what I had plugged in to what ...

Cheers for the help guys

Ned

 

[bum]

... and keep a copy in the cloud. Drop box is useful for this. :icon_cheers:

Another useful method is to have a gmail account and just send important (though not sensitive) files as emails. Large(ish), free storage that can be accessed anywhere.

Obviously, this should not be relied upon as a primary back-up method.

 

[petesbrew]

We backup our photos on dvd-r's & 2 seperate hdd's - then there's the photo albums that are quickly filling the shelves.

Better backup my music this weekend. I think I'd cry if I lost it.