New Acer deleted files without prior warning on a external hard drive

Cottage_Economy

A bit of a cautionary tale to computer luddites like me when attempting to create a recovery back up disk upon setting up a new laptop.

I just bought my first laptop today, an acer aspire. We'd been struggling along with my husband's Dell for a while, but finally agreed I needed one of my own.

I set everything up within 30 minutes, but when I went to go on the internet it reminded me I needed to do a recovery back up file just in case. I didn't have anything to hand, but an external hard drive that we use to store the back ups of my husband's files and about seven years of photos from an old digital camera.

I plugged it in and proceeded with the back up. A message immediately came up that it was searching for a suitable device and it had found the hard drive. I clicked on that, and clicked next. the message said I needed 16gb of memory and everything on the drive would be deleted.

I screached and immediately pulled out the hard drive, but too late. Everything deleted. All gone. It was instantaneous. There was no message about a lack of space, no message asking me if it was ok to proceed with the deletion. Nothing. It just did it. Nothing in the recycle bin either. It even manage to change the name of the drive.

Having never had my own computer before I had no idea the back up needed to be a 16gb empty device, and there was no message on the screen during the procedure to tell me.

I had foolishly stored the photos on there a few months ago as they had been taking up a lot of space on my husband's laptop. Seven years of memories gone. I'm in floods.

tavernman

How big was/is the drive ? Is a hard drive or a USB stick ? All may not be lost depending on the answers.

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

How big was/is the drive ? Is a hard drive or a USB stick ? All may not be lost depending on the answers.

External hard drive, 30gb

poppellerant

While you're waiting for people to advise you, in the meantime do not plug the harddrive into the computer or try recovering the files yourself. It's possible that any actions you do now may hinder your chances of recovery.

So wait until somebody knowledgeable can help you before plugging the drive in.

tavernman

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

External hard drive, 30gb

OK then you "may" be able to recover the files using recuva from piriform http://www.piriform.com/recuva or testdisk/photorec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download and use one of them your new pc to recover them. No guarantees but hey lets try/hope...
It sounds like at 30GB it's probably a stick then,, how much data was on it ?

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

OK then you "may" be able to recover the files using recuva from piriform http://www.piriform.com/recuva or testdisk/photorec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download and use one of them your new pc to recover them. No guarantees but hey lets try/hope...
It sounds like at 30GB it's probably a stick then,, how much data was on it ?

It is a flat rectangular drive in a case with a usb connecting cable. Not sure how full to be honest. Certainly several gbs worth.

Thanks you for the links. I'll try and come back and report.

Cottage_Economy

poppellerant wrote: »

While you're waiting for people to advise you, in the meantime do not plug the harddrive into the computer or try recovering the files yourself. It's possible that any actions you do now may hinder your chances of recovery.

So wait until somebody knowledgeable can help you before plugging the drive in.

Oops.

Plugged into husband's computer to check I wasn't being thick and I had lost them.

tavernman

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

Oops.

Plugged into husband's computer to check I wasn't being thick and I had lost them.

Nothing more lost by that,... recuva may be easier for you, but make sure that you recover the files to your new PC which should have more free space, under no circumstances try to recover them to the external drive

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

Nothing more lost by that,... recuva may be easier for you, but make sure that you recover the files to your new PC which should have more free space, under no circumstances try to recover them to the external drive

Thanks. Tried recuva.

Unfortunately it has come back unrecoverable. One file found with the comment "this file is overwritten with E:\system volume information"

tavernman

OK then read this http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step and try photorec , and calm down read and then follow the instructions, don't rush

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

OK then read this http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step and try photorec , and calm down read and then follow the instructions, don't rush

Ok, will do.