Looooooong Shot

Macker

Got this from a friend ....has he any hope

I reformatted my wife's computer, went from win982nd to winme.I thought I had everything backed up , but forgot her favourites folder.
Well the **** hit the fan.. I'll be sleeping on the couch for the rest of my life if I can't find a way to get the favourites back.
She was working on a history search for a family tree, had months and months of important sites booked marked
I tried EasyRecovery.v6.0, with all the options it had I was not able to even begin the search
It did not display the old drive in the reformat recovery option, so I couldn't use that , in the advanced option it wanted a hex number.. well what the f**k.. How am I suppose to know that
It was one drive fat32 6.4 gigs it was about 80% full I would guess
I really need some expert advice on this.. It very important
thanks

zAbbo

ouch:

did you reformat it as in DOS - format C:\

or did you do a reionstall of windows, not too sure on how to retrive the data, but theoritally the data is not gone until it is over written, hopefully some other users will have experienced this one, I use Norton System Works, but you need to have it installed when the data was wiped.............

Macker

I think it was format c:

if the data was over written well I guess it's gone but is it possible that seeing as he only installed win me that the favs folder may not be over written yet

Macker

sceptre

Doesn't work like that. It's a matter of whether the data where present on the physical disc has been overwritten or not - not whether the Favs folder has had anything new written.

Thje only option I can think of is somewhere that does professional data recovery. No idea where and no idea on cost.

I probably have tools around here somewhere to recover data properly from a formatted disc. No idea where though.

I'll say this as a warning though - every time the PC is used, whether to add files or just on startup if the swapfile is moving, it lessens the odds on you getting the vital data back.


If the HD had a hardware failure she'd be in the same boat (without any forgetfulness on your part). Did she ever do any kind of a data backup at all? (I mean it's the friggin favourites folder for crying out loud - thousands and thousands of the things would fit on a floppy disc). While as you say it may be your fault for forgetting the Favs folder, it may make you feel better to know that something like this could have happened at any time.

marauder

I know your pain
my girlfirend lost a weeks work on the course she is doing when my harddrive died. Luckily it was only 1 week since she had last backed up - it could have been 2 months worth.

Lesson learned Backup AL LEAST ONCE A WEEK. if its anything important backup every day. Its sounds execessive but it only takes a minute. I too lost many hours sleep trying to recover that data......

good luck

mayhem#

I would say http://www.ontrack.com/ is yer only man.
Otherwise you're ****ed....

mayhem#

And you deserve it after installing WinME......

Felix Unger

I would say professional data recovery is going to cost more than a costly divorce settlement.

You could try this if you can't get anything professional to do it
on the off chance there's anything left after the format:


1) Start up in DOS mode

2) Find and run Qbasic (if it's still there with ME)

3) Type the following:

DIM strEOF AS STRING
DIM lngLastByte AS LONG

strEOF = CHR$(27)
lngLastByte = 1 'XXXXXX Replace with the amount of space left in bytes

OPEN "c:\bigfile.tmp" FOR BINARY AS #1
PUT #1, lngLastByte, strEOF
CLOSE #1



4) Replace the 1 before the XXXX with the amount of space (try it in 1 GB chunks)


5) Use "Find" on the file and look for a keyword like "family"



What this has done is grab all the available space upto whatever byte, mark it as a file, but only overwrite a couple of bytes of info.
Allowing you to search the space with standard DOS tools.

Worth a try, more useful on deleted files though.

Felix Unger

I just checked the coverdisk of PC Pro Issue 94, Aug 2002

It's got an app called "Final Data Standard Basic 1" with the sub text "Recover lost data from your FAT partitions" cost for the magazine eur7.

Might be worth a try.

Gaz

about 4 months ago i accidently formatted my d drive and lost about 5 gig worth of stuff. I used restorer2000 and got everything back (mind you some of the mp3's dont play correctly anymore , but i can live with that )

Only advantage my situation had over yours is i didnt put anything on the drive after i formatted it. You have installed an OS so im afraid you are most likely flucked but it might be worth a shot to give restorer2000 a shot

Magic Monkey

Try http://www.recovernt.com/

Winters

Humm...

The US Government can still recover data even when its been formatted 7 times. Its only on the 7th format that they are unable to recover it... i doubt they will help you on getting your favourites back though.

There will be a program that will (Hopefully) be able to recover them but i dont know of any.