I wiped my mom's harddrive!

Troncoso

Troncoso

VIP Member
Alright so my mom destroyed her computer (figuratively speaking) by bogging it down with every bit of software on the planet, scanners, trackers, cleaners, etc. You name it, its on there. And with all the downloading, installing uninstalling scanning and deleting, blah blah blah, you get the point. The computer been there like 6 years. Anyway, she wanted me to reformat it and install windows fresh, so I gave her a second hard drive to put all her wanted files on. She did that and just after, her computer crashes and won't boot.

I try troubleshooting the problem. Since it would get past the post and then just freeze, I figured windows was corrupted so I unplugged the os harddrive. It booted find, though finding no media so I'm like 'Good timing. A wipe will fix that either way.'

My big freakin stupid mistake was forgetting to plug the os harddrive leaving only the harddrive with her important files on it......So I begin the install, format the only drive in the computer, start the setup, then....
oh ******!!!!!!!!!! WRONG HARD freakin DRIVE!!

So anyway, I know there are ways of getting info off of harddrives after it's been erased. I've read about it, I've seen it on tv.

My question is, what steps should I take towards retrieving her very important files? Whether it's sending it to someone or taking it somewhere, or doing something myself. What can I do?
 
To some extent that depends on what OS she is running. Others here might be able to tell you a simpler way to do this; but what I would do is :

1) Disconnect the HDD that has her wanted files on it.
2) Format her boot drive and reinstall windopes on it and do such reinstalls as are necessary to get it back to a satisfactory state.
3) IF she is running XP and the drive is an IDE drive then get a hold of a copy of a program called "Recover It All Professional" and install it.
4) When that is DONE, then shutdown the machine and hookup the drive with her wanted files.
5) Reboot the machine and run ""Recover It All Professional" to recover the lost files.

NOTE : I am sure there are other programs out there that do the same thing, and some will work on SATA drives; but I have only personally Used Recover It All, and then only on an IDE drive; so that is what I know works.
 
Is it safe to say that the actual data recovery starts at step 3? As in the first 2 is basically, put windows on her computer?
 
Alright thank you very much. I'll have to get a new harddrive for the os as it turns out hers is fried. This program; to what extent does it retrieved erased data?
 
It will retrieve all files that were not overwritten, (i.e. deleted and the space used for something else), prior to the format. It will retrieve some files that were wiped prior to the format if they were not overwritten by other files. NOTE however that it does not work with all OSs though it will work with XP if she was using FAT 32 file system. Not sure about NTSF.
 
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K, just checked my version, (an old one). Says it works with NT, 2000, and XP. Also says it works better with NTSF than it does with FAT32. My machines all used to have 98SE - XP PRO dualboots on them, so I had to use FAT32 to keep things compatable. So I know it worked under FAT32. My latest machine has SATA drives with NTSF, and the old version of "Recover It All Professional" that I have does NOT work on these drives. Since they claim it works better with NTSF, I guess my old one won't work with SATA.
 
I appreciate all the help. Based on your info this should work out rather well. She does run xp and the drive was an IDE formatted to ntfs. I'll have to drop by in a day or 2 and try this out.
 
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