I'm a complete idiot, PLEASE HELP to recover my lost data

Magpie2121

Magpie2121

Magpie2121

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13 Aug 2011
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210
I accidentally and stupidly used the disk part and "clean" command on the wrong hard disk and have now lost all my precious photos. Furthermore I'm more of an idiot for not getting round to creating a backup of the drive.

All my honeymoon and holiday photos have gone. More importantly, I've lost all the photos of my toddler from when she was born up to present including her birthday party photos. My wife is livid and so am I with myself.

Please can somebody recommend a solution in order to recover as much lost data as possible?

Many thanks for your help :(
 
Whatever you do don't use the drive for anything. Take it out of whatever it is in and take it to a recovery company. If you feel like you want to do it yourself, put it in a caddy, buy some software, do not write anything to the drive, scan the drive with software (making sure the cache is not on it) and pray to get some data back.

I'll repeat it again, do not let anything write data to the drive.
 
Sorry to say that I've done something similar in the past (shift deleted my photos folder my mistake and when I was having a clear up)

I tried around 5 different restore type tools but none were really successful.

In short I learned the hard way and lost ~2,000 photos. Now I back them up regularly to another drive

Maybe a recovery company can help but software (at least for me) didnt
 
Take the drive out. Use it in another machine as a second drive so nothing is written to it. Then download And run "get data back" and scan the drive

That software has been the most effective in the past. Even got stuff back from damaged partitions. Partitions that's had multiple formats

I found the others didnt really recover as much. Or not what I needed
 
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I used this before:

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

Sister in law's laptop got all of her photos/videos deleted (ex bitter boyfriend) from holidays etc.... I took her drive out and put it into a caddy and then recovered into my PC data drives... it took a fair while but it recovered virtually all of them.

As above, do not let anything write to your disk.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for your responses. The drive is used as a secondary drive on my PC and doesn't contain any operating system files. It just has photos and nothing else. I've re-installed Windows on my primary drive and have not yet used disk management to initiate the secondary drive. Should I still take it out and use it in a different PC?
 
If its there as a second drive no need. But just don't write anything to it

Download software instal on your c drive on your os disk and try the scanning
 
You have reference points on the drive(same as for memory) if you delete a file it's dereferenced not wiped(technically).

However as said in previous posts, if you continue to use the drive there is a possibility that windows/unix will use these locations to write new data too, as far as I can tell there are no hard and fast rules as to where new data is written too.

There is various software to recover data and they vary in ability, some are very good, however you probably want to go to a dedicated recovery service(may cost a bit). I wouldn't go to a computer shop as they know as much as us and could totally screw your chances up.
 
I've used Recuva to excellent effect in the past but a bit out of touch with data recovery these days so don't know whats best any more.

If the data is that important however I'd recommend taking it to a proper data recovery company.
 
Unless you use a special caddy that disables write commands, don't risk keeping it connected to your PC. You have no straightforward way of preventing system writes to it.

If the photos mean anything, send it off to a specialist recovery company. I've tried numerous recovery software tools and have been unsuccessful, but have had success with recovery companies.
 
^^ Yeah indeed - Windows has a bad habit of spitting out swapfiles, etc. onto random drives which can completely toast your chances of getting stuff back.

I've had excellent results personally with write disabled recovering files that have been shift+deleted or a partition erased without further writes.
 
A little late now, but I've just found that google offer unlimited back ups of photos and videos if they meet certain conditions:

Pics : less than 100mb and 2048px
Vids : less that 1080 and 15 mins

Not ideal if you have massive photo files but as a back up, you can't go wrong! :)
 
As others have said, don't write anything to the disk and whatever you do take a bit-for-bit backup of the drive beforehand!

Unless you fancy getting hands on with Linux where you can use something like dd or CloneZilla then first off I'd use something like Macrium reflect free to either take an image backup of the entire drive or clone it to another spare drive. Make sure you use the "make an exact copy of the partitions" option rather than "intelligent sector copy"; this will copy every bit from the hard disk - this is important because it will also copy your "deleted" data.

If possible clone it to another disk then work on the cloned copy leaving your original disk untouched (and disconnected from your PC) just in case. If you can't clone it to another disk then at least you can restore the image backup if you managed to mess things up.

As mentioned by others TestDisk will likely fix it - try following http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step, it's really not as difficult as it may look.

If TestDisk or the other partition tools mentioned can't recover it, and Recuva (free) can't find you files then I've had good luck with EaseUS Data Recovery and GetDataBack. It's not free, but if it works then £40 is nothing to be fair.



Next time invest in cloud backup :p.
 
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Dont try and recover them yourself as you will probably mess it up. Just go to a recovery company and let the wallet take a raping. This is your best chance at recovering them and it will be a costly lesson.
 
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