Thinkpad Quick Restore - can it be undone?

[ell]

Hi, I have a new thinkpad here, the customer was getting a blue screen so he did a "quick restore" from the thinkpad blue button and now some but not all of his files are missing, does the quick recovery copy any of the files any place when it does this? I haven't been able to find the answer googling.

 

[FremontPC]

Are we talking Win8 here?

 

[ell]

nope its win 7, newer model but what I'm guessing what happened here is he did some kind of image recovery, but I'm not sure, he did shut it down immediately when he saw only old folders on his desktop. I just ran easeus recovery and found a few new files but none of the ones hes missing, I'm baffled.

 

[NYJimbo]

I never take the customers word as the whole truth. Chances are the customer did some kind of "save your files before reloading" type of recovery which did save SOME of their files but since the customer did not go prowling around to find where all the files are, the ones outside the "quick restore" backup process were not saved. Most people let their programs store files in default areas and most backup programs know where to grab them but many times customers put them in weird areas or on desktop folders and these recovery backup tools don't always get them.

Unless you can find a special partition or some folder that looks like a backup area then I think the customer is screwed.

Ask the customer for some file names they are missing. Its not the exact name but like "Oh, some Excel spread sheets" or "Some PDF files", then go do a full drive search for files with those extensions. If you find a bunch in a weird area then you most likely found your "quick restore" backup area, but if you looked for those extensions of files the customer is missing and cant find anything different then they are most likely gone.

The only thing at that point would be using some kind of data recovery software where you might get lucky on stuff still sitting in its original disk space.

 

[ell]

I never take the customers word as the whole truth. Chances are the customer did some kind of "save your files before reloading" type of recovery which did save SOME of their files but since the customer did not go prowling around to find where all the files are, the ones outside the "quick restore" backup process were not saved. Most people let their programs store files in default areas and most backup programs know where to grab them but many times customers put them in weird areas or on desktop folders and these recovery backup tools don't always get them.

Unless you can find a special partition or some folder that looks like a backup area then I think the customer is screwed.

Ask the customer for some file names they are missing. Its not the exact name but like "Oh, some Excel spread sheets" or "Some PDF files", then go do a full drive search for files with those extensions. If you find a bunch in a weird area then you most likely found your "quick restore" backup area, but if you looked for those extensions of files the customer is missing and cant find anything different then they are most likely gone.

The only thing at that point would be using some kind of data recovery software where you might get lucky on stuff still sitting in its original disk space.

yeah, I've learned to take customers word with a grain of salt, I'm just not very familiar with the think-advantage blue button recovery, he thought he did a system restore but I bet he had a old image and recovered that, but it seems weird I can't find any of the key folder names with easeus, they were all on his desktop, I'm trying getdataback now, I'll try the search for just ppt this time. Something doesn't add up, maybe the folders were on a networked drive, but I'd still think I could find the desktop shortcuts somewhere.

 

[FremontPC]

What model is it? I can't seem to find much on the issue, but the docs for that model may give more info on just what a "Quick Restore" does.

If it doesn't replace the Win7 System Restore points, you could right click on an affected folder and take a look at "Previous Versions" to see if you can find any missing files in there.

 

[ell]

What model is it? I can't seem to find much on the issue, but the docs for that model may give more info on just what a "Quick Restore" does.

If it doesn't replace the Win7 System Restore points, you could right click on an affected folder and take a look at "Previous Versions" to see if you can find any missing files in there.

Its a Thinkpad X220, win 7 i7, thats a good idea, I couldn't find much either.

 

[FremontPC]

Still not finding much, have you checked the Quick Restore to see if there are any other restore points? Any luck with "Restore Previous Versions" in Win7?

Might be a good time to call Lenovo...

 

[ell]

Good ole Getdataback did the trick, they were all there on the desktop just like he said, weird, don't know why Easeus failed. I still would like to know how this happened, I may ask him if he created a backup image before with the Lenovo recovery options and maybe thats what was restored. I think he has some malware issues too, ie keeps crashing and hes got McAfee, and ofcourse it won't start, so duh. I did some googling for some kind of recovery program to recover shadow copies, and found this, I played around with it on my bench and I think it works great for recovering deleted folders/files you simply select a date to view, its going in my tools folder. I downloaded the portable version here http://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html

 

[FremontPC]

Good job, Ell! Thanks for the link too!

 

[ell]

Good job, Ell! Thanks for the link too!

welcome, its about time I upload some help for a change!!

 

[JustInspired]

Good ole Getdataback did the trick, they were all there on the desktop just like he said, weird, don't know why Easeus failed. I still would like to know how this happened, I may ask him if he created a backup image before with the Lenovo recovery options and maybe thats what was restored. I think he has some malware issues too, ie keeps crashing and hes got McAfee, and ofcourse it won't start, so duh. I did some googling for some kind of recovery program to recover shadow copies, and found this, I played around with it on my bench and I think it works great for recovering deleted folders/files you simply select a date to view, its going in my tools folder. I downloaded the portable version here http://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html

Thanks for that link. I have used Previous Versions previously (ha!) but don't think Microsoft made it easy to get to shadow copies in the Home versions of Windows. This may come in handy.