Data Recovery

[Bruce B]

Let's talk about something no one wants to ever talk about. No... not that. We'll leave that for another thread.

Here's the scenario. Was downloading some files from HDtracks and wouldn't you know it. HDtracks downloader names the root folder "HDtracks". Unfortunately I have several root folders scattered on my root drives named the same thing.

After downloading the files, I moved the files to the selected drives. I put them in more than one place for redundancy. Now I have CAT5 extenders on these computers since they are no where near me and when I type face, sometimes they have a latency, especially using modifier keys like Ctl and Shft. Do you know what happens when you press these keys down making right/left click commands with windows hidden?

Well I just deleted PCM and DSD files from a 4TB hard drive!

 

[DonH50]

Ouch!

I am about to add a NAS RAID box to my network. Normally (currently) I have daily backups (disk images) to a local drive, and weekly to an external drive, with occasional synchs to my current (non-RAID) NAS. Why? About three or four years ago hard drives died on two PCs in our house within a month of each other. In one case unbeknownst to me the backup file was corrupted and I lost everything. It took days to get it working again and 2 - 3 weeks before I had time to rebuild, restore, reload, re-install etc. Same thing happened to the second PC, but that that one had a monthly external backup in addition to the local and I recovered all but some emails within hours.

Restoring 4 TB of data is painful no matter what.

As an aside, I have been looking more closely at hard drive ratings. many of the performance drives for desktop and laptop PCs are not enterprise-worthy and will fail more quickly in a NAS system. I am going to use enterprise level SATA drives, a little slower and more costly but more reliable than "normal" drives, but not as costly as SAS.

At work we have network-based backups that run every 15 to 30 minutes (depends on your settings; can turn off when doing intensive tasks but will automatically turn back on within 4 hours unless you get an exemption from IT).

 

[esldude]

Step one: Stop using those drives immediately.

The more you use them the less likely your ability to recover them.

Step Two: It might be worth your time to use a hard drive data recovery service. These are more widespread now. And as your drives aren't actually damaged they might well recover the entire thing for something like $150. Chances are you have several businesses in your area providing such service.

Now I have used Photorec software to recover such things though not recently and not more than about 250 megabytes of such data. Photorec was originally for recovering deleted photos from hard drives. It also will recover pretty much all files as well as photos. I haven't used it recently, but it will do the job. What used to be bothersome was it recovered files very well, but usually messed up the naming of them. But perhaps that has been improved. Also I haven't needed to do this for a few years, so perhaps better software is out there to use.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec


Step Three: Go back and read step one. Stop using those drives.

Also might be worth mentioning which OS you are using. Recuva is another program that is said to recover files pretty well and usually with the naming conventions intact. It is Windows only however.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

[Bruce B]

Don't know why I need to stop using those drives... They are only 6mo. old and are Enterprise drives. The files were deleted from a bone-headed move.

The last I checked in my area, most data recovery services charge about $100-$500/GB... now 4TB would be $$$$

Was using Win 7 Pro, though the Recovery software I recommended works in Win7/8 and even MAC

 

[esldude]

Don't know why I need to stop using those drives... They are only 6mo. old and are Enterprise drives. The files were deleted from a bone-headed move.

The last I checked in my area, most data recovery services charge about $100-$500/GB... now 4TB would be $$$$

Was using Win 7 Pro, though the Recovery software I recommended works in Win7/8 and even MAC

The reason to stop using the drives is not that they are unreliable. I understand you just accidentally deleted them. The reason is the file data is still there. In overly simple terms, you just deleted an index of where and what the data were. It actually is still there, but the index now has an opening to put something else in its place if you keep using the drive. Right now, recovery software can go find and recover the data without the index telling where it is. If you keep using them that data will in time be written over with new files.

The high cost of recovery is usually for drives that actually failed. Drives that quit working. I may be wrong, but in your case I think the cost would be much less.

Photorec works on most OS platforms. Since you are on Windows, download and use Recuva. It is simple, free and maintains file names. So you don't have anything much to lose. Photorec will recover the files, but you will have 4 TB of data with nonsense names to go sort through. Again, the sooner you do this the more of your data can be recovered.

Now in any case, once you have recovered your data or given up on it, sure the drives are fine continue to use as normal.

Repeating one more time, for now your data is still there if you don't continue to use the drive and write over it.

 

[Orb]

Yeah,
pretty handy FAQ here; not necessarily recommending their product though as never used it and there are plenty of other similar (maybe worse or better) out there.
http://www.r-tt.com/File_Recovery_FAQ.shtml

Cheers
Orb

 

[Shadowfax]

Get a copy of Nucleus Kernel and you should be able to recover the files.

Crashed Hard Drives and even files before reformatting can be retrieved including deleted files if the allocated space has not been written over yet.

 

[DonH50]

Since it is sort of related, what do people suggest for moving partitions around in Windows? My notebook came with several recovery partitions plus C: and D: partitions. I was going to merge C: and D: using Windows Disk Manager but with a recovery partition between C; and D: it won't do it. My son got lucky, no recovery partition on his between C: and D:, and he was able to combine them. Now I'm looking at various free and paid programs that will allow me to move partitions so I can finally combine C: and D:. I use Acronis for backup, but their Disk Director gets mixed reviews, and I hate to pay much for a one-shot program if a cheaper or free program will do the trick. I used to have Partition Magic, but it is old enough that it doesn't support Win 8.1 and the cost to upgrade is more than I could just buy the program on sale someplace.

Thanks - Don

 

[Shadowfax]

download and quickly use the trial version here

http://www.disk-partition.com/partition-magic-pro.html

 

[DonH50]

I guess I could try that again. Last time, several years ago, the free download was pretty crippled and wouldn't allow you to do much until you purchased the license. At that time I had Disk Director (bundled in with one of my upgrades) so I just used that. This time I don't have anything that works on Win 8.1, all for XP (still running on my desktop until it dies). I get annoyed by programs that make you go through the whole install and run process only to say "look what we could do if you paid us!" It's a essentially just a demo of the UI. I have no idea if that is true now, so need to check it out, thanks!