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

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

It should highlight Other press enter then it shouuld select free and search press enter
Come back after it has searched

I'm sorry, it is not allowing me to copy anything relevant on the page, just the header information. It's asking me to select a destination, and underneath the file location is a number of things, some starting drwx and others staring -rwx. They appear to be actual files associated with the recovery program and most end in .dll or .txt


PhotoRec 7.0-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, January 2015
Please select a destination to save the recovered files.
Do not choose to write the files to the same partition they were stored on.
Keys: Arrow keys to select another directory
C when the destination is correct
Q to quit
Directory C:\Users\Cottage_Economy\Desktop\testdisk-7.0-WIP.win\testdisk-7.0-WIP

tavernman

That's ok now press C to continue (it will take a while and I need to go to bed in 45 mins approx) but it will try to recover
what it finds into C:\Users\Cottage_Economy\Desktop\testdisk-7.0-WIP.win\testdisk-7.0-WIP\...I can't remember
which is your new laptop hard-disk so lets see what it finds, hopefully a fair bit guessing based on your first post. If I am not around tonight I will be tomorrow morning so good luck ,

OH you could also try this again tomorrow if you don't want to cry into your pillow :beer:

securityguy

One thing I observe with many computer users is their reflexive clicking of dialogue boxes. Some students are difficult to demonstrate to, because every time a message pops up from a development tool saying what's wrong, they've clicked it to dismiss it, rather like it's a reflex test, before anyone's had any chance to read it. There's a wealth of HCI literature about this, linking the poor planning of user interaction with poor outcomes for users: so used to clicking on meaningless dialogue boxes with incomprehensible text, they also click equally quickly on the one dialogue box in ten or a hundred that is violently dangerous. That's rendered extra lethal if the dialogue box is set up to default to the destructive course of action, will accept any click (because the pointer has been pre-hijacked into the destructive option) and takes Enter as destruction.

So OP, I'm not saying that you're wrong, but it's highly unlikely that a major computer vendor would simply trash any device that was plugged in without asking for confirmation. But it's perfectly likely that you were presented with a succession of badly worded, badly designed dialogue boxes and clicked one too many, or were presented with a lethal one which didn't have (as a minimum) a "discard all input for 5s" gate on it, and either clicked the mouse or hit enter at an inopportune time. That's the sort of cognitive overload that HCI designers should be avoiding, but don't.

It's almost certainly an NTFS filesystem on your external 160GB drive, by the way.

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

That's ok now press C to continue (it will take a while and I need to go to bed in 45 mins approx) but it will try to recover
what it finds into C:\Users\Cottage_Economy\Desktop\testdisk-7.0-WIP.win\testdisk-7.0-WIP\...I can't remember
which is your new laptop hard-disk so lets see what it finds, hopefully a fair bit guessing based on your first post. If I am not around tonight I will be tomorrow morning so good luck ,

OH you could also try this again tomorrow if you don't want to cry into your pillow :beer:

Honestly, I need to go to bed myself! My eyes are drooping. I'll try tomorrow after a cup of strong tea with plenty of sugar.

As for crying, I'm all sobbed out already. Hubby's been so good about it all.

tavernman

securityguy wrote: »

One thing I observe with many computer users is their reflexive clicking of dialogue boxes. Some students are difficult to demonstrate to, because every time a message pops up from a development tool saying what's wrong, they've clicked it to dismiss it, rather like it's a reflex test, before anyone's had any chance to read it. There's a wealth of HCI literature about this, linking the poor planning of user interaction with poor outcomes for users: so used to clicking on meaningless dialogue boxes with incomprehensible text, they also click equally quickly on the one dialogue box in ten or a hundred that is violently dangerous. That's rendered extra lethal if the dialogue box is set up to default to the destructive course of action, will accept any click (because the pointer has been pre-hijacked into the destructive option) and takes Enter as destruction.

So OP, I'm not saying that you're wrong, but it's highly unlikely that a major computer vendor would simply trash any device that was plugged in without asking for confirmation. But it's perfectly likely that you were presented with a succession of badly worded, badly designed dialogue boxes and clicked one too many, or were presented with a lethal one which didn't have (as a minimum) a "discard all input for 5s" gate on it, and either clicked the mouse or hit enter at an inopportune time. That's the sort of cognitive overload that HCI designers should be avoiding, but don't.

It's almost certainly an NTFS filesystem on your external 160GB drive, by the way.

But that does not help now , the time for good practise advice is best left for if the OP can't recover her data , at the moment she will be distraught enough.

Cottage_Economy

securityguy wrote: »

One thing I observe with many computer users is their reflexive clicking of dialogue boxes. Some students are difficult to demonstrate to, because every time a message pops up from a development tool saying what's wrong, they've clicked it to dismiss it, rather like it's a reflex test, before anyone's had any chance to read it. There's a wealth of HCI literature about this, linking the poor planning of user interaction with poor outcomes for users: so used to clicking on meaningless dialogue boxes with incomprehensible text, they also click equally quickly on the one dialogue box in ten or a hundred that is violently dangerous. That's rendered extra lethal if the dialogue box is set up to default to the destructive course of action, will accept any click (because the pointer has been pre-hijacked into the destructive option) and takes Enter as destruction.

So OP, I'm not saying that you're wrong, but it's highly unlikely that a major computer vendor would simply trash any device that was plugged in without asking for confirmation. But it's perfectly likely that you were presented with a succession of badly worded, badly designed dialogue boxes and clicked one too many, or were presented with a lethal one which didn't have (as a minimum) a "discard all input for 5s" gate on it, and either clicked the mouse or hit enter at an inopportune time. That's the sort of cognitive overload that HCI designers should be avoiding, but don't.

It's almost certainly an NTFS filesystem on your external 160GB drive, by the way.

I don't believe it was reflexive clicking, because I was trying to get the hang of the touchpad, which seems to alternate between hyper sensitive and as dull as a brick. I couldn't click through quickly if I wanted to.


It's awful. Hubby did mention that when he got his laptop his touchpad was so sensitive it was opening up all sorts of stuff he didn't want, seemingly at random. He had to manually change it. As I haven't had chance to do anything with the speed or sensitivity of the touchpad, I wonder whether that was a factor?


I've switched to a mouse now.

Cottage_Economy

tavernman wrote: »

But that does not help now , the time for good practise advice is best left for if the OP can't recover her data , at the moment she will be distraught enough.

Thanks taverman. It's not been a good day all round, so I'm afraid I'm fresh out of taking things on the chin. Any other day I'd be stamping and swearing and analysing and learning lessons, not blubbing.


Lost a £10k bid by 1 point. The opposition had 84. I had 83.


Cooked a nice shoulder of lamb with roasted red peppers and olives and didn't like the olives at all, so didn't eat it.


Cat got the squits so I was on carpet cleaning detail


One of my chickens is under the weather and being shunned by the others.


Oh, and I painted a live spider into my study room skirting board and felt dreadful about the whole thing for hours. Poor thing.


Anyway, I'm going to bed. Enough of today.


Thanks for all of your help so far everyone.

tavernman

I remember now (lies damn lies and statistics) C:\Users\Cottage_Economy\Desktop\testdisk-7.0-WIP.win\testdisk-7.0-WIP\...I can't remember
It is \recup_dir.x ..... my test just finished HTH

Saver-upper

Aww,bless you Cottage Economy.What a rotten day you have had.I am sorry,I am no good to advise you (I only learnt how to upload photos to FB this week-had to ask on the Techie board :eek:.Previously my 11- and 12-year olds have been my technical advisers :rotfl: ).
But I had to say,how lovely of Tavernman to spend the time talking you through it all.

I hope after you have slept on it tonight you are able to work something out tomorrow.Good luck-I will check back in tomorrow .

GunJack

are we overlooking the obvious possibility of recovering these photos..... i.e. the old lappy they were stored on ??