I lost everything on my computer

Often you can pick up these older disc drives on ePay for next to nothing, if you can find the same exact model in a working drive, you may be able to remove the platter from the broken drive and put it into the other drive. As long as the platter is not damaged/broken and you can get it out, then may be worth a try. Since once open to the air and contamination, it is a toss if/after you get the data off of it.

Information can be written in many different ways in a hard drive, and it is often fragmented in different section across the disc(s), so if any of the heads/dics(s) where damaged the disk would fail. Had this happen to me years ago and also more recently, I always back up everything to a second portable disc and also have dual drives in all my computers. It still sucks when it happens.
 
mark_f said:
The only option now is to recover from the old laptop drive and that is too expensive to get my 30 page article back.
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I do not think this should be expensive to try, although it may not be successful. I am thinking this would be running an Undelete style utility on the old drive. This may find the parts of old files. The big unknown is whether the parts have been written over in the reformat and reinstall of Windows.
 
mark_f said:
First...... Thank you all for the suggestions, all of which are good ones. BUT, :( this is mostly my own fault. When I bought the new Lenovo computer, a female friend wanted my 6 year old Dell laptop. Not wanting to leave any of my files on it, I moved them to the external hard drive. Once I was sure a complete backup was on the external drive, I erased the Dell and gave it to her. Next, I transferred all my "important" files to the new laptop. I was planning to transfer selected machine shop related files and photos, and a batch of irreplaceable family photos after setting up what was transferred earlier (I wanted to select only the files I wished to keep and not all the duplicates and trash). While carrying the drive in my hands to do this , I dropped the damn thing :eek: on the floor ( I am 6' 4" tall so this was about a 4 foot drop). When I hooked it up it connects to the computer BUT it won't spin anymore :(. I was lucky I already copied my banking, checkbook, and a few photos. But the rest is still on the hard drive that won't spin. I got the bright idea to download some recovery software that says it will restore 1 gig of data for free ( yea right) to the old laptop. After three hours of scanning , All the files were listed in the software :dancing banana:Now to save the desired files. WHAT!!!!! I have to pay $199.95 to save my files :bawling:. I dont have $ 199.95 :( ..... ( Unless some how I can do without food this month)....... And that is the rest of the story!
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Have a look at DMDE, it's a few local currency units for a single-user copy, rescued the contents of three discs that got pooped all over when my old PC died on me - should find what's still on the "old" laptop, assuming your friend hasn't started installing everything on it and all's just erased. Ideally, take the HD from the old machine and attach it to the new, run DMDE on the new one and let it scan (some hours...) then copy what you want. I like it, a lot :)

Dave H. (the other one)
 
In a past life we replaced heads on drives...

Look for identical drive and swap platters as they are cheap...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
yes but they were like washing machines, and were meant to be opened. ;)
 
Mark, I feel your pain. I recently went through a hard drive crash and then found out that my backup strategy had not been working for a while. I did quite a bit of research and found a company that recovered the files from the failed drive for $300 plus the cost of a transfer drive. Service was very fast, and I have been a very happy camper ever since. If you are interested in their contact information, PM me.
 
Well ....... I got the EDM article back! After 6 hours of work last night. The new computer would not open the file ( .wps file, which is Microsoft Works). I tried all the converters.... Nothing worked. So I figured out why and it is because it is text and photos combined, you can't save it in the needed new format. So.... I opened it on the old laptop and removed all the photos and saved it in the newer format. Then opened it on the new laptop and inserted all the photos back in and saved it. Now I have the EDM build article back. It may have been the hard way to do it but it was affordable. I forgot that many photos can be recovered from my web site on yahoo groups. Not all but some. It will take a lot of work, but I can find maybe about half what I lost ( I can't remember everything that is lost).

Good old Microsoft....... Always gave you Office or Microsoft Works with computers. Now they did away with Works and charge you $150 if you want office. They had this figured out. Let everyone use and save all their stuff in the free programs and then make you pay cause now you need it. This makes me mad, But, a program called Open Office that can be downloaded for free and is almost exactly like Microsoft Office. Even looks the same. Saves having to pay Microsoft.

From now on, I will make two copies of my hard drive on two memory sticks. ( And they still work if you drop them)
 
A cheap and effective backup for single files like this is gmail.

Just send it to yourself and it will be there until you delete it.

Easy to access from anywhere by any device just by logging into your mail.

Ww use this often with phone as we find things we want copy of but do not want to store in phone to transfer later or risk loosing so we use the "share via" option and email it to ourselves and then can copy it to whatever we are using to read the mail later.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
mark_f said:
Well ....... I got the EDM article back! After 6 hours of work last night. The new computer would not open the file ( .wps file, which is Microsoft Works). I tried all the converters.... Nothing worked. So I figured out why and it is because it is text and photos combined, you can't save it in the needed new format. So.... I opened it on the old laptop and removed all the photos and saved it in the newer format. Then opened it on the new laptop and inserted all the photos back in and saved it. Now I have the EDM build article back. It may have been the hard way to do it but it was affordable. I forgot that many photos can be recovered from my web site on yahoo groups. Not all but some. It will take a lot of work, but I can find maybe about half what I lost ( I can't remember everything that is lost).

Good old Microsoft....... Always gave you Office or Microsoft Works with computers. Now they did away with Works and charge you $150 if you want office. They had this figured out. Let everyone use and save all their stuff in the free programs and then make you pay cause now you need it. This makes me mad, But, the american Indians have a program called Open Office that can be downloaded for free and is almost exactly like Microsoft Office. Even looks the same. Saves having to pay Microsoft.

From now on, I will make two copies of my hard drive on two memory sticks. ( And they still work if you drop them)
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They also continue working if you run them through the washing machine. :laughing:
 
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