Recovery tool needed for windows reinstall

R

RAA-Kr1cH

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
205
Not sure if this is the right place, but it seemed like the best place to post.

So I worked on my in-laws pc the other day. It was taking xp forever and a day to boot, which shouldn't because it's a fairly nice system with pretty much nothing on it. I made a list of the programs they used so I could reinstall them after I reinstalled xp. Well I totally spaced that they bought a digital camera recently and didn't even think twice about checking My Pictures. How can I recover all of the pictures they used to have?

I know there's software out there that can do this, but I'm not sure which to buy. I'm also hoping there's something for free, but either way, any recomendations anyone might have are appreciated.
 
Ok, I don't remember what program I used last time...but one piece of advice.

DO NOT USE THAT COMPUTER FOR ANYTHING UNTIL YOU RECOVER THE DATA.

You're already reinstalled over their stuff. Good chance its at least damaged.

But there's hope. As soon as you start using windows you decrease your odds of recovery.
 
$80 holy crap! Oh well, I guess that's the price I pay for not checking.

Thanks for the link! I really appreciate it.
 
Hey! Just wanted to drop a line to tell everyone thanks that posted. The software worked flawlessly! I got everything back I needed and left my in-laws very happy.
 
Just wanted to share another good story.

Hard drive was throwing bad sectors left and right. Files were disappearing, computer would get random and frequent blue screens. One day it won't boot to windows. Go into safe mode, all the files are gone. Corruption everywhere. GetDataBack couldn't get the files. Bummer.

But all is not lost.

I used SpinRight and used the recovery option. It went through the hard drive bit by bit and looked for damage at the lowest level, then it tried to fix it.

For a 30GB hard drive, the recovery took 14 days running 24 hr/day. Massive corruption everywhere. But when it finally finished, I put the hard drive in another computer, used unstopcopy (freeware, will copy files and ignores any errors), and saved all of her documents, hundreds of dollars of iTunes music, and her personal photos.

Funny thing was they called me up a few months ago complaining about the computer being flaky. I looked it over and told them the hard drive was failing. It's getting alot of bad sectors and that is a good indication that it will fail soon. They said, but is it fixed? I told them its working, but really should get a new hard drive. They went the cheap route and took the computer home. Guess what, now they had to pay for more of my time to get the computer up and working again, pay me to recover their data, and pay me to set the thing back up on their network (they don't know much about computers). A ~$70 hard drive could have saved them quite a few hours of IT work on my part. Hey, money for me.

Anyways, thought I'd share another story.

Cheers!

Greg

PS...I just changed the clutch/flywheel on my GTI. That transmission was such a PITA to take out and get back in. My whole body hurts. But my car can move again. The old clutch was shot. :-p But hey, time to put new tires on and do some more mods for a bit more speed. Until next clutch.
 
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