I need help because I am the biggest dork ever....

I did a system recovery without backing up my files...( I know...I know)....what is the best Freeware to recover my pictures. That is really the only thing I need....I stored them in My pictures and used Kodak and Picasa....Please they are baby pictures!!!!

Any suggestions please!

Thank you, Allison

 

Ouch! I've heard good things about Recuva but I'm not sure it will work in your case. Please don't save anything more on your hard drive as your old files may still be there and not overwritten. Good luck.

EDIT: I defer to Halo.

 

Allison,

It all depends on what exactly you've done for this "system recovery".

If you formatted the disk and chose the option to write 0's to the entire drive, then unfortunately I believe that only hard disk recovery professionals can retrieve your lost data. This process is extremely expensive ($800+ last time I checked) and there is no guarantee of what can be recovered.

As far as I know, if you simply reinstalled your operating system and DID NOT select to zero-fill the drive, there is a good chance some of your files can be recovered because an ordinary deletion does not actually remove the file data -- the files are only truly lost once new files are recorded in the same location where the old files were. However, there is a strong chance that installing the operating system would have destroyed some of the files.

I can't provide all the advice you need, but I can help get the ball rolling. The people here will need more specific information about exactly what you've done, in order to know what you need to do.

Do you simply mean you used System Restore to go back to a restore point?

Or, when you say "system recovery", do you mean you used the disks that came with the computer to reinstall windows?

If "yes":

Do you remember whether you asked the installer to "repair" the Windows installation, or completely reinstall?

Do you remember if you chose to reformat the partition or simply reinstall/repair on the current partition?

If you reformatted, do you remember if you chose the "quick format" or the "long format"? Do you remember if you chose an option to "zero fill" the drive?

Edit: guess I was too late.

 

Okay I will be more clear....I did a system recovery....and I chose the option to do the recovery with the backup...so there is a file on my harddrive that has todays date and in it is like a shell of everything I had on my computer...I have Picasa in it but no actual pictures....I did not have to insert any discks to do the recovery...I guess it just recovered it from the hard disk...

 

I'm not familiar with this backup procedure. Can you describe the menus and commands you used to initiate it?

On your computer,

Right click the "backup" file and select properties.. what is the full name of the file, with the three letter extension after the period, and the size of the file?

And, as said above, try to do as little as possible with your computer. Pretty much anything you do on this computer right now could be deleting more of your files. If you have another computer that you can use to surf the web for help, you should use that.

And, take my advice with a grain of salt... I have fewer than 100 posts !