# A little advice I wish I had heeded myself.



## ranch23 (Oct 25, 2012)

Lost the hard drive on my computer yesterday. I had an incedible amount of information, pictures, formulas, all my contact info, all of my Granddaughters pictures on it. And yes, no backup. This week when I buy a new computer I will buy a backup with it.


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## Tony Wells (Oct 25, 2012)

It's not impossible in some cases to recover data on a crashed drive. Of course, if it's the servo control or a mechanical issue it becomes more difficult and expensive. There are places that specialize in forensic data recovery that will remove the platters and unless they are badly damaged, can recover them. But there is also some software options. I have successfully used one called "HDD Regenerator" on drives that I thought were toast. A trial download is available to see if it will possibly be successful, but the pay version is very reasonably priced. 

I have no affiliation other than being a very satisfied customer.

http://www.dposoft.net/


I see he's gotten fancy and increased his offerings as well as his price, but it's worth considering. However, this is all for hindsight. Nothing beats a backup, either local or in the clouds. I've been trying out a cloud solution called Duplicati. Can't tell how well it works yet, haven't needed it.


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## Kennyd (Oct 25, 2012)

I am a very happy Carbonite customer, it's worth every penny to me.


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## jfcayron (Oct 27, 2012)

I use SpiderOak. Satisfied customer for 2 years.


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## OakRidgeGuy (Oct 27, 2012)

go to the microsoft website and get the OS recovery files, it will take a few minutes to down load them, but it will allow you to recover the hard drive. yes you will still have lost your files that you had on the computer, but it will allow you to reformat the hard drive and get it going again.. I have had to do this a couple of times. after you have recovered the hard drive, you should be able to reinstall windows onto the drive..


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## icore3user (Oct 27, 2012)

If the drive still spins up and indentifies itself in the BIOS / post screen, then you can recover the drive to a very high degree. I do drive recovery for friends and family, and that's all I need is for the drive to spin up, run and identify. I do not need the operating system running on the drive, just a running drive. But i usually remove the drive and slave the drive to another working computer with a big drive to recover to. All drive recovery software will not recover to the drive it recovering from, since they are non destructive and will not over write any recovered data back to the drive, hence you need a recovery drive to recover too. Depending on how much data you are recovering ( photos, mp3s, videos, etc ) will determine how much free hard drive space you are going to need. I use the Apricorn Drive wire adapter ( http://www.apricorn.com/products/no...ivewire-ide-pata-sata-to-usb-hdd-adapter.html ) that allow you to hook any drive ( laptop, IDE, SATA, ) to any computer. laptop. This allow you to run recovery software on the drive and recovery to a drive. You never want to format the drive, you always want to run a non destructive recovery software. Once you have recovered all the data, then you reformat, or repair the drive then reinstall the OS.

Sometime a crashed hard drive that runs , just needs a repair to the boot sector ( MBR ) or the actual OS. There are windows repair disks that can be found, for XP use the OS disk and do not reinstall, but repair option , for Windows 7 ( 32 and 64 bit ) there are repair disks that work good if the OS is instanct but missing a few files or slightly damged.

 Still yet another option is to try a live OS option like Knoppix or Unbuntu, this allows you to mount the drive, see what's inside ( it will access the NTFS partition from the Linux enviroment ) and copy to another drive. The host OS ( windows XP , Vista or 7 ) need not be intact , just the partition). 

There is also ERD, Emergency Rescue Commander, though it was not made for quite some time, and does not work on Windows 7, it works excellent on Windows XP and I think Vista ( never tried vista on it ), it boots to a mini pre install OS enviroment and allows you to repair, or copy from the damaged drive.

Hirens Boot Cd is also another great tool if you can find it, as it constantly updates the CD with new tools for recovery, repair.

I use On Tracks Drive recovery software for damaged drives ( only to recover ).

do not use and any restore discs, as they will overwrite the data on the drive and recovery after the fact will be very difficult.


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## Tony Wells (Oct 27, 2012)

Sometimes the old trick of putting the drive in the freezer will let you boot and run enough to copy off vital data. It's no fix, but a desperate move if everything else fails. The HDD Regenerator I mentioned above is a standalone that boots instead of the OS (doesn't matter what OS it is), and repairs, bit for bit, the data on the disc. 

If you do "repair" your OS with the recovery disc or partition, you run a risk with high probability of over-writing some of the data you wish to save. You should only do this if you are willing to lose everything on the drive. If you proceed with a format, it is extremely difficult to recover any data unless you have some pretty expensive, specialized software and then there is not always 100% recovery. Computer forensics is a pretty specialized field. So if you have something to hide, formatting just makes it difficult and expensive to get to. It can be done unless you take special precautions that I won't get into here.


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## ranch23 (Oct 29, 2012)

Thanks, Im typing this on a new computer, and have every intention of trying some of your suggestions. Kicking myself just a little. Again, Thank You, Brian.


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## pjf134 (Oct 29, 2012)

Some things I have tried that worked for me is setting old drive as a slave drive and run new drive as master and sometimes you can copy your old files to new drive. On XP and older I went into bios and boot from CD windows disk and reloaded windows, be careful to pic the right settings for install and do not pic to format as I did recover with no files lost at all on many drives. Sometimes the boot sector gets lost and just add a file to make c:drive bootable works too. The slave drive trick works most of the time for me and I would try it first. I do have some recovery software but never needed it for people that come with bad drives. I hear the freezer trick works too, but never tried it myself.
Paul


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## ranch23 (Oct 29, 2012)

Actually, most of what you are talking about is beyond me, I'm just a gunmaker.


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## TRX (Nov 2, 2012)

I have twice managed to recover the data from "dead" hard drives by finding a matching drive on eBay and swapping the new circuit board onto the dead drive.  I then copied all the stuff off onto a new drive.

 As for backup software... backups are great, but remember what you want is a RESTORE.  Terabyte USB external drives are so cheap now, I alternate between a pair of them and just copy the files directly to the external drive.  If I need to, I can just plug the drive in and search through it for a file instead of having to go through some weird backup program.


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## ranch23 (Nov 3, 2012)

Are you saying just copy it to the external drive when you originally keep it on your computer?


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## 7HC (Nov 3, 2012)

ranch23 said:


> Are you saying just copy it to the external drive when you originally keep it on your computer?



It doesn't have to be an external drive.  If you have a desktop you can install one or more additional hard drives internally to use just for storage, or you can copy whatever you want to save (pics, docs, programs, etc.) onto CDs or DVDs, or thumb drives (which are of course a type of external drive).

With all of those methods you can just go to where you saved them and copy them, with no worries about restoring from backup software.


M


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