Reccomend Data recovery service

Supercow · 3 Oct 2007 at 10:34

My bosses' laptop died, which contains his financial software and data on it for the last few years, and has not backed it up.

Unfortunately when he tries and boots it up (Win98) the error message "operating system not found" appears.

I have done all the things I can think of (granted not all that many) by trying to check the boot sequence, booting off a floppy and running a chkdsk, scandisk - all seem to have seen the c: with no issues.

Done some googling but couldn't really find a definitive answer. It's such an old laptop, the bios isn't all that useful either. Not sure form what I see whether it reads the hard drive or not.

Any ideas of where I can send this laptop to - or have a last blast at it myself?

Paul11 · 3 Oct 2007 at 11:04

one option one be to take the HD out of the laptop and get a

USB Hard Drive Caddy for 2.5 inch laptop drives

then connect it to another machine and see if it comes up and copy the data across.

just my 2p

RVF · 3 Oct 2007 at 11:13

Stop messing with it and give it to someone who knows what they are doing!

Sounds like 98 is corrupt, should be easy to copy off data with a caddy and another pc.

Dont bother with data recovery firms they charge the earth.

Supercow · 3 Oct 2007 at 11:15

If I copy the data accross, just as is - will the application data still be in tact you reckon ?

RVF said:
Stop messing with it and give it to someone who knows what they are doing!

I AM the only person who has any idea

Paul11 · 3 Oct 2007 at 11:19

if your asking that if you copy the data across, will it still work, the answer is yes..

if your asking if y ou can copy the application across, generally no, depending on what the application is

what application is it?

Supercow · 3 Oct 2007 at 12:52

Some accounting software - don't really know what it is.
The financial data is in the application - so I doubt purely copying data across will help.

Can you recommend any specialists who can recover something like this?

Avalon · 3 Oct 2007 at 13:24

So let me get this straight, his whole financial data is on a laptop running windows 98 and he doesn't have a backup. Whoever your boss is they're playing financial Russian roulette with the business.

1) Get a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter or caddy from a high street electrical component shop or the boys in purple.

2) Attach drive to working PC

3) If drive is corrupt/doesn't spin/makes any abnormal noise then STOP and go with data recovery firms (they aren't cheap but if he's just lost his financial data with no backup that's the least of his problems).

If it isn't copy everything off, burn it to DVD etc then rebuild laptop - he does know where the CD's are for this almost decade old un-named financial package doesn't he ?

When it's all up and running again go through the correct way to back up data with him, the way he's doing things now he's insane or doesn't want to be in business. Even backing his stuff up to a pen drive would be better than nothing but win98 and USB are not normally a the most reliable combination.

Supercow · 3 Oct 2007 at 13:42

Well - he should have had a backup, but it's nowhere to be found.
It's supposed to have backed up the data to our internal network, but something happened there as well.

Yeap old software is still kicking around - will have a go at getting the files - he just said that the data from the software can be copied over and it reinstalled.

Cheers for the input - will let you know how it goes.

UniqueID · 3 Oct 2007 at 13:54

simple solution:

www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

open pebuilder, burn a disk, use it in the laptop on boot and open the file management to browse the disk.

attach a usb disk to take the data off the PC.

chances are you can copy the programs folder and run the program even though its not properly installed on the machine you copy it to. worth a try i recon.

Countcussy · 3 Oct 2007 at 14:15

UniqueID said:
simple solution:

www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Would be.... except it does not work on Win9x.

Supercow · 3 Oct 2007 at 15:12

Aww that sounded like a good solution - but yea it's Win 98

I just went and bought the Caddy - now to find a screw driver that fits!

Supercow · 3 Oct 2007 at 15:14

Would running Ubuntu off the installation disk work - will you be able to see the files on the HDD ?

Paul11 · 3 Oct 2007 at 15:16

you might find that you can copy the whole application off and it might still work..

also, the application will have the data in its files somewhere. if you can find them, copy them and then reinstall the application and replace back the data files.

edit:

Good luck and seems a lesson learned the hard way..

ALWAYS back up your data...

im so amazed at companies running without proper back ups in place.

milkinc13 · 3 Oct 2007 at 16:09

& u'd have thought by now companies would have leart the importance of a back-up

Kemik · 3 Oct 2007 at 16:13

Applications usually store their data in another file so the application can be easily updated without losing the data.

Google the application and they should have more info about where it's stored on their site. If not, ring the developers.