Son wiped off all files with Recovery Disk - can I get them back?

[Guest]

My son was trying to get access to my computer & couldn't get past the
password so inserted the recovery disk & now ALL of my files are gone
(pictures, music, banking...etc). Is there any way to get this info back? I
tried to use a restore point, but there are none prior to the day he used the
recovery disk.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

No, not without spending a lot of money for 'data recovery'. Once a disk is 're-partitioned' like that, you lose the data.

 

[DL]

If these files are important to you, stop using your PC NOW.
Some restore disks perform a destructive restore ie delete all files others
retain data, it depends on the type of restore disk and any menu options
that may have been avilable.
You can take your hd to a recovery company for a no recovery no fee service,
eg www.ontrack.com
It will cost, but doubtless you can recover monies from your son, assuming
he's still breathing!

 

[DL]

PS and next time backup!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

It will cost, but doubtless you can recover monies from your son,
assuming he's still breathing!

If her son's a minor, then I highly doubt it - where's a schoolkid going to
lay his hands on several grand? A teenager might have a Saturday job, and/or
a paper round, but what if her son's under 13 and still at primary school?
Say her son's 15 and earns £50pw (combined Saturday job and paper round).
Data recovery could cost £3,000 minimum. Even if he gave her all his money
it would take 60 weeks to pay back, and I can hardly see him agreeing to
that! Teenagers aren't the most co-operative things.... ;o)

And how do you get money from a primary school child? Stop their pocket
money? You're still no better off as that's _your_ money anyway!

 

[David Candy]

That's what chimneys are for, primary and infants school kiddies to earn cash for mum. Also people like Michael Jackson will pay a fair bit, and you save on expenses.

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

My son was trying to get access to my computer & couldn't get past the
password so inserted the recovery disk & now ALL of my files are gone
(pictures, music, banking...etc). Is there any way to get this info
back? I tried to use a restore point, but there are none prior to
the day he used the recovery disk.

Well of course there aren't! The recovery disc formats the hard drive and
reinstates the system exactly as it was when you received it. Besides,
system restore has no effect on personal data and information.

 

[Chelsea]

Hi Cindy,
You don't seem to be getting much help here and some people are just being
plain catty. So I'll put in my two cents worth. I do data-recovery
professionally and can assure you that it should be possible to get a good
percentage of your data back even if the partitions have been destroyed. To
a great extent the degree of success will depend on you not using the
computer until it is analysed. It doesn't sound to me as if your hard drive
needs to be taken apart so you don't need to run straight away to companies
like Ontrack -incidentally their prices don't begin at $3000 -high cost
applies mainly when the drive is dismantled in a clean room and the company
does custom platter analysis. I would suggest taking a software approach to
begin with. Unfortunately, the software we use tends to be pretty expensive
around $500 or £300 and that is hard to justify for a one off project. The
good news is that some cheaper packages exist-they arn't as good as the pro
stuff but are quite good at what they are designed to do. Try this
http://www.file-recovery.net/service.htm that's an online web-service from a
company which produces some software called Active@ File Recovery
Professional Edition -with the webservice you download a 350KB activeX
control. If you prefer to run software on your machine Active@ File Recovery
Professional Edition is available for download. I have used their software
, but not the webservice, but have heard its quite good.
Active@ File Recovery Professional Edition costs $49 about £30

Active@ File Recovery web service costs $14 -I think.

One word of warning though you are probably going to get back loads of files
with funny filenames as windows doesn't protect file names once the files
are deleted. The file extensions .doc, .xls etc normally are retained. So
you will have to open files decide if you want them and then save with a
meaningful name. Hope that helps a little

Chelsea

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Cindy

Your pictures and music are gone, but your link to online banking can be
re-instated.. any data that may have been generated by a program like
Quicken or MS Money will have gone to the same place as your music and
pictures..

Professional recovery is an expensive process, as is the purchase of
professional programs available that MIGHT get your data back..

There is a free program that works quite well but there are no guarantees..
to use it requires skill which you or your family members may not have, and
it would have to be run from another computer where your present hard drive
would be installed as a slave device.. any attempt to load other programs
onto your system, even file recovery programs, would result in the areas on
your hard drive where MAYBE some of the lost files still exist being
overwritten by the new program..

This is why manuals invariably tell a computer user to backup (save) files
to media (CD, diskette) that can be stored AWAY from the computer.. the
importance of backing up can't be stressed enough.. it takes a few minutes
per week, and saves people like me having to tell you that you are facing a
lost cause..

You might also want to consider restricting your son's usage of the
computer, not by putting passwords in the way, but by setting up a limited
user account.. you might also want to consider hiding the recovery media..




--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User

"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept
it all to themselves." - Lane Kirkland

 

[Bill Ridgeway]

The financial implication may not be as important to you than the
possibility that you may have lost all your data - for ever - unless you
have a backup. (I presume you wouldn't be asking for help if you had a
backup!).

Tip 1: Get yourself a backup. I would advise backing up onto an external
tape drive. The initial outlay isn't cheap but it does enable you to backup
everything so you don't have to make a judgement of what you may need after
the event. You'll have everything. Backing up onto a CDR is cheaper but,
as you can't get everything onto a CD, you'll have to guess as to what you
wont want in the future. Fete, of course has a different spin on life. It
will make sure that you will need THE file(s) you haven't copied and you'll
be back to square one.

Tip2: Get something like GetBackData. This is software which will retrieve
anything on your hard disk which has not been irretrievably over-written.

Tip 3: Get your son a computer of his own. He will be less likely to abuse
your computer. Also, when he has done a similar trick to his computer you
can calmly say "you've done what to your computer" and calmly walk away
muttering something like "you'll have to sort it out".

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions

 

[Chelsea]

Do you really think tape backup is still best Bill? My experience has been
whenever an emergency came up the tape drive would stick or mangle the tape.
Now that may have been my fault for buying cheap Hewlett Packard tape
drives. If you call £200 cheap that is, but most people are not going to
shell out £400 or $700 for a nice DAT drive when in their own minds they are
thinking it probably will never be needed. My advice like yours is always
back up your entire system and then do regular incremental backups to
protect your data files. Where I differ from you is that I think imaging the
system is best either to a specially created partition or better to a dual
layer DVD. The recorders are so cheap now I have a couple of LG units and
you can get 9GB on a single disk, with the right software you can even do
incremental imaging. The only advantage of tape as far as I can see is that
its more or less permanent if kept away from magnetic fields, but DVDs are
fairly robust as well-and who is going to need a backup thats 100 years old
anyhow?

Chelsea

 

[Alan Smith]

Wouldnt it be easier to hide the recover disk?

PS and next time backup!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Alan Smith]

Far faster is get a second hard drive. Then you can either back up to it
more quickly and more reliably than tape- and its less expensive. There are
lots of packages that can clone the original drive to the second drive. If
you get a removable drive tray (Icy dock for example) a keylock can hide it
from the system so it can't be messed with.

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

Even downloading and installing a small 350kb ActiveX could make an
important file or files irretrievable, depending on the sectors it
overwrites in the TEMP and IE directories.
The best bet was to stop using the drive, period, and if using any
software recovery type applications, installing the drive in another PC
where this one was a slave and the software installed on the master.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

Why I use tape backup on all my Linux boxes, and they have always been a
reliable method for recovery, especially when backing up 20-30GB for all the
important file systems, and making sure you make the proper bootable CD to
allow mounting of the tape for recovery purposes.
For WinXP/Win2k3 I use external 250GB/300GB USB2 hard drives with Norton
Ghost, again this has been very reliable and are very cheap over the long
haul compared to CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW, even the 9.4GB dual layer
DVD's, not to mention quicker. I am currently experimenting with this same
option to replace the tape backups on Linux boxes used above, but just
hadn't got it down at this time, but I'm close.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"

 

[Chelsea]

What you say is quite true AdmiralQ. Any download should preferably be done
to another machine or a healthy hard disk with the affected drive slaved.
The program I mentioned runs from the A; drive to avoid the issue of over
writing data on the hard drive. Actually though with todays giant hard disks
the probability of overwriting deleted files is quite small and people who
have data recovered do need to be realistic about how successful the process
is likely to be . Of course what I just said goes out the window if the HD
is fairly full.

Chelsea