Yesterday, I was talking with a neighbor.

He has been working to clear out his mother's house; but most important,
to collect and preserve memorabilia, photographs, letters, etc.

We spoke of strategies to preserve and also to distribute information among
relatives.  Not just old style information such as photographs and letters; but
also new digital images, scans of the old images, as well as making CD-ROM
archives.

He mentioned that last week, his PC had crashed and wouldn't reboot. 

I offered to help recover whatever was on the machine.

He responded that wouldn't work.  He went on to explain that a friend said to
use the Recovery Disk that came with the PC.  After he did that, the machine
worked, but ALL of his data had been erased by the recovery process.  He
admitted that he lost everything that had been on the machine.

I'm sharing this story so that we can all learn not to make the same mistakes:

(1) He did not have any backups (or they were out of date)

(2) When the PC failed, he didn't seek expert advice

(3) I assume that even though the recovery process warned that all data
would be lost, he ignored that warning and allowed the data to be erased.

(4) The Recovery Disk works to restore the PC to an operational state --
NOT to recover your data. 

I earnestly hope that I never hear another story like his -- especially not
here in this forum.

--
Martin

urm - yeah - i think sometimes if you are in a scenario where you stand to loose a lot - always read every detail of what the computer tells you and never think "oh it will be alright - lets give it a go"... because inevitably it is either the answer 1 or 0... those are the only numbers computers understand when you get to the root of it all - no grey areas unfortunately.

Recovery discs effectively format your harddrive (read:wipe everything) and re-install the operating system (read: Windows).  Which is sometimes a good thing to do if you are having problems with the computer in terms of viruses etc. but only after you backup your data.

Another cautionary tale in a continuous line of things going wrong with computers :(

If cars were as reliable as computers we would never buy a car!  

That said it is a sad tale and one that I have more than a little sympathy with after recalling some of my early experiences with PCs.

Regular backups are an essential part of owning any flavor of computer.

Hello MGD,

Hummm.. sorry to hear that story tho.. But it happenes... sigh!

Now here is a thing, hopefully your friend after the first recovery, didn't do it again! Or he did?
The reason i asked... Please ask your friend to pass you the exact spects of that pc, from model, brand and such..

Please repost them here again, and ask him not to use it at all till i get the specs, and reply you back.. Usually i will get to you as soon as i get your reply.. allow me one day at max.. I might be able with big chances to get his deleted data back from his formated drive.

Thank you and regards

JOE

Thanks for the response. 

I'm trying to get in touch with my friend. 

In the mean time, I did a little web research ... and found these:

http://www.newfreedownloads.com/Windows-Utilities/File-Management/iUnformat.html
[applies to NTFS]

http://www.restorer2000.com/ [applies to NTFS and FAT]

http://www.uneraser.com/quest12.htm

http://www.diskinternals.com/ntfs-recovery/ [NTFS]

http://www.diskinternals.com/fat-recovery/ [FAT]

http://quality-shareware.com/keywords/unformat.asp [NTFS and FAT]

...

plus about 777,994 additional search results as reported by my
good buddy Google. 

Has anyone used any of these utilities? 

--
Martin

Thank you for the links..

I am aware of such softwares, but none of them i would recommend :)
About getting intouch with your friend thats fine tho.. But make sure he don't use the pc till he figure out what he wants to do it or not.. Cause it will cost him some money!

I use and tested this software several times, it should help your friend tho :) please check EASEUS website and read about it.

Thank you and regards,

JOE

My old PC crashed the other week.  I would have been in the same situtation but I had a spare external 320gb hard drive that I keep all my photo's mp3's etc .  I know it's a bit late now for your neighbor but it's worth looking into getting