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

Colbaker said:
Most of us have done this at some point, I lost all my photos of my honeymoon because I didn't back up.

I now backup in triplicate, I have my main HDD which syncs certain folders to my NAS and also I pay a small amount of money per month for unlimited online storage where I also incrementally sync said folders. Always remember that a hard disk drive WILL fail. (Although I am aware this is not what happened here).

Hope you get your data back.
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While I agree HDDs will fail, the signs of failure via SMART are early and Windows will warn you if a threshold is triggered during OS oeprations or the BIOS will at boot.

Note that HDDs that are always on will last longer than drives that are powered up and down multiple times a day. Ever since I stopped turning my computers off I have never had a HDD failure. This is going back to the old Barracuda and Maxtor days.

Keep an eye on SMART and all will be golden. CrystalDiskInfo is a good utility for monitoring the SMART attributes for any given HDD/SSD.

I don't use online storage solutions, I don't really believe in them (personal preference) and as such have external HDD backups of each main drive. I do monthly backups and system images. It's extremely unlikely that both main and backup HDDs will fail at the same time.
 
This is my backup routine:

  1. My laptop has no local files although essential documents are kept on FreeNAS
  2. Girlfriend's laptop syncs to USB drive and FreeNAS server using SyncToy
  3. FreeNAS server runs a 24TB ZFS pool with dual redundancy and 6hr snapshots
  4. FreeNAS server is backed up to CrashPlan continuously
  5. USB drive is kept at her place of work, in the event of data loss
 
mrk said:
While I agree HDDs will fail, the signs of failure via SMART are early and Windows will warn you if a threshold is triggered during OS oeprations or the BIOS will at boot.

Note that HDDs that are always on will last longer than drives that are powered up and down multiple times a day. Ever since I stopped turning my computers off I have never had a HDD failure. This is going back to the old Barracuda and Maxtor days.

Keep an eye on SMART and all will be golden. CrystalDiskInfo is a good utility for monitoring the SMART attributes for any given HDD/SSD.

I don't use online storage solutions, I don't really believe in them (personal preference) and as such have external HDD backups of each main drive. I do monthly backups and system images. It's extremely unlikely that both main and backup HDDs will fail at the same time.
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SMART won't detect a sudden mechanical failure, pretty rare these days I admit but as you said all you have to do it turn your computer back on and one of the mechanical parts fail, also power surge can kill a hard drive.

A big reason for doing backups online is for off site storage, keeping your backups all in the same place can be dangerous, what if there was a fire?
 
ci_newman said:
I do this too, all of my pictures are stored on a NAS which auto-backups to Google Drive nightly.

I then take monthly backups to a separate USB drive to protect against any Cryptolocker type of losses.
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Any cloud backup that does versioning (Dropbox definitely does, Drive probably does too, but I've never checked) will protect you against Cryptolocker type viruses :) (Although the separate USB is always a good idea :))
 
AHarvey said:
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! :)
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Where? A quick Google shows me 15GB. I want to back up 60GB of photos but can't settle on how, tried backing them up on Mega but the upload mechanism is hopeless. I might buy a 64GB memory stick and do a cloud backup - though I wonder what the T and Cs are for Google?
 
Colbaker said:
SMART won't detect a sudden mechanical failure, pretty rare these days I admit but as you said all you have to do it turn your computer back on and one of the mechanical parts fail, also power surge can kill a hard drive.

A big reason for doing backups online is for off site storage, keeping your backups all in the same place can be dangerous, what if there was a fire?
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Oh mine is remote (external drives in a flight case).

The problem with online backups is that for power users it's not that great. I have several TB of data that gets backed up.
 
Be careful with data recovery companies if you have "sensitive" / "illegal" data on the drive ;) Most people forget this, just ask Gary.
 
xibinim said:
Where? A quick Google shows me 15GB. I want to back up 60GB of photos but can't settle on how, tried backing them up on Mega but the upload mechanism is hopeless. I might buy a 64GB memory stick and do a cloud backup - though I wonder what the T and Cs are for Google?
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Just buy a hosting solution, you can get as much storage as you want, any file types, any size, you can use ftp or map the drive to your pc and drag and drop files into it like it's a local disk. Encrypt the files if you want with something like 7zip and no one can see what they are, or even create an encrypted mountable partition with something like truecrypt.
 
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robgmun said:
I will never ever ever trust cloud backups :rolleyes:
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Why? you mean you will never trust normal "mainstream" cloud hosting which people love to exploit and have crap security.

Your better off getting some decent hosting that comes with your own linux based control panel of your choice.

Or if you really want to run at home, raid at the minimum, but that wouldnt stop you deleting files.
 
Energize said:
Raid is not a backup! It's a solution for availability not data security.
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I know ;) hold your horses

There has been talk in this thread about drive damage too

Although I was merly commenting on someone who said they would never trust cloud storage, raid would have course tick the box for redundancy and negating the single point of failure.

RE Cloud storage, you delete a file, your likely to be able to ask them to see if they have a backup from the nightly backup jobs, as for security, dont pick a crap one

Delete a file at home whack the drive in as a second drive and scan, have you tried get data back which I mentioned before? I found it much better than the rest
 
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http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Maybe record the binary of the entire hard drive while you can too.
Use the above and read the entire drive.

A file extension search can then be ran on the binary file.

alternatively, if the binary you suck up only contain FF, you are doomed, else youre good.
 
+1 for Recuva, it enabled me to recover most the photos on a gf's machine which she accidentally deleted (including pics of her mum who had recently died).

There were about 5 partial images recovered but the other 150 odd were fine.
 
TestDisk. The interface is a bit clunky but you'll have your stuff back in a few mins.

The good news is, in all likelihood your data is all OK and fully recoverable; the clean command can be easily reversed - if that's all you did you're fine.
 
Magpie2121 said:
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.
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Have you managed to recover?
 
Haggisman said:
Any cloud backup that does versioning (Dropbox definitely does, Drive probably does too, but I've never checked) will protect you against Cryptolocker type viruses :) (Although the separate USB is always a good idea :))
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This is why any robust backup regime doesn't just rely on 'Cloud' backup for offsite storage.

robgmun said:
I will never ever ever trust cloud backups :rolleyes:
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Why? Use a strong password that you change on a regular basis and encrypt anything you deem 'sensitive' and the cloud is fine and very convenient for keeping workflows in sync as well as backup.
 
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