__/ [-=rjh=-] on Saturday 17 September 2005 23:07 \__
> GMAN wrote:
>> The computer was running windows xp pro sp2. The crash was
>> basically windows could no longer see the partition. So I was
>> unable to recover any files off of the harddrive.
>
> It's too late now, but from the description (ie, Windows not being able
> to see the partition), it sounds like the data was almost certainly
> still on the hard drive and might have been recoverable given the right
> tools. If the drive was still spinning and able to read data off the
> platter the data should be recoverable using forensics tools (there are
> many free linux distributions intended for this). If the drive had just
> lost its partition table, recovery might have been quite easy, using a
> Knoppix boot CDROM.
>
> There's never any guarantees of success, but when this kind of thing
> works, to even experienced computer users, you look like a magician :-)
>
> The important thing is to not allow Windows to try to correct the
> problem or write anything to the drive. It is a little time consuming to
> do this type of recovery the first time, so I guess it depends just how
> important the data is, or how good you want to look :-)
That's a valid and good point, but I assume (without any prejudice) that
someone careless enough to avoid rapid backups of information will not wish
to go down this route, which can be super-expensive, time-consuming and
often fruitless.
I gave a talk on data recovery only days ago <
http://schestowitz.com/Speaking/2005/September/Data_Recovery/ > as people
kept losing their data and had no interest in recovery. A few of them
decided to change their practices.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
1:40pm up 24 days 1:54, 3 users, load average: 1.60, 1.06, 0.71
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