System recovery mistake please help

[car2n]

Hi, I had a problem with a disk and got lots of error messages tried to restart my PC and did not started, then made the mistake of pressing F10 which is sytem recovery and it said it was backing up my files my I don't know what happened they are gone, my programs and personal file, can anyone please advice on what will be the right way to recover my personal files? there is no restore point I had some restor points set up but they are also erased, wonder if there is a way to save my self from this major mistake please help me guys, I do thank you in advance.
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[Hard Five]

I think its funny some people on here post about everything, whether they know anything on the subject or not. When a guy needs help with a problem that someone may be reasonably knowledgeable about (per their posts, but who knows), nothing. No response. Nada.

I myself cannot help you. But there are people here who can. Knowing I would be freaking out if I lost all my data, here is a bump to the top. Good luck, fingers crossed.

 

[jond]

Hi, I had a problem with a disk and got lots of error messages tried to restart my PC and did not started, then made the mistake of pressing F10 which is sytem recovery and it said it was backing up my files my I don't know what happened they are gone, my programs and personal file, can anyone please advice on what will be the right way to recover my personal files? there is no restore point I had some restor points set up but they are also erased, wonder if there is a way to save my self from this major mistake please help me guys, I do thank you in advance.
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If the data is utra important, you would want to power down and take it to a pro. Doing more can cause more data loss.

That said, if it's not ultra important, I would first do a search. Do a search for *.jpg or *.mp3 and see if you see maybe a directory where the data was copied to. Maybe an old profile in 'documents and settings' or some sort of recovery folder on the root of C? That's best case senario.

If you search and search and search and it's simply not there, then you may have formatted your drive on accident. In that case, if you want to recover as must as possible, turn it off, hook the drive up as a slave in another computer and run recovery software against it. If you can stand losing a little more than you would otherwise, you can install the recovery software on your computer. The only thing is, assuming you formatted on accident, any change you make going forward could erase data that could otherwise be recovered. So installing a 100meg recovery app could over-write 100megs of otherwise recoverable data.

I personally use EnCase, but it's priced for professionals($2500) and super steep learning curve. I would reco 'Getback for NTFS'. It's easy. Just install, run, and it will show you what it can recover. You'll likely lose the file structure(aka, pics, music, etc will all be jumbled up).

Good luck, and let me know if you have questions.

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm


One more option, it looks like for $300-$600 runtime software will recover it for you:
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-service.htm


.

 

[robr]

I just saw this post, but there isn't much info to go on. My guess is that there are some factory installed system tools that F10 activates if you hit it upon boot. I'd need to know what make and model of PC you're talking about here. Googling "F10 on boot" comes up with a number of possibilities, one of them being that it restores (depending on the PC) the PC back to factory shipped state, wiping the hard drive and replacing the contents with what was on it at the time it shipped from the factory, restoring the image from a hidden partition. If that is what happened to you, basically I'm sorry to say you're pretty much screwed. I'm an expert at this stuff and if I had the PC here in front of me, I'd yank the drive and start going through it with some low level tools looking at the file system and seeing if there was any data that could be recovered, but it could literally take me a weekend and it's a very manual process. If the data is important enough where money is no object, I can point you at some other, more costly and drastic alternatives. A restore point wouldn't do anything for you anyway, that basically just restores the registry to an earlier point in time, it won't unerase data or even remove files that have been added. You should be backing up your important data regularly. I use a NAS for that ($200) and even some of that gets backed up to Amazon S3 ($5/month or so)

 

[mblomquist]

I agree... need make and model. that will tell us the rest of the story before and recommendations will help.

this looks like a similar situation to yours. If you are lucky, all your documents are on the hard drive and just in a "Saved spot" under c:\documents and settings... but hard to tell without some more info.

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-35141-lost-my-doc-media-files-after-system-restore

 

[mblomquist]

Another point on backups. I totally agree with ROBR. BACK UP !!

Get the $55/year MozyHome or Carbonite backup service. it backs up online/offsite and if your PC blows up, get ripped off or lights on fire you go buy another one at BestBuy and RESTORE. it will take a couple days to initially backup, and it will do backups invisibly in the background every day. totally safe. totally cheap. Unlimited space. Hard drives die ALL THE TIME. It isn't IF, it is WHEN. I have 150 Terabytes I manage at work, and guess what those things do! yup - they die. Good thing I have industrial backups.

I personally have a Promise NS4600 4TB NAS on my network for backups and MozyHome on all 5 PCs in the house. I am double wrapped and ready for an EMP.



https://mozy.com/?ref=U72F4G&mcr=1

 

[flaminio]

I think its funny some people on here post about everything, whether they know anything on the subject or not. When a guy needs help with a problem that someone may be reasonably knowledgeable about (per their posts, but who knows), nothing. No response. Nada.

Dude. I just woke up. Gimme some time.

Echoing what others have said already, will need to make and model of the PC, and what OS you're running (XP, Vista, 7).

If you have another computer handy and a hard drive USB interface, you might be able to read the contents of the drive from a second PC. I recently recovered data from a laptop that had milk dumped into it -- the laptop was dead, but the hard drive survived, and I was able to copy all the data off.

On the second computer, if the hard drive spins up but is still unreadable, you might want to try SpinRite. It can take some time to run, but it's excellent at recovering data.

If your hard drive is truly kaput, there's always DriveSavers -- but be prepared to pay $$$$ to get your data back.

For others reading this thread: Backup, backup, backup! This kind of thing should be as easy as "reinstall the OS, restore your backup".

 

[robr]

Dude. I just woke up. Gimme some time.

Echoing what others have said already, will need to make and model of the PC, and what OS you're running (XP, Vista, 7).

If you have another computer handy and a hard drive USB interface, you might be able to read the contents of the drive from a second PC. I recently recovered data from a laptop that had milk dumped into it -- the laptop was dead, but the hard drive survived, and I was able to copy all the data off.

On the second computer, if the hard drive spins up but is still unreadable, you might want to try SpinRite. It can take some time to run, but it's excellent at recovering data.

If your hard drive is truly kaput, there's always DriveSavers -- but be prepared to pay $$$$ to get your data back.

For others reading this thread: Backup, backup, backup! This kind of thing should be as easy as "reinstall the OS, restore your backup".

His hard drive works fine, it just appears (but we cant be certain yet) that he wiped the OS partition and reloaded the factory image to it and now wants his old data back.

 

[flaminio]

His hard drive works fine, it just appears (but we cant be certain yet) that he wiped the OS partition and reloaded the factory image to it and now wants his old data back.

Recuva might be able to do it -- again, make sure you're running this from an alternate computer. To maximize the chance of data recovery, it's important that nothing gets written to the drive again until as much data as possible has been recovered. Even booting it will create temp files and other system stuff that could be writing over recoverable data.

 

[robr]

Recuva might be able to do it -- again, make sure you're running this from an alternate computer. To maximize the chance of data recovery, it's important that nothing gets written to the drive again until as much data as possible has been recovered. Even booting it will create temp files and other system stuff that could be writing over recoverable data.

I would certainly give tools like that a try, but Recuva and most other tools work by parsing the file table and rebuilding pointers to deleted files and reconstructing the table entry and file chain. The problem here is that (speculating still) this wasn't a case of deleting files, it was wiping the entire partition off the face of the earth and creating a new one. In that sort of circumstance, there won't be anything to recover in the file table as it's a whole new table.

 

[martin]

Hi

I have had success with the tool GetdatabackNTFS. It scans through the drive and then you can choose the files you want to be saved to anothe drive.

Let me know by pm if you want the tools. I have iso bootable thing too with the tools I talk about.

This is the boot drive yes? Well have another drive hooked up a usb or another drive where you could put the files you recover on.

Regards

 

[car2n]

First I like to thank everyone that came out to my call and posted a suggestion, I did turn it off and I actually took it to a pro, they found my files but it was too late most of the files were already overwritten I was able to recover a minor quantity of them, lesson learned now I have a back up and doing it in a regular basis, thanks again guys and sorry for my late reply

 

[martin]

Hi

I am happy that you are now backing things up. I am crazy about backup.

If only Denmark stay intact I'm good. I use www.keepit.com

Local backup is always good and I have that too. But I have over 4TB online. Really recommend Keepit.

I have had some trouble with it, but it was my firewall so I can't blame Keepit.

Regards

Martin

Sent from my U20i using Tapatalk

 

[NsXMas]

I think its funny some people on here post about everything, whether they know anything on the subject or not. When a guy needs help with a problem that someone may be reasonably knowledgeable about (per their posts, but who knows), nothing. No response. Nada..

I didn't realize there was a service level agreement for tech support on this site.

When did that happen? :biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

ROTFLMAO

 

[jacobzking]

you can send it to me and I can probably get MOST of your stuff back (for free). the only problem is that most of your file names will be lost, so I'll return to you a hard drive with JPEGs, DOCs, all starting at 1.jpg, 1.doc, etc. I have a pretty successful recovery rate. I dont get on this board too often, so PM me if you want my help.

 

[Hard Five]

I didn't realize there was a service level agreement for tech support on this site.

When did that happen? :biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

ROTFLMAO

I may have been a little testy/quick to post my comment, but the person the post was about never surfaced in this thread, so I feel it was appropriate. :biggrin:

edit. thanks too all who are helping

 

[car2n]

Hi

I am happy that you are now backing things up. I am crazy about backup.

If only Denmark stay intact I'm good. I use www.keepit.com

Local backup is always good and I have that too. But I have over 4TB online. Really recommend Keepit.

I have had some trouble with it, but it was my firewall so I can't blame Keepit.

Regards

Martin

Sent from my U20i using Tapatalk

Thanks for your advice I will review it and consider it, I'm not really familiar with Internet back up but will dig in to it.

you can send it to me and I can probably get MOST of your stuff back (for free). the only problem is that most of your file names will be lost, so I'll return to you a hard drive with JPEGs, DOCs, all starting at 1.jpg, 1.doc, etc. I have a pretty successful recovery rate. I dont get on this board too often, so PM me if you want my help.

Well at this point I just will carry on with loss, but I will have your info just in case something happens (hope not) thanks anyway for your reply.

I may have been a little testy/quick to post my comment, but the person the post was about never surfaced in this thread, so I feel it was appropriate. :biggrin:

edit. thanks too all who are helping

Hardfive I thank you for bump my thread on #2 post this help it to to more replies.

 

[car2n]

Hi

I am happy that you are now backing things up. I am crazy about backup.

If only Denmark stay intact I'm good. I use www.keepit.com

Local backup is always good and I have that too. But I have over 4TB online. Really recommend Keepit.

I have had some trouble with it, but it was my firewall so I can't blame Keepit.

Regards

Martin

Sent from my U20i using Tapatalk

Thanks for your advice I will review it and consider it, I'm not really familiar with Internet back up but will dig in to it.

you can send it to me and I can probably get MOST of your stuff back (for free). the only problem is that most of your file names will be lost, so I'll return to you a hard drive with JPEGs, DOCs, all starting at 1.jpg, 1.doc, etc. I have a pretty successful recovery rate. I dont get on this board too often, so PM me if you want my help.

Well at this point I just will carry on with loss, but I will have your info just in case something happens (hope not) thanks anyway for your reply.

I may have been a little testy/quick to post my comment, but the person the post was about never surfaced in this thread, so I feel it was appropriate. :biggrin:

edit. thanks too all who are helping

Hardfive I thank you for bump my thread on #2 post this help it to to more replies.

 

[martin]

Thanks for your advice I will review it and consider it, I'm not really familiar with Internet back up but will dig in to it.

Hi

Please do. I have not had the need to get anything back from their SAN's. But I feel safe that I have all my things "offshore".

I am pretty safe. I have a lot of harddrives in my server so I actually mirror the content from one drive to another. And I have backup of everything on those SAN's.

That means that for example personal picture gallery get backed up from the MSI Wind Netbook to the server. Then those files are backed up on another harddrive. And then both the orginal copy and the mirror is backed up to those SAN'S "offshore".

I know a "bit" overkill. But I will never loose anything again. That is the wish of course, but you never know.

Regards