Computers: Hard drive recovery question

I recently had to reformat my hard drive as I lost/corrupted my password and could not gain access to my admin A/C no matter how hard or what I tried (several "hacking type programs).

When I reformatted my hard drive, I lost some programs which had files stored within the programs.

What is the best way to recover these files that are stored within programs? I have Windows 7, and there is a section called Windows.old in my OS, but I cannot find the program that I used to have.

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm no computer genius if I am completely honest, but if you use a 10 pound hammer I'm sure you would come right Valve :D

How critical are these? The first thing to getting your data out will have been *not* to format your hard drive! But you've done that which makes it all 10x more difficult :(

Valve. What you've done is somewhat like rolling your car on its side to service it and then asking how to fix the panel damage.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Valve. What you've done is somewhat like rolling your car on its side to service it and then asking how to fix the panel damage.

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OK! It is a new computer with very little in the way of files which I desperately needed to recover as I had taken the hard drive out of my old PC and have it in a workable case.

I went on a short holiday down to Apollo Bay, and when I returned I found I could not access my administrator account, and hence could not add programs or play my MechWarrior4 MekTek game.

I called DELL, and they tried to help, but to no avail. They even steered me to http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolso...phcracksbs.htm and I spent a whole day trying that, to no avail. This is probably because I now realised that I did not uninstall my McAfee security.

So! I re-formatted my hard drive and everything is working again, but I did lose one set of files which was embedded into a program; no big deal as it was not all that important and I can probably reproduce them anyway.

But I want to learn how to recover stuff from a drive which has been reformatted simply because I read somewhere that all the stuff is still on the hard drive. I don't have much to do anyway, and I really want to know/learn something about files/program recovery from a hard drive.

Let's just say that I am really not worried - just want to learn, that's all.

P.S. I will have to re-install MechWarrior4, and then patch the program twice using my admin powers, that's all.

PPS. I am a little annoyed that I bought a PC because I just found out that Costco has reduced an ACER notebook from $1400 to $1000, and it has an i7 core, huge hard drive, lotsa memory, and can play Blu-ray. Had I waited 4 months, I'd have bought this ACER notebook instead. :bigcry: And at Costco, if I don't like it, I can return it within 3 months and get my money back. :bigcry:

valve you could always try any of these software:
a freeware:
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html

payware:
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywi...-partition.htm

i have not tried any of them myself so i cant tell you if it will work or not.

It's a complicated process and not something you'd want to be attempting just for a laugh!

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Originally Posted by Mark

It's a complicated process and not something you'd want to be attempting just for a laugh!

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Thanks. I think I'll give that a miss right now.
I'm sure Daniel will breath a sigh of relief. :p :

Dude if you reformatted the drive that the files are on you need to go take a course in forensics. they may still be on the drive until you overwrite them with something else. Your mistake was reformatting the drive before you recovered your files.

You can try and plug it into a mac and it will see any files that are readable.

My humble advice:
Preventive action is always easier to implement than recovery!
Try making regular backups of your computers hard drive and you then you can sleep in peace.

Otherwise as long as your hard drive was not encrypted you should have first copied the relevant data from it using a docking station and then format it.
:)

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Originally Posted by ioan

My humble advice:
Preventive action is always easier to implement than recovery!
Try making regular backups of your computers hard drive and you then you can sleep in peace.

Otherwise as long as your hard drive was not encrypted you should have first copied the relevant data from it using a docking station and then format it.
:)

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Or simply asking people what to do before going and formatting your HDD. I would have recommended using a boot disc to kill the administrator password on the machine.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Or simply asking people what to do before going and formatting your HDD. I would have recommended using a boot disc to kill the administrator password on the machine.

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Right!

Do you have a spare HDD Valve?
Laptop or desktop?

Drop me a PM if you like, I might be able to help you out.

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Originally Posted by Roamy

Dude if you reformatted the drive that the files are on you need to go take a course in forensics. they may still be on the drive until you overwrite them with something else. Your mistake was reformatting the drive before you recovered your files.

You can try and plug it into a mac and it will see any files that are readable.

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Nah. No need to do that. It's very hard to erase anything off a hard drive. Most things should be recoverable, however some things will end up corrupted.

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Originally Posted by Ghostwalker

valve you could always try any of these software:
a freeware:
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html

payware:
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywi...-partition.htm

i have not tried any of them myself so i cant tell you if it will work or not.

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I can vouch for Easeus, it works well. You need a slave HDD for it to work properly though. And their English is horrendous. :p

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Or simply asking people what to do before going and formatting your HDD. I would have recommended using a boot disc to kill the administrator password on the machine.

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Daniel - I tried doing that for several hours. Unfortunately, without access to my admin A/C, I could not disable my McAfee, and none of the above programs worked. Believe me, I tried.

Since the PC was new, and everything was newly installed, I had very few files on it that was not expendable, so I finally thought:"Buger-it", and just reformatted the hard drive.

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Originally Posted by Koz

Do you have a spare HDD Valve?
Laptop or desktop?

Drop me a PM if you like, I might be able to help you out.



Nah. No need to do that. It's very hard to erase anything off a hard drive. Most things should be recoverable, however some things will end up corrupted.

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Yes Koz! I do have a spare hard drive, and also a spare laptop. As I mentioned above, I just want to learn something and see if I can recover some files on my re-formatted hard drive. Success would be one helluva achievement.

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

Daniel - I tried doing that for several hours. Unfortunately, without access to my admin A/C, I could not disable my McAfee, and none of the above programs worked. Believe me, I tried.

Since the PC was new, and everything was newly installed, I had very few files on it that was not expendable, so I finally thought:"Buger-it", and just reformatted the hard drive.

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You obviously weren't doing it right, you don't boot into windows so you don't need to deal with any AV, you boot with the boot disc. Just a couple of months ago I had to kill an admin account on a PC at work and it worked just fine.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

You obviously weren't doing it right, you don't boot into windows so you don't need to deal with any AV, you boot with the boot disc. Just a couple of months ago I had to kill an admin account on a PC at work and it worked just fine.

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I haDN'T MADE A BOOT DISC YET AT THE TIME - NOW i HAVE. :(

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

so I finally thought:"Buger-it", and just reformatted the hard drive.

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Sometimes this is the easiest way!

Try Piriform Ricuva freeware. I have not needed it yet, but it "sees" files dating back to 2005 (though admitedly unrecoverable)

Hey Valve - What part of "screwed" are you not getting???