Hard drive recovery

[Cobster]

Anyone have experience with harddrive recovery software?
I tried a few for a friend's drive and we couldn't get anything out through the software we tried.
Next step is going to recovery professionals, but I was personally curious, how much different are their methods than what the average Joe can do with software?

The drive isn't damaged, but files were lost during a transfer, so now he'd like to get them recovered. From reading, if there's physical damage, they have to do recovery by physical means, but what if there isn't any physical damage?

We will call them in the morning, but the curiosity is getting the better of me and wanted to ask here if anyone has experience with this or knows of any good places in Toronto.
We already emailed a few, but word of mouth is good too.

 

[The Options Menu]

Anyone have experience with harddrive recovery software?
I tried a few for a friend's drive and we couldn't get anything out through the software we tried.
Next step is going to recovery professionals, but I was personally curious, how much different are their methods than what the average Joe can do with software?

The drive isn't damaged, but files were lost during a transfer, so now he'd like to get them recovered. From reading, if there's physical damage, they have to do recovery by physical means, but what if there isn't any physical damage?

We will call them in the morning, but the curiosity is getting the better of me and wanted to ask here if anyone has experience with this or knows of any good places in Toronto.
We already emailed a few, but word of mouth is good too.

A lot depends on the file-system and OS in question. To speed up deleting most file-systems simply flag the file as deleted without doing anything with the data. In that case all you need is software that can read the deleted flag, and restore the files in question. Now here's the big bit of advice:

IF THE DATA IS IMPORTANT DON'T USE THAT DRIVE. ANYTHING NEW THAT GETS WRITTEN WILL HAVE NO COMPUNCTIONS ABOUT WRITING OVER THAT DATA. Either use a bootable recovery CD / DVD / USB KEY / WHATEVER made on a different system, or physically pull that drive out and and use an enclosure or physically attach it to another system. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES BOOT ANY MODERN OS FROM IT. The more random shit that gets written and re-written, the less chance any of that data can be recovered.

There are a lot of live linux recue CDs that should be able to do it, but you could try this:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/1370...-on-an-ntfs-hard-drive-from-a-ubuntu-live-cd/

I'm sure there are friendlier ways to do it, but anything which has nfsundelete can do it, and there are tools for this / like this on every platform. Just remember every time you boot you risk more data.

This is not a reccomendation, but you could give this a try:
http://www.diskinternals.com/download/

Personally I always keep a rescue oriented Linux install on a USB key. But that might scare mortals. Remember, most 'pros' are 'pros' because they have a good set of tools that they know how to use... There's no magic there.

 

[Cobster]

Thanks Ops', but this sounds like a job for a pro then. lol
I'll try the Linux route for him today, since I have an adapter for IDE/SATA drives, if not we'll try an enclosure.

If that doesn't work, I'll tell him to send it off to a recovery place, the money isn't the issue, it's the data obviously.

 

[Cobster]

Wow, that price is quote is a lot cheaper than what we got earlier today, starting point was $400 UP TO $1200.
Will give them a shout and see what they say, thanks WM.