photo recovery?

Discussion in 'Software' started by shanrene123, Jan 10, 2008.

  1. shanrene123

    shanrene123 Private First Class

    I am working on a friend's hp pavilion laptop, running WinXP Home SP2. It crashed & I had to do a complete restore/reformat from CD's. Finally have all working well & laptop protected, per majorgeeks sticky threads, as best I can, as I think the motherboard may be affected...& I've lost keyboard & mouse function, before complete reformat. My question is: can photos be recovered from HDD? I do not have the camera or memory card -- pictures were only on HDD. I tried the free program called "Free Undelete" from geeks section on "Data Recovery". I could not get this program to work at all. Is there any program or way I may be able to recover her lost pictures?:cry
    Please help if possible, as I feel responsible for losing her pictures. thanks in advance. Geeks Rule!!!:;)shanrene
     
    shanrene123, Jan 10, 2008
    #1
  2. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    You probably would have to pay for a data recovery service if you are trying to recover things from a formatted hd.
    It would have been better to remove the drive, attach it to another computer and get the files off before you formatted it.
    Tell your friend that any files that are important, like pictures, should be burned to a data CD every so often because a hd can die and you lose everything that isn't backed up.
    I always copy my pictures from the card to the computer and burn them. Then I triple check to be sure I have the pictures before I erase them from the computer and possibly format the camera card.
     
    plodr, Jan 10, 2008
    #2
  3. shanrene123

    shanrene123 Private First Class

    Yes, thanks! I wish I had thought to do that (to remove the HDD & attach it to another PC & retrieve the pictures)...but I guess I was in a panic. I don't mind to pay for data recovery, but do I have to take it in somewhere, or can I purchase any shareware data recovery software & download from geeks? Just thought I'd ask to see if you knew. I definitely agree about the need to back files up to CD's, in case of a HDD crash. Thanks for your input! :)shanrene
     
    shanrene123, Jan 10, 2008
    #3
  4. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    If you want to recover data from a hd, don't use that hard drive because the more it is written to, the fainter the chances of recovering what you want.

    This freebie I hear is good
    http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1
    but I don't know if it will work on a drive that has been restored/recovered/formatted. It is usually for those cases when some files have been deleted.
    There are a lot of choices
    http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html
    Active@ Undelete says it can recover formatted data.

    Whatever you decide to try, put it on your computer, attach her hd to your computer and see if it can find the files. This would avoid writing to her hd.
     
    plodr, Jan 11, 2008
    #4
  5. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    I've used Easy Recovery Pro to recover data from formatted hard drives. It's easy to use, but not free. Check it out:
    http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/file-recovery-software/
    They have trial versions that will show you the data if it's recoverable, but you must pay to actually rescue the data.
     
    dlb, Jan 11, 2008
    #5

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