Lost 8 years of my kiddies lives :-(

pstones578

Aiadi wrote: »

Gosh. You must be walking wearing a bullet-proof vest all the time. I appreciate the need to emphasise the importance of backing up as the message always seems hard to get through but be gentle on the poor OP.

To the OP, when you do begin a backup strategy make sure you have at least one backup copy off-site. That way if you every have a catastrophe at home you at least have irreplaceable data available to you off-site.

buglawton

Have you never emailed any of the pics to relatives or posted them to a photo site?

cliffski

was the laptop switched on at the time? Hopefully not, because theres a good chance the drive heads were parked if it was off, and physical damage would be unlikely to the actual platter.

There is a chance the platter is just fine, and that the circuitary and connections from the read head to the ATA/whatever interface is screwed.
If thats the case, then the platters could be extracted and stuck in an identical case, and read off.
In other words, it's quite possible ALL of your data is just sat there, and can be recovered.

So don't give up hope

angrysmurf

Zanzibar is spot on. Be VERY weary of Fields Data Recovery, Google them. They pulled the same stunt on me and I share your sadness over the loss of your valuable family photos.

Companies like Fields have a large referal network through other companies like PC World, who charge a HUGE markup. Ironically, they mechanically blurt out terms like "clean room", but have no idea what one really is.

A word of caution about people hyping companies they used: always ask the company about their ISO clean room certification and always do a bit of background checking to see what reputation they have.

Ontrack and i365 are the biggest but by no means the only companies capable of recovering your data. They are pricey but you have an excellent chance of getting your data back.

Zanzibar wrote: »

Hi,


I have used other companies - Fields comes to mind and they were useless. Charged £230 and returned a disk saying they couldn't retrieve anything. I didn't believe them and sent it on to Ontrack who retrieved 90% of the data.

Be aware some recovery companies just send the disks to another company to do for them and they take a referral cut. .

Mashmallow

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Mashmallow

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Mashmallow

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googler

I wouldn't event THINK about sending your HDD back to Acer. Look for the other thread here where someone sent their PC back to the maker with the promise that they would get their HDD back, and the HDD disappeared.

I don't think it matters one bit whether or not it voids your warranty.

Find an ISO-certified, reputable data recovery specialist and take, don't send, your HDD to them.

Mashmallow

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Donnie

Mashmallow wrote: »

I'm not too sure what to say to your post? Thanks for taking the time to post, and I understand that some posts are blunt for a reason. This has been a very hard lesson learnt....but I'm just a mum - I'm not very bright - I just plod on with my little life where nothing much changes from one day to the next....I just thought that if I kept my laptop at home and safe, I'd be ok. Naieve and ignorant are probably two good words to use...

Ignore the Johnny-come-lately.