Data Recovery

[madmax]

I have been using a Seagate external hard drive to back up my laptop. My granddaughter while visiting for a few weeks put the drive on the carpeted floor under the bed :crazy:

'Something', went wrong with the laptop and my son had to re-install Vista and I lost all my data, docs, pics, emails, and settings. Hell - everything, but I thought is was all on the back-up external drive. Well, that's not the case. Someone said, it was 'fried' from being on the carpet without ventilation.

Does anyone have any suggestions, recommendations.

Thanks :(

[canetoad]

1. 'Fried' is such a lovely technical term

And it's generally used by people who know fuck-all about computers.

Most external drives don't have a fan or much ventilation. Now a computer placed under a desk on carpet is another thing - open it up and you will find a thick mat of carpet fibres, pet hair and the ubiquitous dust.

Now you said your backups were not on the drive; this is where the investigation needs to begin with some questions;

- Does the drive still work? Can you plug it in to another machine and manually copy files to and from it?

If you can, it is certainly not 'fried' and the question reverts to 'Where are your previous backup files?'

-Did you use software (probably bundled with the drive) to automatically back up your data?

If you did, is there anything at all remaining on the drive? At this point I'm thinking of a software error or possibly something done accidentally by your niece that deleted your backups.

If the drive doesn't work at all, ie you plug it in, doesn't show in My Computer - the chances are that the hard drive itself is fine but the electronics in the case are buggered. This happens more often that you think.

The solution is to disassemble the external drive case and try the hard drive connected to another computer. There is a high probability that you can recover any data on the drive.....

...but the first action is to find out whether the drive is working or not. :)

[Duer 157099]

2. As canetoad mentions above, more info is needed

More than likely, you will be able to recover the data. But we need to understand the problem first.

Perhaps post the model of the drive, and then describe the symptoms exactly.

[madmax]

5. I'm working some of this out with the granddaughter

She bought me the back-up last year. I think I have to wait until after Turkey Day to get this all together. I'm useless when it comes to this and it's a little harder than usual this past year.

Thanks - I'll kick this post up if it drops like a rock, when I see the Princess on Wednesday. I should have waited to post.

[struggle4progress]

3. How old is your granddaughter? And what did she actually do with the drive?

If she's preschool and grabbed the drive and thumped it around a bit, it may be mechanically damaged

If she's a teenager and you were letting her use your laptop with the backup drive attached, and she put it carefully under the bed, it might be a different story: maybe she unplugged the backup drive without a first "safely remove hardware"?

[madmax]

4. She's 20 years old and I won't really know

what the hell she did until Wednesday. She's flying in for Thanksgiving. After I feed her I may beat her. ;)

She just put it under the bed because she didn't want it on the nightstand. :(

[struggle4progress]

6. Eh, just remember how adorable she was as an infant and toddler, and enjoy watching her chow down

It's too bad you reinstalled the OS on the laptop before trying to recover some stuff

If you plug everything in, can you connect to the external drive and see anything there?

[madmax]

7. No - But, I did make hard copies

and iirc - I think I made a copy of the most important documents to a thumb drive. Now to find it :think:

Oh, yes - she was a gorgeous baby. Always smiling, never cried. NOW! High maintenance PITA. Damn hormones ruined a really sweet kid :evilgrin: