Recovering lost pictures?
 

Hi a friend of mine has lost all her pictures off her laptop of her younger sister who passed away last year, she says it was caused by her ex husband installing a programme and its deleted lots of stuff or he has out of spite:Whatever_

My question is, is there anyway to recover these? as police seem to be able to recover anything thats been on it i was wondering if there is any type of company/person/programme that could help:wonder:

Many thanks Aaron:thumb:

First off, don't install anything else on the laptop - it might well be overwriting the pictures.

Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows has a free version which can scan to tell you what it could get back.

Data recovery services, software & solutions | Ontrack data recovery UK have been around for a long time and would take your hard drive and run recovery on it. Can be a lot of ££££ though! They also have software which can scan to see what it can recover.

Ideally you would take the hard disk out of the laptop, slave it up to another PC and try to recover files from there

R-TT - FAQ

Do you know anyone who works in IT that can help you out with this? With the files being that important I wouldn't suggest trying it yourself just in case you do overwrite stuff by accident or you miss something the recovery program is telling you that isn't clear.

Having used several different programs for doing what you need they aren't that basic for someone not IT 'savvy'.

As Chris says above first thing to do is get the hard drive disconnected before any more overwriting happens. Then get it connected to another pc and do the scan Chris has linked to.

As it is a laptop drive the best thing to do to make it as simple as possible is to get hold of an external drive caddy. This is a case for the laptop hard drive that will then let you connect it to any other pc via usb port. These can be picked up for as little as a fiver from some places.

If no family or friends that are IT people do you go to any meets on here as this place is so full of IT bods you are likely to find someone at a local meet that could help.

if your local to birmingham and can get the drive to me i can do a recovery on this for you at work

i do this daily for people its my job ;)

although there is never any guarantee on this

As above really, stop using it and use a recovery program.

If you are around the South East, I don't mind doing it for you. When reparing computers I used to have to recover data. As mentioned before, I've seen way too many naked pictures of the owners of the computers :)

Steve

Just another answer backing up what has been said. If Windows has been buggered but the drive itself works, you need to hook the drive up to another machine to read the data, copy off all the pictures and stuff, reinstall the laptop and then repeat the data transfer back to the laptop (making some DVD backups at the same time just in case).

Techie bit: If it's a SATA drive you can piggy-back it into any modern desktop or use a USB adapter. If it's older style IDE you'll need to use the USB adapter or a special cable to connect internally. I too work next to Birmingham airport and live in Leicestershire and could do it if you're nearby.

on that note if you get stuck i have both IDE and SATA connectors i would be willing to send out to you
i cant imaging what it would be like to lose photos etc
if i lost my daughters baby pics id be heart broken

Tell her NOT to switch on the laptop until you have sorted this problem; If files have been properly deleted, everytime you turn it on you will damage what recoverable data there is. If its a system crash (i.e windows won't boot up), then the data may not be damaged or deleted and can be simply be copied off.

Either way the drive ideally should be removed and plugged into another working computer and then it can be examined to see what is what without damaging what may still be on there.

If files have actually beeen deleted, and also deleted from the recycle bin (worst case). I've got two peices of free software I've succesfully used to recover pictures off a reformatted drive (that had vista reinstalled on it too).

I can't remember the name of one (its installed on my other system at home), but one is called Recuva: Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

Both worked sucessfully and recovered most images (not all), but the one above is more user friendly. HOWEVER all file names are lost, and all directory structure will be lost as well, so recovered pictures will be all mixed up with other stuff and in no relevent order, and so will need to be sifted through and organised. But its better than nothing.

1. First things first: DO NOT switch on the laptop.
2. Assertain what the problem is; have the file been deleted (either manually or by reformatted or reinstalling windows) or is the Laptop suffering an error thats stopping it from working/booting up.
3. Buy a USB caddy or interface sutable for a 2.5" laptop drive (IDE or SATA - will depend on what type of drive the laptop has)
4. Remove drive from laptop, (usually behind a plastic flap underneath secured by a screw) - don't touch the PCB or pins of teh drive (static can cause damage).
5. Fit USB interface to drive, plug into extrernal computer. (turn off any automated disk scanning or error check that may pop up; depends on any anti-virus the PC may have installed).
6. Look at what is on that drive, do a file search for "*.jpg" which will show all pictures and images stored.
7. If nothing relevent is found, it may have been deleted
8. Install the mentioned Recuva software onto the PC
6. Run the above recovery software. First try the recycle bin, if no success try a deep scan. Set it to recover files from the laptop drive and store them on the PC's internal drive (you can copy them back later).
7. Sift through every recovered file; sort by size, delete the thumbnails and other rubbish (icons, avatars etc)- it will be time consuming.

What you have left is whatever pictures that are recovered. It won't have any logical file names (just random incremental numbers) and all directory structure will be lost, so you will have to reorganise it all again. Sometime the Metadata is still intact (i.e date picture was taken - assuming the date on the camera was set correctly), so that can be used to manually organise it if needed.

The alternative is to call in a IT geek who is better versed in these sitations, and also consider sending the drive off to a specialised data recovery company - I will forewarn the latter is very expensive and success is not guaranteed.

Good luck. :)

Finally, tell her to backup important files. As in copy it regularly to somewhere entirely independant of the laptop, Doesn't matter if its DVDs, another computer or external hard drive; a spare copy of something is always better than nothing.

Guys massive thanks for all the advice:notworthy

sadly i only learned of this yesterday as she only realised herself the other day. I'm quite comfortable getting the hardrive out but as B2Z said i'd rather not do this as the loss of all of them or more would be even worse if they were stil there.

Where would you get a caddy from?

thanks for the generous offers too, but unfortunately i'm up in Yorkshire:(.

Would posting it to someone be worth while? I'm sure she'd be willing to pay.

I'm trying to help as much as i can as she has been real unlucky the last few years, her mum passed away a few years earlier, her sister last year in a car crash and she's only 26.

thanks again peeps.

Aaron:thumb:

I'm sure any of us would offer to help having it to be posted to us but to be honest I wouldn't trust the hard drive being posted even recorded delivery etc. It could get chucked about and damaged or even lost in the post.

I'd say you would be better to get this sorted locally with no risk to losing the drive in the post etc if you can.

As for a caddy Play.com (UK) : External HDD Laptop USB 2.5" Hard Disk IDE Drive Enclosure : Computing - Free Delivery

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/2...sure_7783.html

Aaron. I'm in Wakefield / Leeds.

Give me a shout if you want a hand..... been doing computer forensics for a good few years now :)

If there is one person on here you want to help you get your pics back it is BuRR! I don't know BuRR but from reading his posts on here over the years he will know more than most on this topic so that's not an offer to miss.

Hiren's Boot CD 10.2 and All Other Versions - HTTP Download

Burn it to a cdr :)