Data recovery companies..

[SexyGreyFox]

What course was this for? Surely with most courses the work is handed in bit-by-bit so isn't needed again. Old work and notes are a great reference, but not essential to successive years.

I've no idea and he could be exaggerating on FB.
He started with the 'Oh no I've lost all my Uni work' and his last posts were about doing everything again with Uncle Dimple suggesting to also backup to Dropbox.

 

[Gammawolf]

I don't think it's that people don't know about them, more a mixture of privacy and the hassle of using cloud based services.

With a USB drive, you get the ease of using files in the known file explorer system and not have to upload and download to a website after having to log in etc, then you have places with restricted internet usage or no internet at all, and finally with USB you know only you have access to those files.

I do use Dropbox but very rarely, most of my work is on my USB drive on my key chain (although I do make back ups of ongoing work I'm doing).

If someone thinks that dropbox is too much "hassle" then I don't think they should be using a computer. It's literally, sign up, install dropbox, save all files in dropbox. It couldn't be any easier.

 

[Redgie]

If someone thinks that dropbox is too much "hassle" then I don't think they should be using a computer. It's literally, sign up, install dropbox, save all files in dropbox. It couldn't be any easier.

Even better, add a symlink to your Documents folder (Takes ~30 seconds + 2 minutes of Googling if you don't know how), and then all your Documents are backed up without even having to use the Dropbox folder

 

[Gammawolf]

True, but that's the sort of quirky information that not many people know which just makes life easier. Keeping it dead simple and still useable will work for most people, especially when the dropbox product is so readily available on all platforms and even heavily pushed via means like the Samsung range of phones and tablets etc. That way all they need to know about is the product itself, rather than windows tweaks too

 

[jas72]

So few people have backups until they find out why they should have them.

Unfortunatly my experience was someone who worked at my old company got a virus then panicked thinking IT would be angry with her so took it to a certain pc related shop who kindly corrupted the hard drive for us. (Ok virus was gone lol). Nothing we tried got it back so sent it to cbl and they sorted it for us. Quite the bill but as the laptop hadnt synced with the network in a few months it hadn't backed up yet.

Cbl was doing a no fix no fee so fingers crossed they still are.

I have win 7 doing back ups yet 9 times out of 10 it fails to complete for "unknown reason"

Thought it was only supposed to do incremental back ups so no idea why it takes 9 hours to back up a 240GB SSD.

So i'm probably in the "lack of backups" category.

I'd say it's worse for those with only laptops phaffing around with external HDs.

 

[KIA]

I have win 7 doing back ups yet 9 times out of 10 it fails to complete for "unknown reason"

Thought it was only supposed to do incremental back ups so no idea why it takes 9 hours to back up a 240GB SSD.

Have a look at Macrium Reflect for local backup & Duplicati for remote backup.

 

[Mynight]

I have win 7 doing back ups yet 9 times out of 10 it fails to complete for "unknown reason"

Thought it was only supposed to do incremental back ups so no idea why it takes 9 hours to back up a 240GB SSD.

So i'm probably in the "lack of backups" category.

I'd say it's worse for those with only laptops phaffing around with external HDs.

I gave up with win 7 backup tool. Completely filled a 2x2tb hard drve when it was only supposed to keep 3 months(twice a week backups).

You're quite right it does fail inexplicably. It seems to eat all my resources as well for the period it was backing up.

I started using comodo to sort the back ups. Seems fine so far.

 

[ColdAsIce]

I think the only muppet would be your mate not backing up such important Uni work...

 

[Maccy]

I used Stellar Disk Recovery years ago after some pictures of an ex got deleted by someone else. Got them all back after a few hours scanning, no idea where they are now though...

 

[jas72]

Have a look at Macrium Reflect for local backup & Duplicati for remote backup.

I gave up with win 7 backup tool. Completely filled a 2x2tb hard drve when it was only supposed to keep 3 months(twice a week backups).

You're quite right it does fail inexplicably. It seems to eat all my resources as well for the period it was backing up.

I started using comodo to sort the back ups. Seems fine so far.

Thanks I'll look at the options this thread has reminded me of the importance of regular backups.

Now just need to organise the files

 

[Databusters]

The best way to deal with this has already been mentioned..

external caddy the wiped drive and run software against it, provided nothing has been written to the drive and or software installed on it (this happens constantly by people that should know better)

The top 2 are

NTFS/FAT32 etc: R-studio ( r-tt.com )
HFS: Data Rescue3 ( http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php )

These both can be used with failing drives also although if the data is very important its always best to image the drive first before messing about with live data.

hope that helps

andy

www.datarecovery.co.uk

 

[Raumarik]

Vogon are pretty good

Can I just ask that you check that it's the same drive in the computer, expensive mistake if it's not. Last time we had this done at work the cost was around £2500, it was a broken drive though, not wiped.

edit: this is why I suggest people look into a backup product like Crashplan.

 

[Energize]

Remember that an SSD's wear levelling mechanisms etc will overwrite data on the drive even if it is write protected, so if it's an SSD don't even power it up.

Go for a simple option, even if it costs money. I sorted my mum out with full cloud backup of her entire PC for something silly like £20 a year. Sure, it costs £20 and you could do it for 'free' with some old PC kit, or hacking together various applications, but ease of use is so important these days. USB key fobs are NOT data backup in my eyes, they are far too prone to breaking or getting lost.

Cloud services like dropbox et al, aren't really suitable as a sole backup because the service could go down leaving you with nothing, ones that sync to your pc are also vulnerable to being hacked.

A factory reset? I highly doubt the amount of lost work amounts to more storage space than the factory reset of the OS and OEM software bundled with it and as such the data won't be 100% recoverable. Those areas of disk will have been long overwritten.

There's no reason to not give it a shot but I wouldn't spend any amount of money first and instead use a no win no fee service.

In my experience factory reformats rarely overwrite data, they seem to just install over the sectors they were first installed onto.