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Recovering the Lost Data from The Great Beyond – Windows Edition

Posted By Paul\HellNoire In Category: Computer

May
10
2010

I’m aware Raymond’s covered recovery of data in his articles before, in it, he recommends a lot of data recovery tools. His suggestions, like many of those out there, echo the need for a better system of backing up. One of my friends has perfected such a solution for himself. He uses a RAID 10 configuration that he has manage to customize into a nutcase paradise. For those not familiar with RAID 10, it is a mirrored data set (RAID 1) which is then striped (RAID 0), making the “10″ name. A RAID 10 array requires a minimum of four drives – two mirrored drives to hold half of the striped data, plus another two mirrored for the other half of the data. And he’s using this on Windows, along side a 1:1:1 imaging system, that not only backs up the RAID 10 configuration to another hard drive, but copies it also to DVD too.

Now, while this might seem like a perfect solution to many people, this is overkill and not only is this friend crazy for his data, but he’s lost his mind [which I might add, I've told him a lot on occasion]. There is such a thing as being too religious over your data. And while I admit, I’ve suffered data loss in the past because I don’t practice a RAID solution, I feel that if you back your data up right, you won’t have to worry about it. Since one of our forum members had lost some data in a disk failure today, I’d like to walk you though the steps I’ve managed to use to get the majority of my data back and hopefully this guide will be a handy one for you.

I’d just like to point out that the majority of these programs are free of charge and you might have heard of them before.

Recuva

Raymond’s covered Recuva, as have many other blogs. For good reason. Out of my test data that was deleted, Recuva has time and time again either recovered portions or full bits of information from my hard drives. Unless the data was shreded, usually I was able to recover it in good form and able to use it again. It’s actually saved my behind on two finals for my courses thus far, so if you’re simply deleted it, check the recycle bin, then check this program.

RoadKil’s Raw Copy

RawCopy’s interface is dead simple for a reason: when recovering data from a disk gone RAW, you do not want, nor do you need the aggravation of digging out a manual to understand something. RawCopy provides a free service of a 1:1 copy of your data that it can recover from your dying hard disk. And from my reading, if your disk is slipping away faster then you thought, RawCopy will help you to the best of it’s abilities. If you’d like an unorthodox trick that might just prolong it’s death a big longer, putting the hard drive in a freezer until it gets a little cold might just give you that few extra seconds it needs.

Finally, prevention is the best course of action when it comes to data loss. If you back up your important data to DVD/CD, flash drive, or external hard drive, you’ll have it there if you need it. And for those that are wondering how I back up my data these days to prevent data loss, it’s a rather simple, yet complex one at the same time. I keep a 1:1 compressed image made by Clonezilla on my second hard drive on my desktop, of my desktop and laptop, as well as backing up all my important data (non-OS stuff) to an external hard drive. I also use a different Roadkil tool for the backup of my parent’s data, which is 1:1 networked copy to a secondary computer, so if one computer fails, the other has all the data on it and is ready to be swapped out at any time. That tool would be Roadkil’s Unstoppable Copier which I would only recommend if your data is in use at the time of copying files over. Seeing as Linux has a lot of built-in tools as well as command line tools to help you, my only recommendations are to keep up with the articles, as later this week I shall cover that very subject.


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    • Zimbo

      Many thanks. Some useful tools.

    • Ted

      For situations in which the file system is trashed, data carving techniques are useful. Recuva’s deep scan does data carving. Freeware PhotoRec may be better at data carving than Recuva’s deep scan. The list of file formats that PhotoRec can recover is found at http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec. PhotoRec homepage is http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec.

    • Ahmad Saleem

      I never heard about RAID 10, please also cover up about it . thanks for your recovery tools, sharing with us.

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @Ted, PhotoRec works extremely well in my testing, but I recommend more for the Linux users because, well, let’s face it… Recuva has GUI, whereas many Linux tools along with PhotoRec do not.

      @Ahmad Saleem, like I said, it’s combines from RAID 1 and RAID 0. I find it a bit overkill, and as of right now, I don’t even know how to set up RAID so… yeah, couldn’t tell you yet. But I’ll look into it for you.

    • emtunc

      Your last paragraph sounds a bit over-complicated, although it is ideal for large chunks of data (tens of gigabytes), a sync solution such as Dropbox would probably suit ‘typical’ users who just want to back up important documents, pictures, videos and such and have them sync to the cloud as well as another computer.

      If anyone is interested; you can get an extra 250MB free space in Dropbox by following this link: tinyurl.com/db250

    • Humayun Khan

      The article is a bit sophisticated in my view.

      @Paul\HellNoire : Please make your future posts a bit easy to digest for guys like me.

      I was able to understand this blog post with a little help from Google(RAID, 1:1:1 and all other stuff…)

      You are a Geek…
      Good post keep it up…

    • Ahmad Saleem

      Thanks Paul, don`t put burden on yourself, it is just okay, you are doing excellent job.

    • S2K

      Even i suffered frm data loss last week..
      n thnkz 2 this software…i gt some important files,images,vids..back…
      a special thnks 2 paul..who recommended me this softwr..
      Its a must have software…

    • http://www.zuarxpdc.blogspot.com Sumber Informasi Terkini

      you all can use tune up utilities..it is also good software for recovery

    • hyena

      I lost my Data off a External Hard drive, a 500 GB USB Drive. About 150 GB’s where stored, and was unfortunate that there was a power outage whilst I had it pluggged into my computer. Uninteruptible power supply (UPS) is another feature of backing up, or moreso, keeping safe your data.
      To continue a program called iCare was around the web blogs, giveaway of the day, etc., a week or two ago so I tried it. It recovered maybe 60% of the 150 GB’s of Data. I was glad to get any back. I have however got out of the habit of having my External Drive attached to my computer continually as the risk is too great. i learnt my lesson .

    • http://FM olamoree

      I too relied upon an external HDD for back up, a MyBook, 500GB which is a 500 GB SATA drive in an enclosure that has a converter to USB… When it got about 420GB on it, I went thru it for a whole day and deleted stuff that I “thought” I might want to keep but later decided to dump it. Afterwards there was about 320GB on it. A couple days later doing a manual back up of some files… just copying files manually to the drive… it lost its Drive Letter and shut down–stopped spinning. The drive itself shows up on my USB Safely Remove list, but without a drive letter. Bottom line, the drive starts up, registers on USB Safely Remove and then shuts down… stops turning… and doesn’t give me time to jump in and assign it a drive letter as it only spins for 10 seconds. So as to have more control over it, I took the SATA drive out of the enclosure, hooked it up to an external power supply, plugged in the SATA cable into a desktop and still it starts up, registers in USB Safely Remove without a Drive Letter and shuts down. With the external power supply, I could restart it at will but it will only run 10 seconds without a Drive Letter and that is NOT enough time to give it a drive letter and stops spinning after 10 seconds. I have tried it Cold and Frozen but the same thing, only 10 seconds running. Is it the drive failing? How? or is it just shutting down because it has no Drive Letter? and how could I give it a drive letter as it is starting? I would run Recuva on it but it will not stay running long enough… any ideas? Thanks guys.

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @Humayun Khan, I tried to make it as simple as possible. I’m only using common terms that are used in IT, so I would like to know what I’ve done wrong to help you understand better.

      @olamoree, it sounds like it’s already failed, not failing. Which means there’s nothing that we can do I’m afraid.

      @hyena and Sumber Informasi Terkini, I’m only recommending what I’ve used and heard is amazing. But thank you both for your input.

      @S2K, not a problem, glad I could help you.

      @Ahmad Saleem, I will still try, since RAID has been something I’ve been wanting to learn for a while. I just can’t assure you of a prompt delivery.

    • lulzdude

      You missed one very good tool, although its not free, i might suggest, oh i dont know, looking for hirens boot cd… just a thought =p but anyways the tools are from http://www.runtime.org/ entitled get data back 4 ntfs/fat and yes the title actually has a “4″ in it. i cant speak for their raid recovery, but their other tools are invaluable when it comes to data recovery.

    • Humayun Khan

      @HellNoire: In my view the only thing you over see is that this blog is viewed by people from round the globe. There are many people who understand only plain english. However the language you use is pretty simple but at times it gets little complicated.

      No hard feelings HellNoire. This is my observation, no wonder I may be totally wrong.

      Your knowledge of computers is excellent. Keep it up and share it with us.

    • Bruce

      Everyone:

      As I enjoyed a catastrophic data loss recently, I would like to add in my 2 cents’ worth:

      1) DO NOT PANIC! I panicked, and among other stupid actions chose to try rebuilding too early. I not only overwrote, but also reformatted and repartitioned my drives. Drives are CHEAP these days. The first thing you should do is go out and buy a big pig of a drive – whether or not it meets your normal operating standards. Make it into your primary, build the new OS on that, and from now until you are fully satisfied you have recovered everything possible, do NOT write ANYTHING to the original drive.

      Besides RECUVA, I believe Easeus has a solid data recovery package. It is pricey, but there are alternatives.

      Prepare to dedicate a lot of time. The recovery process might seem to take a lot of time, but then when you enter the “examining files” stage, you will see the recovering files stage as “the good old days”. You will wade through many files that were supposedly recovered but are trashed. You will also need to wade through multiple duplicates of files and pick out the best ones. Do not be too hasty on deleting – relegate those to a folder for future examination and keep them around until you are perfectly satisfied that the “good copy” that you chose is, in fact, perfect – or the best you could get. It is now 6 or so months since my crash and I still have a lot of garbage remnants around on the original drive just in case. One more item – there are many many programs out there that claim to recover files and when you run them, they report that they did recover your files – pdf, MS Office and graphic file recovery especially – and when you go to open the “recovered” file, it is still a bunch of garbage. Be careful what you pay for – if you can not find a way to try and PROVE before you buy, you are best to leave it alone. I wouldn’t want to suggest to find a fully functional copy and use it before buying it for this generally would be illegal, but it certainly is tempting in an ocean full of crap-ware.

    • pamelax

      hello to all,

      may someone tell me about realtime encryption external hd,what happen if it crash,is there tool to recover from an aes256 encryption??

      thanks!

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @pamelax: I doubt there is something, but you could always try RIP Linux, which will have an article today. I just took yesterday as a day off.

      @Humayun Khan, this is indeed true.

      @Bruce, I’m going to cover a package that’s free of cost that is downright amazing, it’s called RIP Linux… Recovery Is Possible. I’m rather impressed.

    • shoaib haider

      dude didnt work for me i mean i accidently deleted my files yesterday but all in vain :(

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @shoaib haider, Wait until tonight. I’ll be posting on RIP Linux, which should be able to get your files back fine ;)

    • pamelax

      @paul:well,thanks for the hints,it dont sound good to use such hd if a crash is a pain to recover files…

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @pamelax, HDD crashing is always a bad thing and painful to boot. So I’m just trying to help make it less painful.

    • pamelax

      It was not an attack ;)
      i just said that using for myself an hd with realtime encryption,that’s an secure option but if it’s hard or impossible to get data back if a crash happen,i let this option out,i tought it was more easy to get data back but thanks for the riplinux,downloaded in case of,i hope never,using it later.

    • http://freshcrop.com/ Photo Recovery

      Hello,

      Thanks for posting this blog. there is very useful information.. that how can we got our deleted data.

    • madas

      Bagi teman – teman yang pernah mengalami harddisk rusak
      - no detect- partisi hilang- terformat- fdisk- virus- corrupt
      - delete- hidden..dll…..bisa dikonsultasikan atau di recovery data
      bisa datang ke ertech komputer.
      Alamat nya: jl.karang rejo x/36 surabaya (daerah ketintang)
      Hub : 031 72357968/081330029001
      Saya dulu pernah menyelamatkan harddisk no detek
      Disini memang benar ok banget.masalah harga bisa di nego,
      Trims ertech berkat ertechcom dataku kembali normal.
      Semoga sukses…..teman2…!

    • lokesh lokesh

      I liking this website as well as it without doubt has given me Some inspiration To succeed, just so Thanks.

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