laptop hard drive hacked at

jje_2

I see it as you having two choices .
One send the hard drive to a Data recovery specialist not to a computer shop who may be unable to do anything bar tell you it does not work >Data recovery done in that way may recover most of your files at a high cost .

If the hard drive is bootable into windows .
Second choice is to attempt the recovery yourself by installing a recovery program ( assuming the drive works ) and attempting to recover as much as possible .Cost upwards from free .
Going the second route would require a recommendation for a recovery program that works well and is easy enough to use .
I have done the recovery of pictures from deleted hard drive and pulled back 80% of the files .

jje

albertross_2

Does it boot?

Alias_Omega

my bet would be to do as mentioned above, buy the relevant adaptor and install into a tower unit and from there pull the jpeg / bmp files off as required.

and format as required afterwards.

jje_2

OS not found then anybody recommend a recovery tool that you can boot from a cd .
As the next step .

jje

albertross_2

what was the original problem

PROLIANT

You can make a BART CD from your XP setup disk download the program from here: http://www.nu2.nu/download.php?sFile=pebuilder3110a.zip and follow instructions, you may access the HDD from this environment and save the files to a pen drive or Network share. I have used this tool before and is very good. Or go to plan B, buy an external caddy for the laptop hard disk and plug it in to a normal PC and extract the data that way, you can pick up a caddy for around £10-£15.

bookduck

mspig wrote: »

I'm willing to pay money to have the photos recovered but a few places i have tried have said they want from £100-£250 just to look at the laptop to see if the photos are recoverable.

I back jje, when he said that to send it to a specialist recovery company that only does this as their primary job, rather than PC support company. It is your best chance, and contact a few for quotes. This will not be the most cost effective though.

Myself for myself, would try various software items first, but I'm got a good idea how far I can push things to make it work.

One well known company is Ontrack (www.ontrackdatarecovery.com), think they are a bit on the more expensive side and hopefully someone else can recommend a few other good ones.

When dealing with them, stress that the data is not mission critical and you just want the data back within a few months, rather than hours - it is cheaper this way.

PROLIANT

bookduck wrote: »

I back jje, when he said that to send it to a specialist recovery company that only does this as their primary job, rather than PC support company. It is your best chance, and contact a few for quotes. This will not be the most cost effective though.

Myself for myself, would try various software items first, but I'm got a good idea how far I can push things to make it work.

One well known company is Ontrack (www.ontrackdatarecovery.com), think they are a bit on the more expensive side and hopefully someone else can recommend a few other good ones.

When dealing with them, stress that the data is not mission critical and you just want the data back within a few months, rather than hours - it is cheaper this way.

Yea go and spend a mint on specialist service when there is no gurantee of success, try yourself and see if you can save yourself a few hundred quid!

bookduck

PROLIANT wrote: »

Yea go and spend a mint on specialist service when there is no gurantee of success, try yourself and see if you can save yourself a few hundred quid!

Yes, I agree YOU should do this, because you have an idea of what your doing.

Unfortunately at this point in time i'm under the impression that this is currently beyond mspig's ability/operational understanding. Secondly if she makes a mistake, more could be ruined - if she continues in the future to take it further. Thirdly she has already given the disks to two 'experts' and probably had a fiddle with it herself too, so who really knows the state of play. Those 'expert' knew more than mspig, but after huffing and puffing they still could not recover them making it look not that straight forward. Fouthly ... was going to put something about mistreating/playing with valuables but lost the thought thread

PROLIANT

bookduck wrote: »

Yes, I agree YOU should do this, because you have an idea of what your doing.

Unfortunately at this point in time i'm under the impression that this is currently beyond mspig's ability/operational understanding. Secondly if she makes a mistake, more could be ruined - if she continues in the future to take it further. Thirdly she has already given the disks to two 'experts' and probably had a fiddle with it herself too, so who really knows the state of play and those 'expert' knew more than mspig, but after huffing and puffing they still could not recover them. Fouthly ... was going to put something about mistreating/playing with valuables but lost the thought thread

If the HDD is accessible then where is the problem, put it in a caddy and plug it into another machine and off you go?