Sorry but this was the best place I could think to post this. On my personal computer windows xp I recently had some strange happenings with my harddrive. Gave me an error when trying to access a folder. Then I did a scandsk with a restart. I was then presented with about a 6 hour blue screen of recovering orphaned files. Yes not sounding too good at this point. The bad thing is now that it is all over with I noticed a lot of my files no longer work. Especially a lot of my stock images and video files, that cost me some nice cash. My question is "is there a way to actually recover the files at all. I was hoping maybe it was a windows thing and used knoppix the bootable Os to try to view some of the images with no success. The files look like they are the right size however I realize that they are most likely missing key data. I just wondering if I should go get some whiskey and drown in sorrow or if there is still a glimmer of hope.
What's your location? My company does data recovery. If you are near by or willing to mail your hard drive we would be glad to recover your data. -Clutch
just burn a copy of a puppy linux boot it in CD and access your drives. even if its a corrupted drive it can be access by it. its even used by computer forensics
Hey thanks for the feedback. I already tried to bootup using the knoppix cd. I have used this method in the past and easily moved files off. The problem was that even some of the files were not working using the knoppix cd. I used the tool PhotoRec which seems to be yielding good results my hard drive is like 750 gigs though so it has been running for like 24 hours. I am very surprised it pulls up stuff that was actually deleted from the system as well. Very useful tool however it puts everything into folders with a very generic name so it will be like pulling teeth trying to sort through them. I have seen some useful scripts for sorting everything based on extension and size, this was for linux systems though. Maybe I can still use it for a windows system. I think the program is nearing its end it came up with 58,000 jpg files. Cant wait to sort through them all sound like a very exiting task. Thanks again for the help I would definitely recommend this program for anybody in the same situation.
You will find the best recovery software here at http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-recover-deleted-documents I used this software to recover more than 70% of my hard disk successfully !! P.S. Don't underestimate this percentage .. I tried a lot of programs before I use this one and most of them failed to recover even half of my deleted data !
I used a company called here. http://www.lazarus.com/. they are in San francisco bay area. good people, and good workers. and more affordable than anyone else i talked with. Drivesavers is another one. very pricey though. both can have you mail them the drive, so you don't need to be local.
I'd probably grab that whiskey for this one. I had a similar situation with orphaned files under Linux, and basically all my files were dumped into the recovery directory with random file names. All the data was intact, but I had to sort though thousands of files by hand. Luckily linux is a lot better at this sort of thing. I think windows has "done its best" already, and the recovery will have overwritten stuff too. You need to salvage what still works, then take the lesson of backing everything up. Sorry about your loss.
You can try using professional data recovery software. These software are designed to scan your hard drive for lost files and attempt to recover them. However, keep in mind that the success of file recovery depends on the extent of the damage to the files and the drive. It's also a good idea to consult with a professional data recovery service if the files are extremely important to you.