re-installed windows - lost everything

wild_tiger

my friend has reinstalled windows xp from a service pack 2 disk, she has managed to lose everything which was on her pc before she did it. I have a laptop and internet connection and i want to help her get back anything i can (photos, letters, screen dumps). I read a similar post from a while ago but i don't know much about computers and i don't want to make anything worse. i've told her not to switch it on till i find out if i can help.

So what can i do, if anything, i've read about recuva and i know a few free sites have been mentioned on here but whats the easiest, she doesn't want to go spending much if anything.

And yes i've bent her ear on why did she not do a back up!! her other friend told her to put all her stuff into her 'c' drive and it would be safe but its gone

Thanks for any help

googler

Get the HDD from her machine, find out if it's IDE or SATA, get a USB caddy to match.

Insert HDD into Caddy, connect to your laptop, and Explore it to see what files are visible. If a folder structure is visible with the data she thinks is lost, then copy that data to your machine (or another portable HDD that you've attached to another USB port).

If the free space on your machine is smaller than the data space used on the HDD to be recovered, you WILL need another portable drive.

If no data structure is visible, download Recuva and use that to see what you can get back.

fwor

It's difficult to say how much you could get back with Recuva, as it depends on factors such as how full the hard disk was, whether it had been defragmented recently, etc.

Good to tell her not to switch it on - the more she uses it the less chance of getting anything back.

If possible I would try to remove the hard drive, put it into a USB caddy and connect it to your laptop to run Recuva against. That way you won't have Windows running off the drive at the same time as you're trying to get stuff back.

But before you try using Recuva - take a good look around. You ~may~ find that the re-install did not involve a re-format, and she simply has a new (empty) "My Documents" folder, and that her old docs are still there in their original directory...

wild_tiger

she said that her c drive had 180 free out of 190 (gb, kb or whatever they are) i got her to do a 'search' for her name since that is what she called the folder where she put all her stuff but it found nothing. Before she ran the disk when she put on her pc you could log in as 'her' or 'ipod' but after running the disk they are both gone and it just says 'owner' (hope you understand what i mean) if the log ins are gone does that mean her stuff is gone too?

googler

wild_tiger wrote: »

she said that her c drive had 180 free out of 190 (gb, kb or whatever they are) i got her to do a 'search' for her name since that is what she called the folder where she put all her stuff but it found nothing. Before she ran the disk when she put on her pc you could log in as 'her' or 'ipod' but after running the disk they are both gone and it just says 'owner' (hope you understand what i mean) if the log ins are gone does that mean her stuff is gone too?

The data might still be there, only the pointers to it have gone - which is where Recuva comes in, and why she shouldn't use the disk in the meantime.

Hammyman

Chances are when she did the re-install, she chose to format the partition as the screen following which partition to install to offers formatting the partition as the first two of three options.

I would count it as lost. You can try running CG Securitys Testdisk on it which may recover some but expect for a fair whack to be lost.

There are companies who can recover data not overwritten but at around £500 for 20GB, its not cheap.

closed

recuva deep scan should find something provided the data area hasn't been overwritten, the sooner she does it, the better the chance of recovery

wild_tiger

Not confident taking out somebody else's harddrive

Is it possible for me to download recuva on to a usb stick from my laptop and use it in her pc? if so is this best to open her pc from f8? can i then put anything i find onto another usb stick and put it in my pc?

she thought she had a virus which is why she reinstalled windows, if there was a virus could my laptop get it from the info on the usb stick. i don't want to put my laptop at any risk.

Thanks for taking the time to read and reply

aliEnRIK

Just run recuva as soon as possible. And yes, there shouldnt be a problem running off the USB stick

fwor

wild_tiger wrote: »

Is it possible for me to download recuva on to a usb stick from my laptop and use it in her pc? if so is this best to open her pc from f8? can i then put anything i find onto another usb stick and put it in my pc?

she thought she had a virus which is why she reinstalled windows, if there was a virus could my laptop get it from the info on the usb stick. i don't want to put my laptop at any risk.

Last question first: There are viruses that can survive a Windows re-install (they occupy an area of the hard disk that does not normally get re-written during a re-format), and some do propagate by detecting and infecting removable storage such as USB pendrives. However, the risk of this being the case here is very low. If you are worried, you should turn off auto-run on your laptop.

You could use the Portable Version of Recuva from a USB stick, but the problem with that is that it is not bootable from the USB stick, so you are back in a situation where Windows will be running from the HDD that you are attempting to recover, and will be creating all sorts of temporary files there.

A better solution would be to use SystemRescue CD, which is a bootable CD that includes a recovery tool called PhotoRec - which despite it's name can recover files other than photos. The advantage of this is that it is does its recovery read-only - so it won't write anything to the HDD, and leaves the situation unchanged so you can try another tool later if it finds nothing. You will however need a pendrive to store any recovered data.

wild_tiger

Thanks for all the advice, i don't have a pendrive, is there a 'good' one that i should buy or any makes i should avoid?