Tech Help

[Castuserraticus]

I need a new tech service with people who's first response is not to wipe the hard drive with a system recovery. :$*%&:

 

For the fourth time in the past year my computer locked. This time I felt confident my data would be intact because I'd installed a removeable hard drive and had set it up for automatic back-ups twice a week. After several conversations with the ESL tech, I requested they install a new hard drive and leave the old one in so I could access all my files. I just got it back and it looks like they wiped the old one because all it has is the basic windows folders. They claim they did not touch the old drive but there are about 40GB of files missing.

 

The auto back-up failed in early May and the back-up file can not be read by the program. I had done a manual back-up in January when I first installed the drive so it looks like I'm missing about 6 months of files.

 

This coincides with a really busy time for my company and I'm missing some really important files.

 

If the techs are telling the truth then the data should be on the old drive. Can it be found? There's a free float trip for anyone who can help me recover the data.

[birchy]

Have had some good success with this software:

 

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recov....htm?language=1

[admin]

Send off a PM to Birchy, he's worked some wonders for a few memebers who have hired him.

 

Did they install windows on your removable drive? If so, that data may be lost, but if not, it's still likely there, perhaps the drive just isn't mapped or the drive installed yet.

[headscan]

When I used to do tech support I always advised people to do a test restore with their backups about once a month or any time they modified the backup parameters to make sure it was working properly. I know that's little consolation now, but a good habit to get into for the future.

 

Could it be that the empty drive you're looking at is the new one and the old one isn't connected properly? They may have installed the new drive as a master and not switched the jumper on the old drive to make it a slave. Or the old drive may not be connected at all. If it is the old drive that's empty the data should be recoverable with a program like the one birchy suggested unless they did a secure erase of the entire drive or something.

[Flytyer]

Have had some good success with this software:

 

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recov....htm?language=1

 

Birchy ; does this work on lost stuff even after a restore has been done?

[Castuserraticus]

Have had some good success with this software:

 

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recov....htm?language=1

 

40 minutes so far and 20,500 files so far.

 

It's a hard world to be a tech luddite in.

[Nick0Danger]

the other drive may still be there, but windows may not see it. Have you checked computer managment in system administrator to see if its just sitting there?

[Castuserraticus]

Unfortunately, Birchy's program didn't recover anything useable. The data is there but needs more work to recover. Looks like a hardware issue. Had a data recovery specialist in to take the old drive. The computer locked up after taking out the old drive so had to start at 0 again with a system recovery (third time since January).

 

What I've learned:

Stand alone for a corporate computer is Russian roullette.

Back everything up regularly - one short term and one long term.

Don't trust the back-up program - check it.

A third redundancy wouldn't hurt.

Techies strongly disagree on which hardware is the best.

The only way to find out which component is failing is to use the computer again.

[headscan]

Don't trust system recovery. If the system is still fairly clean (as in no data stored on it) reformat and reinstall clean. If you only have one computer for your company you don't necessarily need a file server. You can do standalone, but get a second hard drive identical to the one you have and set up disk mirroring (RAID 1). Both drives will have all the same data, so if one fails you can just pull it out and run off the other. It'll be a little slower when you write to it, but the read times will be a little faster. Ideally you would have a separate drive with your operating system and programs installed on it and the mirrored pair of drives only containing your data files. Any decent techie should be able to set that up in no time flat. That would also cover your third redundancy.

 

Techies disagreeing about which hardware is best is kind of like us disagreeing on which fly rod is best. I've seen a lot of drives from a certain manufacturer fail within a year, so I'll never buy another or recommend them. A friend of mine has had way better luck with that same brand of drives so he swears by them. It's just one of those things I guess....