Life can be a real bitch at times

Damn bad luck, Kim.
Hope someone on here can help you recover all the lost info.
Cheers,

Kim, there are some free disk recovery tools on the Net. Some are good, some aren't. Just don't throw that disk away yet.
Someone closer might be able to help...worth a shot.

If your plight encourages just one person who reads this forum to start doing backups of hard drive data then you have done good.

It is SOOOO important to do. Even if it is placing a copy of those really important files on a 2 or 4GB $20 USB Key and flinging it in the back of a drawer in your office desk at work or at the Mother in Law's then you have an off-site back-up of years of work and play at low cost and always available should the worst happen.

Keep the drive Kim - one day you may just be able to take it somewhere and have the data recovered or perhaps a hobbyist can spend some time on it - you never know. If the drive hasn't munched the platters then the info will be there. A recovery quote might pleasantly surprise you.

When I think of all the digital stuff that I have collected over the years my eyes start rolling!

Commiserations
Muddy

Hey Kim, there was a bloke here the other day that is doing an IT course that reckons he can recover stuff. He offered his services here for someone else who had lost stuff..... I can not remember the thread but it was within the last week.
He said he wouldn't charge much as he needed the experience
Peter

Try putting the HDD in the freezer for around 15 minutes, then you may retrieve some, or all your info, start with the most important items first!

I feel your pain, mate. My joint got cleaned out by the local scum last week while I was at work. The turds took my brand new plasma, camera, video camera, 2 laptops, and the 3 external hard drives that I used for all my backups.

I lost just about every pic and video that I had taken in the last 5 years. The insurance co. are coming to the party to replace all my 'stuff'....but I can't get all the personal stuff back. I'll just have to do all the trips again:-)....but my grand daughter will never be a baby again.

Muddy doe makes a good point about keeping an off-site copy of important files. I did the back ups because I've been caught before by a HDD failure....but it didn't do me any good because the pricks stole my back ups.
Hope you get your files back.

Cheers
Glenn

Your internet service provider provides you with so much allocated web space, a good palce to store data, create a web site anything will do then link it to a passworded site for your data.

A 500GByte external Harddisk now costs about $150 - a cheap way to back up ALL my info.

If the HDD still spins up, then usually no problem with getting the data back. One thing you should do is DO NOT WRITE ANYMORE STUFF on the disk and DO NOT PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE. If the HDD controller has gone faulty it is usually just hunt down a same model of HDD and rip its guts out. If the bearing had seized, then you are in trouble. DO NOT SHAKE IT as well. I done these kind of things many times. The best program for the job is called easy recovery professional.

Kim,

where do you live?

Flick me an email at Kyriakos at TPG dot com dot au if you have no luck restoring anything ill give it a go for you... if you can get the hard drive to me easily enough i wont charge you anything.



cheers


Chich

Another form of offline storage is the plethora of freebie email sites such as Hotmail, G-Mail etc etc. I have stuff stored on a few of these sites, inaddition to my portable HDD.

JE

Have you still got the hard disk? Sometimes you just never know who can help out and I have done more than a bit of fiddling in the past, only question is has it been too long!

Sorry to hear your dilemma. I am sure that the data can be retrived - at a cost.

I keep a copy of everything important and update it every 6 months on 2 external hard drives that I keep in a tin in the shed. No one will ever find them because I have trouble when I want to do a backup.

I have a 400GB external hard drive on my desk for weekly backups

I also travel a lot and keep 2 smaller external hard drives with me for on the road backups.

I now create CD's of may family history stuff and give them away to anyone interested - another form of off site backup and the family appreciate my work.

BUT, even though what I am doing is overkill, I would have to be extremely unlucky to loose anything older than a week

Stevesub

Kim, yep its a real bugga
I have all my co stuff on computer
sometime back i had a trail period with uploading co accounting stuff to a off site server....being a trail version and being like every one else i never did take it up...approx 1 month later my HD mechanically failed. Like you I was slack in doing backups....what back up is more to the point
Bloody hell what am I going to do ...who has owes me money. I didnt keep copy invoices or anything...it would have taken ages to figure it all out.
Ah Ah ring the back up mob in melbourne to see if they had the last file that was sent...yep they did and i have been a customer ever since (there is another story here but i might tell that a later day)

I simply got another disk, loaded the software and down loaded the last file (a bit more than month out of date I know) but at least i was up and running with several years of accountiing and payroll stuff.....all i had to do was to check the old manual (hand written paper) costings and replicate the clients invoices as best as possible..and hope for the best that they will pay the correct values shown on the invoice they recieved. It saved me months of work i reckon.
I still lost a my personal files pics, general co's word and excel docs etc etc
Now I do a hard disk back up of all files including email to a second hard disk (not a partitioned disk) but still send all accounting stuff off site just incase...having a second drive is a good investment especially now as they are so damn cheap

Hope you try to get data revocered but it does cost an arm and a leg...but thats the price of being slack..i know i reckon..albeit being luckier than most

Hi Kim,
if your disk is still spinning then try downloading Stellar Phoenix data recovery software. You will need to put your drive into another PC to do this. I have actually bought it and used it too many times unfortunately. Have never missed yet.
You can use the trial version to see if it is recoverable and then pay for it to get all your recoverable data back. It may take a lot of time to rebuild the data structure but will probably be worth it. The last client I helped took well over 24 hours to resurrect the data but we did get it back.
Best of luck.

Thank you all for the helpful suggestions and the member messages I've received.

The son in law was able to retrieve the lost data from the hard drive which I was told was stuffed.

Tomorrow I have to take the tower back to the mob I purchased it from, and get XP Pro registered. Somebody has stuffed it up at their end, because the product code isn’t working.

I’d have to say the mob I’m dealing with will never get a recommendation on this site from me. It's been a painfull experience.

On the positive side, every fella I've met, or spoken to on this site who owns a business, has provided terrific service.

Regards

Kim