Lost all my photos

[Shannon]

I'm a bit freaked out. My computer was recently infected with a virus. I told a friend about it and he said he could fix it for me. I thought cool, I'll save some $, and I won't have to send my computer away for 2 weeks. He picked up my computer yesterday. Today when he dropped it off, he said he had good news and bad news. The good news is that my computer is free of all viruses. The bad news is, all of my pictures from the past 4 years are gone. I couldn't believe it. I told him that I didn't have them saved on disc and that losing those photos was the only thing that I was really concerned about. He said he wasn't able to clear up the problems unless he dumped everything and started fresh.

I appreciate that he spent time and energy to fix my computer, but I'm dying that I lost thousands of photographs. Is there absolutely no way that those photos can be recovered?

:crybaby:

P.S. As of today, I know how to burn the photos onto a CD.

[Jadis]

Unfortunately, you learned a valuable backup lesson the hard way.

The same happens with people and their iPods when they delete their music off their computer, thinking they can just sync their pods. Not quite how it happens.

[CapnGimp]

you can recover those photos easily. There are a zillion versions of software to retrieve "deleted" files from your hard drive. They will need to be copied to another hard drive, internal OR external such as USB. Anyone worth 2 cents on a computer can do it for you.
I have done this many times for people and business.
If it is too hard to find a reputable person, holler at me thru email.

[Jadis]

:applaud: Capn!!

[CapnGimp]

Post your Operating system version and I'll hunt my software for you. I can put up a server here and give you the info to download it. Then I'll tell ya about putting it on another drive to save them.
A lil bit of an explanation....
Remember when you used to record over and over old cassettes and you could still hear the old stuff in the background on the new recording?
Sorta the same with hard drives. Unless you do multiple wipes of a drive, the old info can be found. THAT is why DA MAN wants your puter if you breakA da Law. All the software does is a low level read of the drive and lists the filenames for ya. Then you pick which files you want and have it "copy" them to another drive to avoid writing over potential keeperZ.
I've found files that 2 businesses that do this for a living couldn't,lol. But I'm not braggin, just saying don't sweat the l0ad. Try to avoid writing to your drive until you get the pics btw. It may help.

[Shannon]

Oh yay! CapnGimp, you rock!

I use Windows XP. (That's what you mean by "operating system", right?:o )

[McDuff]

Capn is correct, unless, when your friend said he started "fresh" he meant he formatted your hard drive. If he did, all is gone, if not the files can be retrieved.

[bob clark]

Hi Shannon,

Even if your friend "formatted" your hard drive there's still a possibility of retrieving them. But you probably won't be able to get all of them and only portions of some. When you format a hard drive it doesn't write over everything like an erasing/wiping program does. It just puts a "character" (I believe it's an upside down "e") in front of every writable cluster that gives permission for the OS to write over that sector. Now after the OS was installed and it physically overwrote where a particular photo was stored then you won't be able to retrieve that one. Unless it's done at the FBI lab in Quantico or other professional private sector recovery expert who has the ability to do such fine work.

You can have those pictures (or a portion of an individual picture) professionally recovered but it costs a LOT of money. Check out ADR Data Recovery (http://www.adrdatarecovery.com/). Or call them at: 1-800-450-9282. Give them a call in any event just to see what they say about it. But you should stop using that hard drive now. Everytime you use it, it may be writing over your photo files (jpgs etc.). And definitely don't install any new programs or games...

I think a professional recovery service starts at around $1000 or so but that's just a number I heard years ago. Perhaps prices have changed.

If only a portion of the cluster was over-written then theoretically the remaining portion of the picture (file) can still be salvaged. The good part is that when you install the OS it should physically install itself on the hard drive close to where it was originally installed. Hopefully leaving your pictures (which were installed at a later time) unmolested.

But only doing a search of the hard drive with a data retrieval or recovery software program will be able to tell. Hopefully CapnGimp has a good, user friendly program that he can send your way. I've tried a couple free and trial programs before but personally didn't have much luck with them. But I didn't spend a whole lotta time with them either.

The next time your friend formats and clean installs your OS ask him to create an extra partition or two on your hard drive so you can store your photos there. He REALLY should have asked you before he took the liberty of formatting and clean installing your OS. But that's water under the bridge now!

I don't know if the words "sector" and "cluster" were the right ones to use in this situation but I hope it got my point across.

Best of luck.

[Leif]

The data is still there, even if he formatted your hard drive.

http://www.ibas.com/america

Advice on Data Loss:
1. Do not panic
2. Turn off the power
3. Do not restart the machine
4. Do not reinstall any software
5. Do not open the hard disk
6. Do not use recovery tools
7. Assess the situation
8. >> Contact us for free advice (http://www.ibas.com/contact)

Seams like CapnGimp know how to handle this, but in the meantime don't write to the hard drive.

[McDuff]

Cool, learn something new everyday, I thought formatting did a more comprehensive rewrite. Googled data recovery and there appears to be a lot of options for recovery, from cheap to $$$.

Good luck Shannon, and everyone is right, stop using that disk.

[CapnGimp]

Trying to get the software to you Shannon, but you have no email here. My profile has my email listed, email me and I'll send the recovery software to you. It is 977 kb file. Install it preferably on a second hard drive either internal or USB. The help files are the in the program plus here is the link to the website for the version I use
http://www.quetek.com/prod02_V2.htm
If you have questions let me know. I have a pro user license so your fears are alleviated. It is small enough to install on a floppy BUT I never used it this way, you could try if you want.
Remember, to save the files you want to keep to a DIFFERENT hard drive from what you are using.
You could go buy a hard drive and install it inside your computer and go from there. I suggest to everyone who uses a computer to learn to use multiple logical drives on each physical hard disk they own. This is the best wauy to avoid these types of problems.
Gimme a shout so I can email it to ya!

[CapnGimp]

Shannon email me, it's in my profile... posted this earlier but it didn't show up CC site is REALLY SLOW for me today
I have the software and will send it to you in email, it's 977kb.

lol NOW it show up

[PN]

CapnGimp, thanks and please keep us updated on this data recovery issue.

Shannon, glad to read that you are now backing up your data on to a CD-R. I would also recommend backing up on to a USB Flash Drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=nb_ss_e/104-2180520-6953503?url=search-alias%3Delectronics-aps&field-keywords=USB+flash+drives&Go.x=7&Go.y=14) because they are, inexpensive, portable, solid-state and can be used with other computers. You can also store your photos, music and work related documents on Streamload (https://www.streamload.com/about/onlinestorage.asp) for free and they give you 10GB of online storage.

Good luck!

[Shannon]

Thank you all very much. I've got a quiet house to myself tomorrow, and I will on work on it then. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Shannon]

No luck. It's just way too confusing for me. I'll find a friend to help walk me through it.

[PN]

Shannon, sorry to read that you are having a difficult time recovering your photos. A short time ago Raven (http://carecure.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13303&highlight=Lost+poetry+files) thought she had lost all of her poetry files but by using recovery software she was able to get some of her data back. I think all desktops should come with two hard drives because you will be able to have more storage, "more flexible organization options," and it is easy to backup. I have been using a software program called Back up My PC but Replicator (http://www.g4techtv.ca/callforhelp/shownotes/0234.shtml?freefiles) is free and you might as well save some money. Good luck!

[CapnGimp]

What is giving you trouble?
using the software itself or just locating the file names? Let me know and I'll help!
If it comes down to it you could mail the drive to me and I'll retrieve them no charge. Just need to Know if they were jpg/tiff/bmp or whatever( sorta to narrow down the quantity of files saved).
If I were you, I would just list all picture type files above a certain size( whatever your cameras size was, for instance all above 1meg), unless you resized them to something smaller. Then copy all those to another hard drive and go thru them.
What you are trying to rule out is all image types OYHER than your personal photographs, that would be equivalent to browser cache files such as all the images on a webpage, advertisements, etc.

Just talk to me,lol, I can help ya understand. It truly isn't hard once you get the general idea.
I don't want ya to loose your pics when it is absolutely no problem for me to retrieve them if you can't. It's not like I am too busy,lol. I do not have a job, so I try to be helpful to others, THAT"s my job now.
John

[CapnGimp]

Hey Paul,
Two physical drives ARE a good idea. But for most cases, other than actual physical drive failure, multiple logical drives on a single drive serve the same purpose at no extra cost. I have tried since drives got above 1 gig to get everyone I know to do this.
Every computer I maintain/build or load for ANYONE, I put the OS on Primary Partition, make rest of drive an Extended Partition, then put one Logical Drive for most commonly used software, and for businesses a second Logical Drive for their primary software, home users would put their financial,etc, software here, If you are big on photography a seperate one for this, etc, etc, until you have MAJOR groupings of large quantities of data on seperate partitions.
Lastly at end of drive a place a Swap file on it's own partition.
If at ANY time you get OS problems, you can just reload the OS and all your data is accessible for restoration w/o worrying about doing backups. Any pure data files such as photos, music, text,etc, are immediately usable with no hassles.
If you are concerned about CRITICAL data such as a business, I suggest a RAID array so that duplicate drives exist real time and upon one failing, you can keep working and only have to replace the failed drive, without work stoppage, and the duplicate will restore on the fly, as you work.
You do end of day back ups of critical files(entire databace/logs/etc) to a USB drive and take it off site(home) and restore THAT to a back up server, in case of catastrophic loss due to theft/fire/etc.
Now, that's just MY way of doing it, but it IS cost and time efficient, adds layers of security and you can sleep well knowing you comply with even HIPPA regs.
Haven't lost any data yet, that I couldn't rtetrieve, even coming in behind others that have failed, charging big bucks.
Hey, we're dealing with a box of sand essentialy, we can outsmart it if we apply ourselves,lol! ;)

[bob clark]

I partitioned the hell outta my last 120GB last hard drive. I created 6 of them for various things. Swap/paging file, games, mp3s, videos and Internet downloads/storage. But I've since learned that with XP you want to give the "active" C: drive/partition plenty of room to work because it was designed with large capacity hard drives in mind. Unlike earlier Windows versions, XP apparently needs room to breathe! I use 20 gigs as a minimum. Some people put XP on a 2-5 GB partition which IMO is way too small. On my new computer (74GB hard drive) I only created 3 partitions. Swap/paging, gaming and storage. But I have the hard drive from my last computer slaved up to it so most of my stuff gets stored there. I also moved my swap/paging file to my older hard drive because even though it's a slightly slower hard drive (7,200 RPMs as compared to the new one at 10,000 RPMs) it's on a separate channel making it access/transfer data faster than if it was on the master hard drive.

Unlike you CapnGimp I always use the D: drive/partition for my swap/paging file because it's located farther out on the disk so spins faster decreasing the access time. It's theoretical because I imagine it depends on how many disks are in a particular hard drive and whether it uses both sides of the platter etc. In other words where the D:/ partition physically ends up on the platter. I make it 4 times the size of the amount of system memory I have. I want it to have a little extra room to move things about.

I know a very computer literate fellow from another forum (smartest computer guy I ever met) and he claims that XP runs best on the whole hard drive. He uses separate hard drives for storage etc. He cringed when I told him I created 6 partitions on my hard drive! :) But it works well for me.

It's ridiculous to keep all your music, pictures and video files etc on the active C:/ partition. Not only does it gunk the drive/partition up forcing you to defrag more often but if you don't have a second physical hard drive you need to back up or store everything on removable media everytime you format and clean install the OS. Not cool.

And if you game or sim a lot you should have them installed on a separate partition so they don't fragment the active partition. I need to defrag my gaming partition more often than my active C:/ partition!

Live and learn.

PS. Dogger should have a "hidden" 700MB partition on his NetVista computer. It's where IBM stores the drivers etc. I think it can be accessed by hitting the F11 key. My sister had an Everex computer that had a hidden partition on it. I only found out about when I was trying to save her data from a hard drive failure and used Partition Magic on it. It didn't show up any other way. I wondered where that extra 5GBs went to! :)

Hi Dogger,

If you read this....

What model number is your computer? I couldn't find anything about an "EZ" model # or name at the IBM NetVista support site. You should have one of the following models:

IBM NetVista A20i Series:

Machine Type 2255
Machine Type 2275
Machine Type 2276
Machine Type 6276
Machine Type 6280

IBM NetVista PC model # label can typically be found on the right front panel.

[Shannon]

CapnGimp, do you think maybe you could help me out if I called you? If so, and it's okay with you, please email me your phone number and a good time to call.

[CapnGimp]

check your email, We'll get this thaang wh00ped. BTW, I sent ya the software for windows newer os'es with NTFS filesystems. If your are using FAT16 or FAT32 like on windows ME or 98 or happened to format the other two systems in FAT instead of NTFS, I gotta find THAT software,lol. Just dawned on me you said 4 years, anyway, call me, won't take but a sec to find out, same cat to skin, just a different knife... uhh yeah ;)