So many smart people read this Board that I'll risk a tech question that may be in the minds of many of us. I just had my most serious data loss ever - about 50 Word files and folders erased while trying to reinstall Windows 98 in my trusty Gateway laptop. Had to disable GoBack for the reinstall it said. Did not read directions with care. 1/ I tried everything in those huge Word and Windows books to no avail 2/ Took laptop to one computer repair place. They used a Norton recovery tool without success. 3/ Now have laptop at another place that advertises data recovery. Many of these files contain vast amounts of city-by-city data and pictures on escorts, about 700 well-reviewed ladies, about four months worth of work. Now I have Zips for future backup, but how can I recover that stuff in its original form? Thank you in advance. The Lost Schlong
When you re-installed Win98 did you reformat the hard drive? If you didn't then the files should be there some where on your hard drive. My mom accidentally locked herself out of Win2000 and forgot her password. I had to reinstall win2000 but didn't choose the format option. It reinstalled and all of her files where still there... just in different places.
If you reformated then mostlikely you lost all of your data... If you didn't reformat then do a search for a file that you previously created to find those files. If the files were in the My Docs folder and you didn't reformat then it should have saved it somewhere on your drive.
I don't know that much about data recovery services but give them a call and see what they say.
There is a decent program you can run called Easy Recovery Pro by Ontrack. Send an email to [email protected] and I will tell you where you can download a copy it is entirely nondestructive so it wont hurt anything.
Maybe you missed what I was doing, putting together in one place city-by-city pics and review info - city pages - for travelers & locals, based upon personal experiences and info from a huge number of sites. That means millions of keystrokes. The crash came while trying to install something to make the CD burner work to prevent the very disaster that happened. Now I have to return all of those bbjteoku's and FOTCs and will probably wind up in ICU somewhere, with a born-again nurse praying for my soul instead of sucking my schlong. They are like that.
OK, here's the deal. When you first load windows, the files are written to a specific location starting at the center of the disk. They don't move. Later when you create the data files, they are written to the outer area of the disk towards the edge. The chances are good that most of the files are still there. When you format the disk, the data is still there, the only thing that happens is that first character or so of the file name in the File Allocation Table (FAT) is overwritten with a character ($ i think) that makes the file location invisible to the operating system, but easily recoverable by LE or a tech using data recovery software.
All that needs to be done is use a data recovery utility like Ontrack. Either Ontrack can do it for you, or you can hire a consultant who has purchased their software (or some other package), or you can buy the software and do it yourself.
I do it all the time and have had very good success using this product. People are just amazed that you can bring back their quickbooks and email.
Good luck, and feel free to contact me if you want more help.
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