[XP] Fans

Try Recuva, I find that one is both effective and intuitive.

Thanks SuperSparks, I'll download recuva and take a look at it.

Virtual Patient

uh oh ....hit a hurdle almost immediately with recuva, it doesn't seem to have the ability to find a lost drive :(, I can only see options to recover deleted files etc, and not those on drives that have damage to the boot sector. The drive is listed in the device manager but is not listed in my computer and is not accessible in any normal way.

Virtual Patient

I sat for 7 hours babysitting this machine through a PC Inspector scan on that hard drive, clicking to abort on read errors (retry and ignore didn't help either), finally got a list of the directories found but to no avail .. all the parts I need weren't there :eek:

I was willing to lose everything except the contents of one folder (two if I was lucky) but I cannot get there.

Losing the will to live with this machine.... anybody out there got anything else I can try?

Virtual Paitent

I think you are heading into the realms of pay-for recovery solutions, or data recovery specialists. Mucho dinero :eek: I've had excellent results in the past with Easy Recovery Pro, but it isn't cheap. You can download a demo version though, to see whether it will be able to recover the files, before you have to spend any money.

Ontrack

Thanks SuperSparks, I agree it's looking that way, but I can't afford to do that right now. I will take a look at Easy Recovery demo and see if it gives me more than PC Inspector did.

Virtual Patient

kinda resolved :confused:

I had to finally give up on data recovery, I really couldn't afford to have it done professionally or pay for software.

So I guess the problem is resolved ... the dead computer is now (so far) a fully functional system again. Oh and the ram upgrade works now too.

I am really grateful to all you guys that have helped me through this, I am not quite bald yet and hope the machine will settle down and work nicely for a while now, especially with it's nice new ventillation system :)

Thanks again :D

Virtual Patient

You're very welcome :)

Hopefully you also gained the valuable knowledge (the hard way, as most of us did), of backing up your data.

We have all lost stuff and had to start over when things get scrambled so bad we can do nothing else.

Makes one feel bad, but there is nothing we can do about it, except to back up more often. :( :(

Back ups to backup, etc.

A last question for the experts of back up. What program should I use to make back ups or should I simply back up to dvd/cd as I did in the past (just not often enough :o )

Virtual Patient

Programs are nice, but can be limiting in some aspect or another.

For myself, I copy/paste to other hdds on the same computer, to other computers in lan and back up to data dvds.

Fact is, in the last month I backed up enough to fill about 130 single layer dvds. Worth the time and expense in my book.

Plus while browsing older cds, checking to see if they still opened without hesitation, I found and was able to present a family member some pictures she thought were long lost do to a fire which I knew nothing about.

With earlier versions of Windows I used to store my data on a different drive to Windows (which makes reinstalling a lot easier if it becomes necessary), then I would burn very important stuff to DVDR and use Acronis True Image to back all the data files up to an external drive.

Since I've been running Vista I still store the data files on a separate drive, and I use the built-in data backup utility to back the files up to a 3rd separate drive that is purely used for backup purposes. I then copy the Vista backup files to an external drive.

Thanks guys, think I'll go for the DVD back ups (only one hard drive in this machine at the moment), and maybe upload a few to the massive hotmail accounts just as a second back up.

Virtual Patient

That is a start, and it will take a bit, but we can figure out a system that works for our own needs.

Do you have a second PC? Another alternative is backup up to the other machine(s) on the LAN. I used to do it that way, and very successfully too. The only reason that I stopped was that I found an external drive was a bit more convenient.