Topic: Help!! Disaster!

[Simon]

I've just had a major catastrophe, and managed to lose 6 months of my own, and the companies accounts!  Gulp!

I went to do a back up of 'stuff', and I thought I'd just shove all of My Documents onto a DVD-R, using my new DVD Writer.  I right clicked on the My Docs folder, and selected 'Send To DVD-RW Drive: E'.  Away it went, then it decided it was going to take an hour to copy everything, so I stopped it, as I didn't want to be up too late, and I thought I'd do it tomorrow.  There were already some files waiting to be written to the DVD-RW, so I deleted them, thinking they were just copied Temp files.  I then erased my Recycle Bin.

I then had this horrible feeling.  I just thought I'd better check that the accounts were still there (!), and yes, they were.  Phew!  But hold on, when I tried to open a file, it refused to open, and the file size went from 10Kb, to 0kb.  And the next one.  And the next.  Starting to get palpitations, I tried to remember when I last did a back up, but the last one was in June!  I then thought I'd try System Restore, basically out of desparation, rather than any real hope it would work, but System Restore is now also refusing to work.  I select a date and it goes through the process, but then says "System Restore not completed.  Your system has not been changed."

So now I have two problems.  The main one is that I have all these Excel files, which are still present, but have 0 bytes, and won't open.  Secondly, my System Restore won't work, no matter how far back I try to go.  And yes, I've tried it in Safe Mode.

I have yet to explain to my boss that half the years accounts have vanished, so does anyone have any ideas of a rescue plan?  Is there any way I can get these files back, and what's up with my System Restore?  If not, does anyone have access to a secure bunker?  

[Sandra]

System restore doesnt restore docs as far as I know Simon its for installations, registry and the like  

[Sandra]

Have you got norton AV installed still Simon, that has Unerase built in for the recycle bin, not sure how or if it works but try that.
Un erase everything and then delete unwanted stuff after you have confirmed that you data is back.
Do not switch your PC off in case it allows it to be recovered prior to that  

[Adept]

It is a horrible sinking feeling isn't it? I've been there mate. I have every sympathy ...

If you want to stand any chance of recovering that data, you should not use the hard drive on that PC again until you are ready to recover data from it. Which effectively means, get another hard drive, remove the old one, set the new one up with Windows XP and then and only then can you slave the old drive off the new one. Any file which is written to the old drive is likely to overwrite deleted data, so you have to be careful.

There are many Data Recovery utilities out there. My favourite is OnTrack's EasyRecovery DataRecovery which is really excellent. Sit down before you view the web page though, it's going to cost you £130

[Simon]

Bugger that!    I don't think these files will be recoverable, as I actually erased the Recycle Bin with Eraser, which is a secure data removal tool.  What I can't understand is how the deleting of these files, which were supposed to be copied to a CD, has affected the original files.  Surely that's not supposed to happen?  Fortunantely, on further investigation, it seems that it is only copies of invoices which have gone missing in the company accounts.  My boss should have paper copies of these, so I should be able to recompile things from those, but it will take me a few hours.  My own personal accounts, however, I did not have paper copies of.

Who said backing up was a good idea?  If I'd left well alone, this wouldn't have happened!

Sandra, using Eraser bypasses the Norton Recycle Bin, as it overwrites the data to US DoD standards. I already looked in there, and nothing of what I need is in there.  

I think the files have gone for good.  I'm not going to pay £130, for a chance that OnTrack might work.  What I need to do now is find out why my System Restore is not working, and how to fix it.  Any ideas appreciated.

[Clive]

I have always found System Restore to be iffy on Win XP Simon.  Have you checked that it is actually turned on (it can be disabled) and that you have asked it to make restore points?

[Simon]

Yeah, it's definitely turned on, and the restore points are there.  It goes through the complete process, including rebooting, but then says it was unsuccessful and the system has not been changed.

[Clive]

That sounds a bit worrying Simon.  The last time that happened to me was on Mrs Clive's computer and it required a re-format (ask Adept). I would back up whatever you can to be on the safe side.

[Tony]

How many times have I got to tell you lot...YOU NEED.......GOBACK DELUXE installed on your PC.

Then all you had to do was GOBACK in time....it creates a virtual Goback C:drive, or what ever at a point in time in history you chose. You then just drag and drop files from that "virtual" drive back to where they belong on your "actual" drive.

 

[Simon]

I think I've got that somewhere, Tony.  I tried it once before and don't you get some sort of splash screen at start up?  Anyway there was some reason I didn't like it, but might try it again.  Wise after the event, and all that.

On the System Restore front, I just tried an experiment.  I created a restore point, then five minutes later, tried to restore to it, and it worked.

I will hopefully be finishing my back ups tonight, of what's left,    so should anything terrible materialise over the next few days, at least I'll be somewhat prepared.

[Clive]

I've just been backing up my e-mail addresses to floppy.  What a palava it is on XP.  What used to be a 2 minute job has now become a lengthy saga.  

[Simon]

Well, I came across a deleted file recovery program, but I can't get the sodding thing to work!  It scans, it finds (although not all I wanted it to find), but it won't restore to 'C' drive, as it had to restore to a different partition, or an external drive, so I tried restoring to a CD, and it goes through the process, says 'Done', but the CD is still empty.

I'm probably doing something stupidly wrong, but I have no patience with this sort of thing.