Recovery Sucess Story

S

SKiTLz

2[H]4U
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Aug 3, 2003
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Im writing a christmas card to the folks that wrote File Scavenger as we speak.. :D

Got hit by a bit of malicious software today. Stupid error on my part as Im usually more careful.

Anywho, long story short it hit my G:\ Partition. Which happens to be where I store every project I've ever worked on. Websites, Scripts you name it for the past 6-7 years.

Im currently working on a site too for which Im almost done but havent been paid. Yep stored on G:\. I was bout ready to pass out. Grabbed File Scavenger as per Ice Czars previous recommendations. Gave it a birl and thank christ it got 99% of my stuff back.

I've never had good luck with recovery software but this one is awesome. Fast too. Only took 20min to recover a good 40Gb.

Admitedly the data was only just deleted and hadn't been overwritten or anything, so it wasnt the hardest test for it.. But Im still impressed.

And before you data gururs start screaming & start yelling backup.. :p I do keep them, there just not very current at the moment. DVD-R backups are a pain in the ass.

Anywho, just thought I'd share.
 
Good to hear a success story :D glad to hear you got everything back

next time something like this happens I'll try this out...
 
now Ive given a few girls a whirl, but never a birl :p

glad you liked it, but be advised,
you only get to transfer the ap to a new computer once
and have to contact them to do that
barring reverse engineering
 
I'm glad you had a better experience with it than I did. I still don't know what exactly happened to my drive, but right now it is sitting in a box until I have the time to try the 'freezer trick' on it :(. After that I might be looking for a replacement board for it...
 
asyork said:
I'm glad you had a better experience with it than I did. I still don't know what exactly happened to my drive, but right now it is sitting in a box until I have the time to try the 'freezer trick' on it :(. After that I might be looking for a replacement board for it...
Click to expand...
shitty deal man... I say they quit making faster CPU's and GPU's and everyone come up with a Rock Solid 99.99% reliable, affordable storage solution... :D. I can't stand to lose data.
 
glad you liked it, but be advised,
you only get to transfer the ap to a new computer once
and have to contact them to do that
barring reverse engineering
Click to expand...
Care to elaborate on this Ice Czar? I am working to recover my screwed up XP setup now, and File scavenger v2 is the only thing thats come close to working. It all started when I was deleting any references to "symantec" from my registry, I must have been delete happy or something :rolleyes: . When I rebooted I got (and still get) this errror: windows cannot start, WINDOWS/system32/config/system is missing or corrupt. My setup is an Abit kt7a-raid with 2 Western digital 80gb drives in RAID0 array. Windows recovery console is no help, when i try to access C: with any command (dir, or chkdsk) it gives the error: C:/ has encountered and error that is not recoverable. I put another HD in the machine and installed windows. The new installation sees the drive as C:, but will not allow me to access it. When I right click on it and select properties it shows it as RAW. I have recovered some of my files with File scavenger, but when I access the files on the new drive there are two copies of everything that I backed up. Some of the files seem to be reusable, but some may be garbage i think.
Any comments or help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Justin Payne
 
kurgan said:
Care to elaborate on this Ice Czar?
Click to expand...

Licensing Policy:

You can purchase Personal Use or Professional Use licenses. The program works the same with either license. However, the type of licenses you buy determines where the program can be run and technical support terms.

A Personal Use license is intended for individual use and can be used on a single computer. A Personal Use license can be transferred from the original computer to a second computer in the following scenarios:

* The original computer is being retired and replaced by the second computer.
* The license is bought for the original computer for testing. The actual use is intended for the second computer.

The right to transfer licenses is not intended to allow a Personal Use license to be used as a floating license among multiple computers.

A Professional Use license is intended for a computer support person who needs to use the software on other users' computers. A Professional Use license is registered to a named individual and can be used by the individual on any computer. A Professional Use license can be transferred to a second individual when the original licensee no longer intends to use the product, such as in the case of permanent change in job assignments. The right to transfer licenses is not intended to allow a Professional Use license to be shared among multiple users.

To request a license transfer, please click here.

the lincense enforcement goes beyond just saying so, and the software will refuse to install on a new box till you contact them and get a new serial number
it actually fairly obvious on the site
however I missed it when I originally purchased, I might have considered a Pro License if I knew I wasnt abkle to easily migrate it between my boxes, we do after all retire alot of boxes around here
 
Oh, i see now. Since you have experience with this program, can you tell me why i'm getting two of every file that i recover? I think I broke down and bought the professional license, i'm not sure right now have to check tomorrow. If anyone else cares to view my other posts, and help me out with this I would greatly appreciate it.

[Update]

I'm typing this message on my XP machine now :D . The registry hive was corrupt. I was able to repair with recovery console after getting updated drivers for my hpt370 raid controller, and this faq. The first option only works if you use system restore (i think), it didn't work for me(first option). I hope this helps someone in need someday.
Thanks,
Justin
 
kurgan said:
Oh, i see now. Since you have experience with this program, can you tell me why i'm getting two of every file that i recover? I think I broke down and bought the professional license, i'm not sure right now have to check tomorrow. If anyone else cares to view my other posts, and help me out with this I would greatly appreciate it.

[Update]

I'm typing this message on my XP machine now :D . The registry hive was corrupt. I was able to repair with recovery console after getting updated drivers for my hpt370 raid controller, and this faq. The first option only works if you use system restore (i think), it didn't work for me(first option). I hope this helps someone in need someday.
Thanks,
Justin
Click to expand...

The reason you are geting muliple files is File Scavenger trys muliple ways to recover each file if you don't tell it not to. It will name these files file, file[1], etc.
 
I'm glad you had a better experience with it than I did. I still don't know what exactly happened to my drive, but right now it is sitting in a box until I have the time to try the 'freezer trick' on it . After that I might be looking for a replacement board for it...
Click to expand...
What is the freezer trick?


Glad to hear about the successful recovery.
 
Put the drive in an anti-static bag. Then put it in a ziplock bag and make sure that it is sealed very well. Put the drive in the freezer for about an hour or so, I've heard of people doing it for a while longer too. Then connected to your computer and, hopefully, retrieve your data before the drive warms up. The hope is that, due to thermal expansion, chilling the drive will free up any moving parts that somehow got jammed. It only works for specific problems, and has a decently high risk of destroying the electronis of the drive through condensation.

My drive did spin up, and my computer actually recognized it when I tried this, but the partition was destroyed beforehand. I may try it again someday with some recovery software installed.
 
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=755679
(can also be found in the NAKED GIRLS sticky thread :p


The Freezer Trick is employed to rescue data from a HDD that is other wise inaccessable, typically because it is seized, or in an endless "click of death" cycle
(Keep in mind the occassional click is normal)

the cold contracts the components, and allows them to spin freely
or at least until they heatup again, its a trick of last resort and there are potential problems you need to address, namely condensation and Electro Static Discharge (ESD)

Place the HDD is an ESD protective bag, and then in a Ziplock bag, then place the HDD in the freezer for an hour (if you allow it to get too cold, it could also be an issue and any condensation problem will just be that much worse)

Then remove the HDD from the freezer and attach it to the computer, its best if you have a second reliable HDD with its own OS to access the "cold" HDD and immediately transfer the data to, or if neccessary to run data recovery programs from.

Condensation occurs when the water vapor within warm air comes into contact with a cold object and the surrounding air drops below the dewpoint, at which point water will form on the surface, never a good thing for a circuit board :eek:

review Dewpoint Temperature and Humidity , you might need to take extra steps to keep condensation from occuring, especially if the relative humidity is very high, like force feeding your computer heated dry air :p
(an AC actually condenses moisture quite well too)

Id advise checking your local humidity, and the ambient temperature in the case\room before embarking on this ;)
 
Thanks.

Would the risk be lessened with the HDD connected while outside of the case.

I have a HDD that died on me and it has a loud clicking to it. I believe I am going to attempt to recover the data but on not on my main system.

Thx for the tip and any additional info will be appreciated.
 
a little, at least outside the case any condensation that might form wouldnt drip inside the case
with the added advantage of a quicker hookup with longer warmup time to recover data
 
WOuld there be any additional risks if I were to set it up so that the drive was able to stay in the freezer while it was running? I just might be able to make that happen with my minifridge.
 
your welcome, its what we are here for ;)

asyork said:
WOuld there be any additional risks if I were to set it up so that the drive was able to stay in the freezer while it was running? I just might be able to make that happen with my minifridge.
Click to expand...

none I can think of, still run it into the antistatic bag though
not that the air is a good enough means of heat transfer to actually keep it cold for much longer, so there really wouldnt be much of an advantage except forstalling condensation
a bag of frozen peas might help a bit :p

the operating temperature range of HDDs varies a bit
generally the lowest temperature for operation is somewhere between 5C and 15C
so dont actually freeze the drive and then start it up ;)
 
Now if I could only get a liquid nitrogen HD cooler :). My warranty ran out on the drive a couple weeks ago, but I wasn't willing to give up hope and send my data away forever :(.
 
I just used Handy Recovery (free if I remember correctly) and it found a bunch of files I deleted and cleared from the recycle bin, but did not find those too big that bypassed the recycle bin in deletion. All in all, not bad. Ranish Part Manager also digs out a lot of stuff - used it in past (free).
 
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