Full Destructive Recovery (Laptop)

[Ravenholm]

I had to wipe my entire drive earlier today. I lost over 100Gb of music and pictures and everything!

Everytime I kept starting the Laptop up it would come onto the desktop no probs. But trying to access a folder or Windows Media Player or anything else was a nightmare. It felt like it was taking it's time to even attempt to access anything I tried to access. Then when it did it just sat there for ages with the little circle spinning on the screen as if it was attempting to open what it was. This only started a few days ago (well close to a week more like). I've no idea what caused it or anything.

I tried system repair and disc check to see if anything came up. Either nothing came up or it crashed in the middle of accessing the repair setup. So I opted (with a broken heart of sorts) to full destructive recovery as my last option. I had no where left to turn all other options I could think of or had were used up.

And here I am back on with the laptop but at a loss of over 105Gb of stuff.

 

[tartanterrier]

I'd back your stuff up on a separate drive so you don't lose it from now on

 

[mah1407]

Had this happen to me before (on a brand new laptop none the less.) Your hard-drive is crashing. You will need to get a new one. I know it sucks, but after a while, it won't even load up at all. I've done the recovery and stuff like that so many times on the bad hard drive that I gave up and bought a new one (after taking it to best buy since it was under warranty and they even said it was a hard drive failure.) Hope this helpls.

 

[GodsEmbryo]

I'd back your stuff up on a separate drive so you don't lose it from now on

What TartanTerrier said.
I think there were some other options you could have tried to recover your data, but the damage done now. Best option is to backup your data on an external drive.

 

[Ravenholm]

I had always planned on burning most of what I wanted onto DVDs. Just never got round to it. Lesson learned I suppose. Don't dick around next time and just do it - burn it then it's done.

As for mah and what he said. It is working fine now that I did that full recovery thing. I lost everything. But it cleaned the HDD and it's all back to square one. The Laptop starts up every time and works fine now. Everything opens quickly and the internet connection WIFI works fine as well. It must just have been something I had on the HDD that the machine didn't like. I've had the laptop 2 years this October. It's fine. If it develops a fault in the next week or so then I know it will be the HDD as the problem wont be gone. If nothing happens, then it's as I think it is. Just something that was on the drive that was arguing with the laptop and caused it to be really slow or not respond. A virus or some crap like that.

If it was the HDD wouldn't it still do what it did now even after wiping the drive and starting over. The desktop and everything would still not respond. Its back to normal now though. I'll give it a week or so and we'll see how it goes down.

 

[STDiva]

That sucks. My laptop is going soon too. That's why I post from my phone. I'd **** to lose all my music. That **** takes a lot of time to import.

 

[Ravenholm]

That sucks. My laptop is going soon too. That's why I post from my phone. I'd **** to lose all my music. That **** takes a lot of time to import.

A HELL OF A LOT OF TIME TO IMPORT.

Yes indeedy. Since most of the 105Gb was Metal music.

 

[mah1407]

I had always planned on burning most of what I wanted onto DVDs. Just never got round to it. Lesson learned I suppose. Don't dick around next time and just do it - burn it then it's done.

As for mah and what he said. It is working fine now that I did that full recovery thing. I lost everything. But it cleaned the HDD and it's all back to square one. The Laptop starts up every time and works fine now. Everything opens quickly and the internet connection WIFI works fine as well. It must just have been something I had on the HDD that the machine didn't like. I've had the laptop 2 years this October. It's fine. If it develops a fault in the next week or so then I know it will be the HDD as the problem wont be gone. If nothing happens, then it's as I think it is. Just something that was on the drive that was arguing with the laptop and caused it to be really slow or not respond. A virus or some crap like that.

If it was the HDD wouldn't it still do what it did now even after wiping the drive and starting over. The desktop and everything would still not respond. Its back to normal now though. I'll give it a week or so and we'll see how it goes down.

Mine did the exact same thing. It didn't crash right away. I did the system recovery thing and it worked fine for about a month or two... then it was a week or two... then just wouldn't start. It didn't crash over night. I'm just giving you a heads up. I know a lot about computers, and I have had many of them. Don't ask me to fix your screen though or anything like that. But going back to the main topic... you will see it happen like that. Also, if it was a virus , sometimes the clearing of the hard drive doesn't help 10% of the time because some viruses can **** the harddrive completely.

 

[Ravenholm]

Time will tell on this one so it will. With any luck it was just as I said. So get lost Jonah incase you curse me! lol

 

[Prod3]

Same happened with me too...my old laptop was 9 years old & its power supply gave up and fried the internal HDD on my laptop. I had an external HDD too which had a lot of my backups on too, but when I tried to use that external HDD on my new computer it failed and lost its filing system. I knew the files were still on there but just could not access them. I was pretty gutted at the time as I thought id lost everything...pics, music & important documents... thankfully all my porn was on a separate hard drive & that one was fine (sods law lol)

In the end I decided to get someone in to recover my external HDD which cost £90...he gave me EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard and was able to get most of my data back. It did take a while but it was well worth it. It even recovered some old porn which I had previously deleted from my drive before it went wrong. The only thing I found was it did make multiple copies of some of the files though

If you havnt re-formatted the drive that went wrong already, id give EASEUS a go!

 

[Vanilla Bear]

Phew thank god it was only metal music.


Sorry about your loss R!

 

[Kingfisher]

I'd back your stuff up on a separate drive so you don't lose it from now on

External desktop drive. They're so cheap now.

 

[Ravenholm]

Same happened with me too...my old laptop was 9 years old & its power supply gave up and fried the internal HDD on my laptop. I had an external HDD too which had a lot of my backups on too, but when I tried to use that external HDD on my new computer it failed and lost its filing system. I knew the files were still on there but just could not access them. I was pretty gutted at the time as I thought id lost everything...pics, music & important documents... thankfully all my porn was on a separate hard drive & that one was fine (sods law lol)

In the end I decided to get someone in to recover my external HDD which cost £90...he gave me EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard and was able to get most of my data back. It did take a while but it was well worth it. It even recovered some old porn which I had previously deleted from my drive before it went wrong. The only thing I found was it did make multiple copies of some of the files though

If you havnt re-formatted the drive that went wrong already, id give EASEUS a go!

By using the full destructive recovery option. It wiped the entire drive and reinstalled windows. More or less putting it back to the position it was when it first came out the box. It's running fine at the moment. So I'll just keep an eye on things see how they go for the time being. I just need to remember that if I get like a DVDs worth of pictures or music or whatever BURN IT TO DISC ASAP!. Keep the drive from clogging up with stuff. Easier said that done. Y'all know how tempting it is to let things mount up when you have a large and empty HDD hehe.

Phew thank god it was only metal music.


Sorry about your loss R!

Heathen!

It's not the first time it happened. I remember it happening with a PC I had one time. I lost like 65Gb of music and movies I had erm... got from Santa hehe. The fucking thing wouldn't start up one time and I had to format and lost the lot. What made it less painful was that I couldn't remember everything I had lost. So what you can't remember you can't be disappointed about I guess.

External desktop drive. They're so cheap now.

Definitely an option for the future me thinks. Yes indeedy. Definitely.

 

[tartanterrier]

You can get a 1Tb HDD out of Maplin for £40.That should do the job

 

[Rey C.]

External desktop drive. They're so cheap now.

^^^This^^^

I know what it's like to lose a drive and not have a full back up (although I've never lost everything) - it is painful. But yeah, the price of external drives is dirt cheap now. I have my data backed up on three different external drives now, including an Apple Time Capsule. The Time Capsule wasn't exactly cheap but it serves as more than just a backup drive. The other two I paid about $100 each for them and have about 1TB of storage combined on those two (2TB on the Time Capsule). I'm sure they're even cheaper now. And no, it doesn't take that long to do a backup. Depending on the type of drive that you have, it's not that bad - except for the first time maybe. On the first go-around, I set my backup in motion, went to bed and when I woke up, it was done.

Depending on the nature of your data, you just have to weigh which is more painful: buying a backup drive and doing the backups or losing all your data when (not if) your hard drive crashes & burns.

 

[Ravenholm]

Yeah an external drive will be bought at sometime down the line. Untill then I'll watch what I'm doing for the time being. I'm definitely getting an external one though soon.

Spank you all who have responded