laptop hard drive hacked at

mspig

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TonyLisaP

Depends what the "hacked at" entails, you maybe able to remove the disk and put it in an external usb HDD case and recover the data that way.

startrekker

In your post you say the photos have been saved to a disk but the disk was lost, now that would mean to me that the photos can still be recovered.

Dont know what hacked at means... some technical term no doubt:rolleyes:

TonyLisaP's suggestion is what I would do....providing the hard drives not dead.....or formatted there is a good possibility the photos are still on there... I would be willing to have a look at it for you.....free.... I live in Leicester... i'm no expert but do fix for friends only...

isofa

You are being fobbed off, "the hard drive has been hacked" is a meaningless statement, and only a poor technical person would offer such a response. The HD is one of these 3:

1. ok and data can be recovered,
2. ok but data can't be recovered
3. has failed (physically damaged / failed) and then will need specialist recovery.

If the HD still is OK, even if it is has been formatted, it's very possible some of the photos will be be recoverable. A savvy IT person can do this, with a manner of tools. (Even freebies like Recuva: www.recuva.com can help too)

However if the HD is faulty, failing etc. Then you'll need a more specialist recovery. OnTrack are excellent, but could be expensive if the HD has failed totally: www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk/hard-drive-recovery

Worth talking to them first, they have a freephone number to give advice first too.

fwor

Albertross posted the following links on a similar thread a few days ago:


http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/dr.html

http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassi...a_unerase.html
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm
http://www.pandorarecovery.com/
http://www.recuva.com/
http://www.download.com/Recover-File...html?tag=lst-7
http://www.partition-recovery.com/
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.data-recovery-software.ne...Recovery.shtml
http://www.fdrlab.com/software/tfu.html

http://www.runtime.org/products.htm
http://www.finaldata.com/sub_products/products_1.asp
http://www.restorer2000.com/
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

I've not tried any of them, but may be worth a look. Most professional recovery services will cost a fortune, because mostly they are dealing with desperate people!

If you suspect that the photo files have been deleted or the disk formatted then avoid saving anything to it, as you may inadvertently overwrite the files that you want to recover.

totalsolutions

Hi, just to jump in and to support www.grc.com if it has failed in some way this will recover your drive and data, I can also provide this for you, no charge, I'm in south London.

isofa

Professional recovery is expensive because they are experts in their field, they run clean rooms, open drives, repairing mechanisms, attach to specialist rigs, etc. All which cost significant amounts of money to set-up and run. Most good data recovery companies, don't charge if they can't recover data.

Depends how important data is to you I guess.

PeteHerts

Rather than the caddy idea if you have a PC with a spare IDE or similar slot available on the motherboard then you can buy a cable that you can plug the laptop hard drive into.
This should be a cheaper option and should show up as an extra drive if the hard drive is ok.

bookduck

mspig wrote: »

Spoke to brother inlaw this morning who said that that his technical guy tried to link the hard drive up to another computer using the IDE way but it didn't show up anything from the hard drive and said that the first person must have had the hard drive out already and not known what he was doing as its a mess, looks like it was really hacked at.

Does that sound like everything is lost then?

it might be that your laptop enabled security build into the drive. it might be that the laptop accessed the drive with slightly different bios parameters. there are 'hacking' progs for drives that have security enabled.

I feel that if you really want the data back, pay £££ and get it done properly and stop letting everybody have a go, possibly corrupting the data further. If you want to fiddle then you take a chance, but I'm under the impression that this is outside your area of expertise and no friend want to play for days on something for no incentive or joy.

superscaper

mspig wrote: »

looks like it was really hacked at.

Don't know why this term is still being used. It's not the kind of thing a "technical person" would use in this context at all. I am rather cynical of this second technical guy's expertise if he's using meaningless terms he got from a hollywood film. (Unless this is your own phrase and you're not simply quoting what you've been told).

So as far as I'm concerned I've yet to see any evidence of anyone competant looking at it and saying everything is lost, so I wouldn't treat this as a lost cause yet. Try the suggestions or take up the offers of the posters on this thread or find someone yourself to get a proper second opinion.

ollyk

could you show us a picture of this 'hacked' up mess please? This sounds like gross incompetence to me!