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ChopChaeJoe
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:49 am Post subject: abracadabra..files are gone! |
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I'm not sure what happened, but i lost thousands of photos I've taken of Korea in the last year. they were stored on my desktop, and now they're not. i certainly didn't delete them. is there any hope to recover? I'm using WinXP, and i tried a system restore, but still no finding them. Amy i screwed or what?
Always backup your stuff, yeah, i should know. this is far from the first time.
Microshafted! |
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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:26 am Post subject: |
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| abracadabra..files are gone! |
It depends on what exactly you mean be a system restore.
Windows does restore points intended to fully restore the OS status to a point before some software was installed. I don't know if this type of restore would harm you in your efforts to find your pictures, but I don't think it would help much, either. I've never been able to get it to work very well. It might help in the event of a virus attack. Someone with more expertise could give you better info.
A system restore, as I think of it, is a full restoration of the operating system. Usually, this involves a full re-installation. On my XP laptop the OEM version of XP wipes the hard drive completely, even if I have partitioned it into multiple drives. It then re-installs the OS with the hard drive formatted as a single drive, the C: drive.
A professional might be able to find some photos on the portions of the hard drive that have not been written over in the process. However, Windows has a bad habit of automatically turning on the defrag program scheduler. This would probably take care of writing over just about anything left.
Now it's possible that your OEM allows for the re-install of the OS without removing partitions on your hard drive. Did you create multiple partitions? I always do this, leaving one partition for Windows, one for additional programs, one for data files such as text or photos, and one for caches. This way my data is relatively safe and I only need to defrag twice a year, if that.
So the question now is did you do a full system restore, as I have described, or did you do something else?
The other question, of a forensic nature, is how did you loose thousands of pictures in the first place?
I can only make wild guesses on this. A virus comes to mind. I've never had a major virus problem in the past 10 years, nothing like this, but my guess is this is a possibility if you don't protect your computer. I see you also lost most of your icons, so my vote goes for a virus problem.
I hear that in Korea there can be more viruses than usual floating around because so many machines are using fake copies of Windows that are not fully protected. So if you also go to mickeymouse websites, you could easily put your computer at risk. Not a good idea to stray too far from the beaten path, at least without protection.
In the old days of unreliable hard drives, the FAT was especially vulnerable, it seems, because the write head would sometimes bump against the drive in that area when shutting down incorrectly, if I understand this. Cutting the power without a proper shutdown sequence seems to contribute to this problem. So the first sign of hard drive failure could be in corruption of the FAT, or file allocation tables, the index for all your files and directories.
When this happened to me with one of those crummy Western Digital caviar desktop drives, I naturally did a complete re-install, after saving all data, but it only postponed the inevitable by a few weeks.
this drive was less than a year old, but was junk. I would not put 100 percent faith in a hard drive over two years old. It might last for years, but you can't be certain.
If you have no other explanation for the lost data, it might be safest to get a new drive, especially if you have any more problems after a complete re-install.
The lesson here for anyone else is that if you lose vital data and don't know why and aren't a computer expert, consult one before using the drive again.
This might not be a good option if you have anything technically illegal on the drive. Some people have some genuinely bad stuff on their computer, yet are dumb enough to take it to the shop anyway. Wasn't there a bishop or college dean or something who took his malfunctioning drive in to a shop and they found it was loaded with child porn?
The other lesson, of course, is make backups. I'm not perfect on that score. But at least I have put some of my better shots on flickr.com and youtube.com. Perhaps making backups should be a whole thread of its own.
Now if you did not do a re-install of the OS, or for anyone else who loses anything, do you know where the first place is that you should look?
The trash, of course. All you have to do is right click on a file and instruct it to restore it to its original location.
The next thing I would do is try running the Microsoft malicious software removal tool. This runs once a month if you do the Windows update thing regularly, but you can download the latest tool from Microsoft any time you're computer is behaving erratically.
Ultimately, I wouldn't place too much faith in any advice from me or any other poster here. At best, it might point you in the right direction. But you still have deal with your specific problem.
Anyone think otherwise, feel free to add anything. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:26 am Post subject: |
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A program called directory snoop may help you see what is (or was) on your hard drive. It can restore as well. It has a free trial, 25 time use limit.
After you see where they are (were...remember, deleting files on a Windows machine doesn't delete them) then perhaps some professional recovery software has a trial version, if directory snoop doesn't work though it has for me many times. |
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bellum99
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: don't need to know
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| Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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Don't download anything large because this will overwrite the deleted information on the drive sectors. Don't defrag the drive because this will also overwrite the sectors. Just use a program to undelete the files. The other guy told you a program to use. You will get most of the pictures back.
Hint: did you look in your recycle bin on the desktop? |
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