Laptop data loss

frugaldamage

Hi everyone, hope you can help, occasional forum user but first time Ive had to post.

I had my laptop repaired last month, initially they said the data was fully recoverable (I cared much more of that than the 4yr old laptop) but then when i got it back i found someone else photos and documents on it. A pretty bad mistake.

They are failing to give me full refund hiding behind their terms and services but surely they have a 'duty of care' and I can prove they have been negligent in giving me a third persons private data.

Have I signed my rights away? Any help or advice greatly appreciated, I intend to take it to a county claims court if necessary! I'm pretty livid :mad:.

bbelt

forget any negligence claim.

your best going under Sale of Goods & Services Act 1982 (if your in England)

or the common law relating to the supply of services in Scotland.

Both say that services must be carried out using reasonable skill and care, that of an industry professional, within a reasonable time and for a resonable price.

you would be arguing that they never took reasonable skill and care as you have ended up with someone elses documents and pics....

send a recorded delivery letter quoting the above and ask for their comments and intentions in relation to it, not forgetting to say what you want doen about it!

failing that, hit the small claims court.

frugaldamage

Thanks very much bbelt, im drafting a letter at the moment so i'll include that. I think they'll take it to court though...he had audacity to call me greedy and there was no proof i had any data!

bbelt

no problem, hope you get it resolved.

nomoneytoday

Can you not get the data from your backup?

frugaldamage

They didnt back my system up or did so incorrectly. Im a usually religious at regular backups and have recovered most of my files but not my last (crucial) two months of uni work. I couldn't back up before i gave it to them because it wouldnt turn on.

ABH_3

You could try installing http://www.recuva.com/ and see if it will be able to recover anything, is it possible to pull the harddrive then put it into a caddy, then setup another harddrive to recover From and To ie:

Caddy 01

---

=Laptop=

---

Caddy 02 so the files are going from Caddy 01, the source to Caddy 02 the store? As that will mean you can install various programs on your laptop, then keep your source files separate to your recovered data. I've had a great deal of success with Get Data Back both the Fat and NTFS variations.

HTH

frugaldamage

Thanks ABH but the problem is my data has been overwritten by this other persons data, ive used a similar data recovery program and only about 1 in 20 of my files are intact, those uncorrupted I seem to have backed up anyway. Ta for the help though, i'll use that program in the future (I paid £30 for mine).

ABH_3

frugaldamage wrote: »

Thanks ABH but the problem is my data has been overwritten by this other persons data, ive used a similar data recovery program and only about 1 in 20 of my files are intact, those uncorrupted I seem to have backed up anyway. Ta for the help though, i'll use that program in the future (I paid £30 for mine).

I covered this a couple of weeks back in the Tech Forum: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1771845&highlight=get+data+back as you will read, I had formatted my drives several times, installed OS's on them multiple times, I was still amazed by the amount of data I pulled from those drives, including those old TV programme encodes.

Sometimes, you're just surprised, true sometimes it doesn't work, but other times it might just surprise you. I offer up the retrieved Temporary Internet Files from 1995 as an example of such a surprise

As you possibly know yourself, all that's possibly happenedd is that the FAT has been deleted, the data will be there in some form, just with the FAT there's nothing to say 'it's over there'. So find a programme that will look a little deeper, Steve Gibsons will take a while but will peel back the layers and expose each one to you. The only problem I found, is that it wouldn't stop, so you set it going and came back 2 days later so the laptop stays on all day and night. Ontrack Utilities meanwhile allowed me to stop the retrieval part way through, then restart it at a later date. True you may not get as far as I did, but you could try the 'trials' of Get Data Back off the website, it will show you the files that it can retrieve, just won't let you retrieve them if their above a certain size. Likewise Steve Gibsons Spinright may have a trial, or maybe if you look hard enough you may find the full thing, google suggested that to me when I just searched, the same with ontrack utilities too it would seem. You have nothing to lose at this point but some time, and yet I would imagine a lot to gain.

HTH

frugaldamage

Hmm interesting, sounds pretty impressive, I had written off any chance of seeing my data again but what you're saying about the FAT makes sense to me. There are a couple of videos i created that I would certainly pay good money to recover. I'll explore that soon. Thanks again.

frugaldamage

Thanks to everyone who contributed, I took the most cost effective solution to get my own back: the local press

coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2009/08/24/student-finds-confidential-nhs-files-on-laptop-92746-24511053/