Ever had a PC total disaster?

[Scylla]

I'm venting here

For the past several days, and all day today, I've been trying to help my Iranian friend, over the phone, with his PC.

Thing is, this guy is an architect, he's no dimwit... except when it comes to computers, the very basics. My brother put a new hard drive in for him several years ago - partitioned the drive and explained to him that all his data should be saved to D-drive. I, too, have emphasised this many times.

My friend doesn't "housekeep" his PC so it's been crawling for months, and today we took the drastic step of formatting C-drive and reinstalling Windows. Been at it ALL DAY, because it's over the phone and everything has to be said umpteen times, including "You do realise that you will lose EVERYTHING on C, don't you?!".

Transpires that he thought that when my brother had told him "Everything you save goes to D-drive", he thought it would automatically go there without him telling it to. This doesn't wash because I've also told him the same thing in different words, and I told him to check C before we formatted it, but it was so cluttered up...

He has lost several years' worth of legal correspondence relating to a court case in which he has already had £65,000 worth of costs awarded against him, and he has to go to court again in a couple of weeks' time.

I've told him that the only solution is for him to take the drive to a professional and pay a lot of money to get the files recovered. Dunno if any of you know anyone reliable?





scylla

[Chrissie]

OMG Scylla

I used someone local to me to try & retrieve pics & documents off my lappy hard drive last year when it died. Sadly they couldn't retrieve anything Hope he has better luck.

All I can suggest is that he DOESN'T take it to PC World - have heard to many bad stories about them.

[jerryrm]

Scyll, when someone deletes a file, only the first letter is actually deleted, so a guru can retrieve the file. A reformat wipes out everything on the hard drive, there's no way that anything can be recovered. Sorry.

[Perpetua]

I know a genius chap Scylla, who used to train Apple engineers and now works for himself . . . sadly my drivel will be of no use to you as you're miles away . . . all I can say is, with the computing crisis I've had, young Lloyd has come round with a plug in type box . . . plugged in to my ailing computer, pulled out all the documents/pictures ( can't do emails ) out of it and put them, miraculously into a new PC.

I have absolutely no idea of how this is done, but Lloyd is always quite pleased.

[Lilac]

I thought that too Jerry, but i just googled it, look....

www.computing.net/answers/hardware/find-files-after-format/57011.html

not that im suggesting you try to talk him through using one of these progs Scylla, an expert is defo the way to go...

i know there's ads in my local weekly paper for stuff like that, get him to look at his maybe?

good luck sweetie just thought, does he not have tech guys who maintain the computers at his office, if he works in one?

[jerryrm]

Interesting, Anne. The chances of recovery are pretty slim, but maybe it's possible.

[Lilac]

Oh dear, i hope so Jerry, poor architect man

[Scylla]

My friend works from home, if at all.

I know that data can be recovered, with difficulty, after formatting; after formatting and reinstalling the OS it's even more difficult. Whatever is recovered will be unrecognisable, probably

I found him a well-established local PC shop that would attempt recovery, now he says that he's going to a "friend of a friend" to save money. "Saving money" is partly why we're in this situation in the first place.

Thanks for all your sympathetic responses

scylla

[Chrissie]

Oh dear, in this instance, he really needs to forget about saving money

[Scylla]

I just phoned for an update - he's took the whole PC to the guy with a spare monitor (he was thinking the guy might only have laptop) but the monitor didn't work so he had to make another trip. It's just typical, everything goes wrong.

The guy asked "was it a quick format or a slow one", and when Tofigh said "slow" he replied that there was little hope

scylla

[jerryrm]

I was afraid of that, Scylla. A "slow" format, really cleans off the disk.

[Chrissie]

(((Scylla))) please don't beat yourself up about this, it's not your fault

When the hard drive died on my lappy I was gutted that I lost so much that couldn't be retrieved, not the same thing I know, but it was still 100% my fault for not backing things up!

[Perpetua]

As Chris says ((( Scylla ))) . . . you absolutely mustn't beat yourself up about this anymore . . . it's the sole responsibility of any PC owner, no matter how proficient they are or not to back up their data . . . especially if it is as important as your friend is leading you to believe.

[Scylla]

I deliberately chose the slow format so's to do a thorough job because the drive was so seized up

I know it's not my fault, but still I wish I had insisted he'd brought it over here. But you never know what "might have been". We shall await developments.

I'm terrible at not backing up, Chrissie - I used to save stuff on CDs but I don't have a CD/DVD drive on this netbook and am too lazy to get out the external thingy.

scylla

[jerryrm]

Scylla, it was his responsibility to backup all his information, not yours.