need to recover old data

I have gotten a virus and have decided to reformat my drive. First, I need to recover some deleted photos. I have run stellar phoenix photo recovery, and it has successfully brought back many pictures, but some are still incomplete, and others are fuzzy/unveiwable. most importantly, i have gone through many of the recovered pictures (almost all), and the pictures I was specifically looking for have not shown up. HELP!

 

A Linux live CD is an excellent way of recovering lost files, providing you have some idea where to look. Any Linux distro will do it but I find Puppy Linux the smallest and easiest to use.

 

i have no experience with linux, how do i use that?

 

Basically, what you do is download a Linux distro ISO file and burn it to CD/DVD. Go into the BIOS of your computer and set the CD/DVD drive ahead of the hard drive and restart the computer with the CD/DVD inserted. It should boot into whichever Linux distro you've chosen.

Almost all Linux CDs/DVDs have some type of file manager. Launch it and look for the files on your hard drive.

Also, since you're booting from CD/DVD, there's no chance of it becoming infected.

 

If you have already formatted the drive and reinstalled any type of operating system, you will never get that stuff back. You can try, but it is now gone forever.

 

If they've been overwritten, you'll certainly struggle to get them back in any usable condition. Try TestDisk/PhotoRec.

 

i just tried testdisk, and am totally lost. what is this program even supposed to do? where to i begin with this? i hit a dead end in about 15 seconds flat x.x

 

I've only used it 2x, the first of those was remotely, both times successfully but they were both some time ago, I recall very few details.

Best that you read the info here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec and follow the Step-by-Step linked near the foot of that page.

 

so i know EXACTLY where the files i am looking for used to be, i simply need something that is INCREDIBLY thorough and can recover anything that used to be there going back a LONG time. i've been at it for weeks with this, help!

 

You might try Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier. It's one of the most thorough programs for data recovery there is. It's available as an installer or a stand alone product from the website.

 

I can't see that you ever tried the Puppy Linux suggestion. You just burn the ISO to CD, boot to it, and you get a Windows-like desktop with icons at the bottom for each of your drives (without Windows drive letters but you can easily recognise which is which when you open them). Anything you want to copy you just drag and drop to a USB drive.

 

blahh, you're gonna make me try new things aren't you?? hahaha, alright i give up, i'll try that tonight.

in the mean time, if anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to keep them comin! i could always use a plan B in case Puppy doesnt work =3.

thanks for all the help so far everyone!

 

need SERIOUS data recovery help

OK, I am trying to recover some files deleted quite a while back. i know exactly where the files used to be. PLEASE HELP! i have tried a few programs with no luck yet.

thanks!

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

If the physical locations where your deleted files used to be have been overwritten by new data, then there is very little chance that you can recover them.

Easiest way to recover lost files: from backup.

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

i know that, but i dont think i have restore points that i can use. i need a more professional method. ideally something that will just look at a file at find everything that ever existed there.

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

Backup means things you have burnt on discs or copied to other drives like external HDDs, flash drives, cloud, another computer etc. it does NOT mean restore points. Restore points don't store that kind of data.

What pwillener is trying to explain, is that data recovery is 'time dependent' meaning the earlier you can recover it from the point it was lost or deleted, the better your chances of recovering the data, in fact for hard drives, the recommendation is to shut it down immediately and load it as a secondary drive on another PC to recover data, as the paging file that windows uses, can overwrite your data.

In short here's how data recovery works;
When you delete something, you are telling the OS that the space where this data lies is now ok to overwrite. The OS removes any pointers from that data that ties it to the system. When new data is saved, it may be saved to that or any other free location. So... the longer you have operated the system and especially manually saved more data, the less likely you are to recover long lost data on a highly used HDD. The likelihood goes down also when you save a lot of large files or it the file you are trying to recover is large.

Data recover software will try to find data that is intact, but without pointers and attempt to replace a pointer to the files so you can access them. If your files have been rewritten, this will not be possible.

There are many data recover softwares out there, most you'll have to pay for. Nero, if you have it, I see, now comes with one, I've never used it to tell you how well it worked. I've used a couple recovery softwares before, they are pretty simple to use, but the free ones are very hard to find.

Maybe one of the other geeks can point you to a couple.

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

i understand that, but surely there is a more thorough way. there has to be a method that agencies like the FBI use to dig deeper to recover files that criminals have tried to hide.

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

Trust me, those shows you see on TV are highly overrated. The FBI can no how recover files that you and I can not.

What you are referring to will break the laws of physics and computing. You are suggesting that the HDD will store all data that ever existed on it, no matter what! If that were possible, someone would have written a program to retrieve such files, and we would all just need a HDD as big as the largest file you'd ever want to have. So for most folks, a 5 GB HDD would be more than sufficient and Terabyte HDDs, would have no purpose... it's just not possible.

There are ways of deleting files that no one not except maybe God or someone with a time machine can recover. Who knows, maybe the FBI has a time machine, that's why they can recover anything. There are programs called 'file shredders' that you can use in place of your recycle bin or when you empty your recycle bin, which basically rewrites your data a couple times (though, once would be enough) with random code (random zeros and ones) hence making any file deleted unrecoverable. Any cyber criminal worth his salt, would have one and as mentioned above only God or the use of a time machine can recover data shredded by that method. Which is why normal people who may accidentally delete stuff and want to recover it, don't know/use such stuff.

Even if you can recover data, most people of the calibre you are referring to, would also have industry strength encryption on everything, and even with a super computer, it would take *years to crack a good encrypted password.
*years depending on the encryption method and super computer can go into 20+years - long after your statute of limitations expires.

So long story short, the FBI ain't half what they are portrayed as on TV.
.
.
.

If your local FBI can recover files that have been shredded, give me their number, I'd love to see what the next millennium looks like.

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

It isn't only a question of whether a lost file has been overwritten either. Many files get fragmented when being written to disk, the filing system knowing in which disk sectors the various parts are located. However when that file is deleted all of those pointers are lost and although all of the parts may still physically exist there is no way of identifying which parts belong together or in which order. This can account for files being only partly recovered, where the first part has been identified and recovered but not the remainder as there is nothing at all to identify them with the first part.

 

Re: need SERIOUS data recovery help

thanks, I forgot to mention about fragmented files.

but I hope the OP understands, at the end of the day, there are files that CANNOT be recovered.

 

recover overwritten files

Need help recovering overwritten files. I have no experience with this sort of thing.

please help!

 

Re: recover overwritten files

If you're certain that these files have been overwritten by other files, it may be impossible to get them back intact. Piriform's Recuva is one of the best apps for recovering files that have been accidentally deleted, but I don't know of any app that can recover overwritten files.

There is one other option you can try and that's doing a System Restore to a point prior to those files being overwritten if you can.

Hope you're successful.

 

Re: recover overwritten files

Restore? Am not too sure about that. That would overwrite the files again and kill any hopes of recovering data.

 

Re: recover overwritten files

No it won't. It will put the computer back to the state it was before the files were overwritten. Everything that was on the hard drive will be there. That's why the System Volume Information file is so large. It stores the information needed to restore the files to their original state. I've used System Restore myself when I've made a mistake and files I had deleted or apps I had uninstalled prior to doing the System Restore were back.

System Restore is one of the most important and best tools the Windows OS has to offer. I'm sure many other even more knowledgeable "geeks" will agree.

 

Re: recover overwritten files

Well I for one DO NOT agree.

I too have tried system restore and it doesn't recover deleted files or reinstall uninstalled programs. It just doesn't store that type of data.

Why not try it again yourself. Make a dummy/test document on your desktop, write something in it, make a restore point, delete the file and then restore to that point. I'm sure the file won't magically appear back onto the desktop.

 

I don't think the OP has already formatted the drive - this is what he actually said

However all of the usual suggestions have already been made - undelete programs, boot disks and so on - without any success apparently. The topic only keeps going because the OP keeps starting another thread because he doesn't accept that once data is overwritten it's gone for good.

I certainly agree with Blujay that System Restore will never be of any use in recovering personal files like photos, and that in the process of writing its files back to the disk it is further reducing any chance of recovering deleted stuff. That's because System restore won't necessarily write back its files to the same sectors they were in originally - it will write them to wherever it can find unallocated space.