Well ordinarily I would suggest people only put their "good" files on a Linux computer.

It won't let you reformat a drive as easily as Winblows will.


Aside from that, install the following program on your computer. If the files are recoverable, it will recover them.

Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download


Good luck,


Rick

 

Update, Im making progress returning things to there proper places ,Iv got my desktop back, and Im moveing pictures now, but I ended up with 7 copies of everything so Im takeing it slow moving and deleting and its working. SO Id like to give a big FTE thank you to all of you for helping.

 

thank you for making me paranoid, time to copy a bunch of stuff to the ol flashdrive...

 

Flash drives are best for temporary storage. When something goes missing from them, it is almost impossible to recover. Ask me how I know.... And they are very cheaply made.

I have an external hard drive that automatically backs up all files, even ones I delete, even previous versions of files I've modified. It cost $80. Even with that for convenience I burn a DVD of critical personal files and throw it in a storage box.

 

Don't beat yourself up over it. Anyone who has computer savvy has at one time or another ventured into the suicide world of the lost. Just rebuild and it will all fade into the past.

 

2 of the above comments are SPOT on accurate - yes RECUVA is the bomb, I recovered a full 2 terrabytes of data and got everything except 3 files. this after the user reinstalled windows (fresh) over the top of her drive (formatted too).

Yes thumbdrives / flash drives are NOT a backup medium - their average life with daily use is 7 months - when they fail, write them off it is NOT cost effective to recover, never store anything on a flash you don't back up and never use flash as a backup.

Ross has the best idea, using an external drive (google "seagate freeagent") an external enclosure / separate power supply with incrimental backup software is the way to do it right.

I'm a programmer / server admin / etc - it's my job to be the computer guru... so far I managed to recover 90% of data when a user comes in lost..... the only major time I've lost: my stuff, when the service area became corrupt on a seagate 7200.10 (notorious for failures - only fix is to open the drive and $$$$$$$$) and I did not have a backup. - do as I say, not as I do... computer techs are the worst for adhering to good backup religion.

 

After you have recovered as much as you can and you have backed everything up make sure that you don't have a hard drive that is about to fail. Some drives have a built in safety program called SMART that will warn you provided that you have it turned on. Regardless you should run a check on your computer (virus and hard drive) as I'm sure that you don't want to do this again. If you find a virus make sure that you check your new backup drive too as you may have transferred the virus to that drive.

If you find no problems you may want to consider doing what I did after I had too many unexplainable problems with Bill Gates experimental software . . . Go out and buy a Mac. A good OS should be designed so that when you mess with screen or mouse setting you can't wipe out the hard drive. Sorry, just my 2 cents.

One final safeguard that you might consider is transferring your best pictures to albums here on FTE.

 

Great suggestions guys! Now, how do you recover your lost pictures on your Iphone when you accidently "restore" it?

 

If you are syncing with iTunes it stores copies in iPhoto. If you are using Bill Gates experimental software (Windows) it treats the iPhone like any other digital camera. Try this Google search for more info: iphone windows picture storage

Good luck,

 

Seeing all of this made me think of a friend of mine who is a photobug. He has thousands of pictures & we discussed how to keep digital photos.

Hard drives on computers have a finite life and will eventually crash, so back up anything you want to keep. Burning pictures to a CD is OK but burnable CD's have a roughly 5 year life in storage, so that is a temporary way to feel good. My friend says two backups is a good thing to do. With removable hard drives being as cheap as they are now, burn copies of your pics to two removable hard drives.

Now for Eugene's other advice....keep one of the removable hard drives somewhere else.....in your office at work maybe. If your house burns down, or someone breaks in and takes your computer, you'll have those files stored safely somewhere else.

It's all easy to say, but your have to make a note to re-do the back-up once in a while to catch your newest pics. The same advice goes for any important files that you have.

Dan