Recovering info. from hard drive

onway

My computer crashed last week and,of course,I did not have any back-up done.
I gave it to repair man to see what he could do and he said that he would save whatever he could from old hard drive and put onto new one.Now I have computer back but nothing from my old hard drive has been recovered.Is it possible that absolutely nothing could be saved or might he just not have bothered that much.........

RoadKillTs

might he just not have bothered that much.

More than likely.

Unless the hard drive was damaged he should have been able to recover the files.

What exactly happened the computer?

onway

Not sure really.....wouldn't boot up - kept getting message about windows root/system 32 or something........

RoadKillTs

With an error message like that I would be surprised if he couldn't have gotten your personal files off the drive.

I'd say he just didn't bother.

polyfusion

Ah Jebus! Doesn't sound critical in the slightest. Sounds like it was just a corrupted system file(s). Often complicated to fix, but easy to recover personal files.

Do you still have the "damaged" hard drive?

James G

If you still have the hard drive, you could connect it to a computer and recover the files yourself. There are quite a few programs out there that'll do it for you.

PapaQuebec

Looks like he simply didnt bother. I do data recovery every day and its no problem recovering files from a disk with the problems you mention!

youcancallmeal

onway wrote: »

Not sure really.....wouldn't boot up - kept getting message about windows root/system 32 or something........

Well the first thing you should of done is come here and told us what the error is, we probably could of guided you through fixing it yourself. From the little bit you said about the error message you were getting its safe to say the hard drive wasnt completely busted (Not a head crash). Anyway if the repair guy replaced the hard drive then it probably had bad sectors (A windows repair often fixes problems like this which is what I would of suggested) which means the data on it wouldnt be completely ruined. Do you have the old hard drive? If so you could connect it up to your PC and run a program like recuva to try and get some of your files back?

EDIT: After reading your original post again it seems entirely likely that the repair guy may have just re-installed Windows and not actually replaced your hard drive at all. If this is the case then you are definitely not getting your data back

PapaQuebec

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Well the first thing you should of done is come here and told us what the error is, we probably could of guided you through fixing it yourself. From the little bit you said about the error message you were getting its safe to say the hard drive wasnt completely busted (Not a head crash). Anyway if the repair guy replaced the hard drive then it probably had bad sectors (A windows repair often fixes problems like this which is what I would of suggested) which means the data on it wouldnt be completely ruined. Do you have the old hard drive? If so you could connect it up to your PC and run a program like recuva to try and get some of your files back?

EDIT: After reading your original post again it seems entirely likely that the repair guy may have just re-installed Windows and not actually replaced your hard drive at all. If this is the case then you are definitely not getting your data back

Not strictly true. I use software that uses very advanced recovery algorithms. It includes options to recover data from a formatted or re-installed drive or partition!

youcancallmeal

PapaQuebec wrote: »

Not strictly true. I use software that uses very advanced recovery algorithms. It includes options to recover data from a formatted or re-installed drive or partition!

Yeah absolutely your right but the problem is whether or not that data was overwritten when/if the OS was re-installed on the drive. Sure you can get back some data but its more likely you wont get most of it back. For example if even a few blocks of data are missing from a video file then its going to be very hard to reconstruct, you would probably just get back thousands of jpegs which are the individual frames and it would be a complete mess. Still worth a shot though if the OP ever gets back to us?

onway

Have been trying to contact the repair man to get old hard drive back but no success so far.....

youcancallmeal

onway wrote: »

Have been trying to contact the repair man to get old hard drive back but no success so far.....

Sounds pretty dodgey then. Either he didnt replace it at all or he doesnt want to be caught out in saying he couldnt recover anything from it :rolleyes:

PapaQuebec

Check the date of maunfacture on the "new" HDD. It should at least be newer than the date you purchased your PC. Try not to write data to the "new" drive as this will make data recovery more difficult! PM me if you need assistance or advice!

softdancomputer

Get a free SMART reader for the HDD (like CrystalDiskInfo ). Check the power on hours. You should see if the HDD is new or not.