Good recovery tools for PC?

  • Thread starter Livada
  • Start date
Livada

Livada

Artist and photographer
Towns Folk
Recently my boyfriend lost all of his data on his removable hard disk. Long story short he wanted to install Windows 10 on it but he didn't know the hard drive would optimize for OS and erase all of the data (it's kinda logical but nevermind that).
The files wouldn't even matter if he didn't have about 500 movies on it and so many songs. And now it's all gone. So can anyone recommend any good recovery tools?

We tried Recuva but it didn't do good, the movies were in pieces and most of the files were named [00001], [00002], [00003] and so on.
 
Shouldn't this post be in the technology section? :p

If the files are coming out like that then it's quite possible that the files are just coming out corrupted. Unfortunately, the only one I'd recommend is Recuva.

It's very possible that by installing the OS onto that drive, it's overwritten the old data causing it to be unrecoverable. Not everything is like movies where they make out any deleted files are 100% recoverable unfortunately...
 
As stated above, you more-a-less rewrote each and every single file on the hard drive. This corrupts the files that you had on the hard drive because they are no unrecognisable to the new OS. This creates issues such as files not being recoverable or files that won't open post-installation. This is why a lot of people dual boot whenever possible if your PC can handle it. Regardless, the only program I can credit with personal usage would be Recuva, I have never used any other program for recovering files... so if that hasn't worked your boyfriend may be doing a lot more downloading in the near future.
 
Shouldn't this post be in the technology section? :p
Click to expand...
I forgot in what section I put it in but I thought it would fit best,_, thanks for placing it in proper place :3

Ah, I see that's what I thought. Well then, we should start downloading, luckily I have unlimited Internet :3 a little slow but it's still unlimited ;-;

 
Sometimes the best recovery method is having a good back up system. For example when I knew my first laptop's hard drive was failing it was recommended to me to back up what I wanted to keep. I did just that and when I bought a new laptop I was then able to transfer my data and etc. to the new laptop. It's also good practice to periodically back up your stuff too. Especially things that are precious to you like photos, family videos and so on. Personally I use a Seagate hard drive powered by the USB port. It was reasonably priced at the time of my need to back stuff up. There are others out there some with external power sources that seem to be more robust in storage capacity. Pick a external hard drive that fits your needs and wants.
 
Sometimes the best recovery method is having a good back up system. For example when I knew my first laptop's hard drive was failing it was recommended to me to back up what I wanted to keep. I did just that and when I bought a new laptop I was then able to transfer my data and etc. to the new laptop. It's also good practice to periodically back up your stuff too. Especially things that are precious to you like photos, family videos and so on. Personally I use a Seagate hard drive powered by the USB port. It was reasonably priced at the time of my need to back stuff up. There are others out there some with external power sources that seem to be more robust in storage capacity. Pick a external hard drive that fits your needs and wants.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more although that isn't entirely useful after the fact considering what seems to be the necessary re-downloading time. On this note, however, I too would highly recommend investing in a good hard drive/USB port e.t.c. as to prevent this from happening again and to save the struggle of going all this again. Alternatively, although I did previously recommend recuva (and still only recommend such) if you desperately want the files back through recovery it may be worth checking out some of the other programs on this site:

http://alternativeto.net/software/recuva/

Hope this helps as well, been down this road! Good luck!
 
Thanks everyone, decided to let it go, what's done is done and we started to redownload music as well as some movies. It's gonna take a while but it will be worth it :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: 28142
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top