I have a usb3 1TB Hitachi hdd with which I have a problem, the drive is recognised and the folders are all, bar one, displayed in the pick table but all the folder contents appear empty. I suspect the table shown is a previous one and hence the pointers are mis directing. The disk properties show 180GB used.
Before I send it away to a data recovery firm is there anything simple I can do to recover files?
AJH
Nip around to the newsagents and buy the latest Linux magazine with a free DVD on the cover. The flavour of Linux is not important. Boot it up as a "live" Linux in the machine's optical drive or from an external drive - you don't have to install anything but you may have to change the boot order in the BIOS to do this or interrupt the boot on switch-on (dabbing at during boot-up does it for me with my HP machines.) If they are still intact, you may be able to see the files and their contents and copy them onto a memory stick or external HDD using the Linux OS.
Good luck
Nick
If you did want to have a go yourself the first thing I recommend you do is take an image of the drive (various way of doing that) and then playing with that. Then, if all else fails or you make things worse, you still have the original drive to send away.
Ten, you can even run stuff like Chkdsk to see if there are any basic filesystem type faults or Testdisk to copy recover the data etc.
A simple way to clone a drive is with one of the small desktop drive cloning units (~25 quid on ebay) when you just plug the master into one bay and the destination drive (bigger or the same size as the original) into the other and press a button (do be very sure you get them the right way round re Master and Slave though!!!!).
Backups? [1] ;-(
Cheers, T i m
[1] It's because I know how 'lazy' we all are (here at home) re backups I made sure that was covered and pretty cheaply at the time with a Windows Home Server (about 50 quid for the OS at the time). Stick it on an old PC and it backs up all your PC's daily and automatically without anyone having to do a thing ... and given 'most people' (especially those who have ever lost a lot of data) don't generally bother backing stuff up (other than in the cloud possibly these days), it has proved invaluable. ;)You can restore anything from a single file to a complete bootable system.
"testdisk" is the utility you need to start with. Plenty of resources online.
If you have decent internet access you can download a CD/DVD image of one of a plethora of recovery suites that can be run from booting the media. (USB too, if your hardware supports USB boot).
Some offers of a download/key for £15 or so on eBay at the moment - prob have to run it on XP/Vista though - just a thought.
WHS (retrospectively referred to as V1) is actually Windows Server
2003 behind the user 'Dashboard', and the second (and last) version (WHS 2011, go figure) is built on Windows Server 2008 (all from memory).So, they are both stand-alone / commercial Server OS's that have been tweaked to make them user friendly for home use.
Basically both will support a maximum of 10 'Users' (that could be shared) and / or machines (unique, for backups) and are very easy to setup (you boot the CD and then follow the prompts). ;-)
We have used it (V1) in earnest at least a couple of times in the 2418 days it's been online now. Both times the hdd failed in the wife's PC and I stuck a new one in, booted the generic client recovery CD, selected her account to recover off the server (all wizard based) and around 40 minutes later she was all back up and running exactly as she was the day before. ;-)
Initially I tried to build a file / backup server using Linux but after wasting several days I gave up, spent the 50 quid and WHS was up and running a few hours later. ;-)
I have also recommended it to a few mates with small businesses and they are all equally happy (considering the cost and complexity of any alternatives that offer the same features).
The server backs up the clients then can backup both itself (and the client backups) onto another drive (I have a USB / removable). The server can be recovered in a similar way to the clients, using a recovery CD.
Why MS stopped making it I don't know. ;-(
Cheers, T i m
Before you do anything, boot your computer from a live Linux CD and copy the raw disk of the USB thing onto a file on the computers main hard drive. Then run fsck on the drive image copy, then mount the drive IMAGE and if the data is there, copy it somewhere..
Here is a rough guide how to do it
fsck should recognise a FAT drive or NTFS automnatically
Then thrwo the USB in the junk. Unless you unplugged it just after files were added without waiting for it to update the internal FAT structure.
Because linux is free and works better?
Whilst Linux can be free, my time isn't always (depending on what I'm doing).
As a general file server, I'm sure it's ok.
As an easy to configure fully automated backup solution for all our Windows PC's and laptops, not to me it wasn't.
And I would be very interested to hear from someone who actually 'knows Linux' (so not you as you are just full of bluster when it actually comes down to it) to confirm just how easy / possible it would be to duplicate the functionality I currently use and enjoy (and have done for the last 6+ years) using Linux.
eg, Once a day, a bare iron incremental (and fully retention time configurable) backup using shadow copies (so no open files are skipped) and where no files are duplicated on the server if common across all 10 client machines (saving server space). A bare iron image that I can recover using a few mouse clicks from a generic recovery CD.
Where the total server drive capacity can be created using a drive pool yet each drive could still be accessed individually and were critical data can (optionally) be forced to be duplicated across more than one drive.
And assuming I value my time at £25/hour, something I can setup in two hours without having to learn anything?
Cheers, T i m
Couldn't compete with NAS drives I expect.
I use synology NAS drives (cheap 215j). file history saves the changes every 10 minutes (or less) Then the NAS backs it up, with versioning, to another NAS overnight. The NAS drives are mirrored too.
That way I can recover any file version up to six months old.
Win10 will do file history to a "linux" server. What you do once you have one copy on the server is the interesting bit as its not a backup yet.
My servers are linux based but I don't actually need to SSH into them to do anything.
But then its a system designed for a job not a linux desktop.
That usually needs a reliable fat table though of whatever format. I think these are duplicated, but if its an old table it might get confused. Brian
Does that provide an automatic and complete 'bare iron' recovery solution with the least amount of effort?
Ok.
Ok.
Ok.
If we could get away with Linux workstations and had a Linux server, I wonder if that would make things any better from a complete and automated solution POV?
Cheers, T i m
Whilst I agree for those looking for some sort of network shared space, I question what percentage of the population have any sort of clue re networked storage etc? The number of times I see people moving files from one (networked) PC to another using Pen drives when a simple network share would do it?
That's quite 'regular'. ;-)
Not yer everyday consumer setup though eh?
And can you do a bare Iron recovery of any machine with that? The point that whist the user date is most important, much of that *can* be in the cloud these days (or spread around on Facebook etc) it can still take quite a while to re-install the OS and all the apps and prefs (assuming someone without a proper backup regime wouldn't know how to back all that up either).
Cool.
Cheers, T i m
Of course it would.
Any backup regime you want, just no expensive flashy app to do it. You might have to - gasp - set up a bit of software and write a small simple script.
Why would you want to? If its a hardware issue, you need new bare iron, and if it was a software issue, you are putting the same shit back to fail again.
Asssuming you actually are running legal sofwtare, you only need your data back - you can reinstall everything else on new iron
It can but its a bit quicker to have a disk image to install too. It can be out of date. I have one on a USB stick. You can even download the latest ISO and start with that if you want.
Which is exactly why people don't do it!
No need as mint17 runs the xp vm I post from.
I can read the files with linux but my brother swears there is a folder missing so I'll do as you say when I have a moment to dig into the depths of my brain and run the command line without destroying everything.
AJH
Copy what is there fisrt
Then
- unmount the drive
- run fsck on it
That is make or break
OTOH if your brother accidentally deleted the directory....
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