Data Recovery

[MrUnknown]

if a drive was even remotely properly wiped, software can not recover anything. even a basic wipe of making everything 0 will remove pretty much any possibility of recovering using software. Formatting is not a "wipe."

Honestly, if nothing was recovered using any of the programs you mentioned, then I would assume it is gone unless you want to pay Drive Savers or some other company. The simple fact that *nothing* turned up (not just pictures, any file at all), I would suspect a wipe or severe hard drive failure somehow reporting the wrong data on the drive.

I do not have very much experience with encrypted hard drives in laptops (can you read the data without supplying a password?), but if it was encrypted, then you won't be able to recover anything either as it will appear to be random data.

[Morrison5891]

Originally Posted by Kenhelms

did you check to see if the drive is even used?

It would also help to know why recovery is needed in the first place.

When you said "any files" do you mean any period, or any photos. did it recover any garbage files at all? was the computer running any kind of encryption?

If it was a sparse encryption you wouldnt be able to see the files without some specialized procedures

I mean any at all ZERO files... no NOTHING!

[Morrison5891]

Originally Posted by MrUnknown

if a drive was even remotely properly wiped, software can not recover anything. even a basic wipe of making everything 0 will remove pretty much any possibility of recovering using software. Formatting is not a "wipe."

Honestly, if nothing was recovered using any of the programs you mentioned, then I would assume it is gone unless you want to pay Drive Savers or some other company. The simple fact that *nothing* turned up (not just pictures, any file at all), I would suspect a wipe or severe hard drive failure somehow reporting the wrong data on the drive.

I do not have very much experience with encrypted hard drives in laptops (can you read the data without supplying a password?), but if it was encrypted, then you won't be able to recover anything either as it will appear to be random data.

No encrypted data, etc ... The lady I'm doing this for was using her laptop just the other day... Windows crashed, she re-booted and got the message "Operating System Missing" and that's it.

[MrUnknown]

Well, unless you're doing something very randomly wrong, such as scanning the wrong drive, then the data is beyond your reach. You should quote for Drive Savers or a similar service.

the fact that *nothing* is recovered is incredibly odd and points to something else happening.

[bagellad]

Yes if the customer wants the data no matter what i would send it to one of those recovery labs. I called local places and it was anywhere between 2000 and 750, giving you between 5-20% discount for being a computer service.

If the customer wants the info but isn't willing to pay then I would continue to fool around with it.

[Doctor Micro]

I agree with all the other posters in that something is definitely very very odd. If she just had an OS crash, and didn't do anything before bringing it to you and no one else has touched it in the meantime, you should find TONS of recoverable data, even though most or all of it may not be anything you're specifically looking for. Something smells fishy here...

[angry_geek]

I just finished recovering data from a drive that had an os reinstall . . . twice. I was still able to get all her d & s folder. Either the controller on your drive is toast, or the heads aren't moving. Time for professional data recovery.

[JRDtechnet]

what does the partition tables show? For example an HP system you would see NTFS HP partition and then a fat32 recovery partition.

I doubt it would be the heads or the recovery programs wouldn't work at all.

[Morrison5891]

It shows NTFS The drive works fine. I can copy to and from the drive. I copied a few programs and pics to the HDD and then deleted them. Re ran the recovery software, and it found everything I had copied and deleted. This is very weird and i've never seen this before.

[JRDtechnet]

I bet someone isn't telling you the complete story. After they had the OS crash they must of used the built in recovery partition to restore their computer or at least tried too, this wiped the partition (perhaps using the secure erase command built into all HD's after 2001) this would kill any chance of getting data back off the drive, sans a few thousand hours with an electron microscope.