Recovering lost movies

May 24, 2005 7:40 AM

Entire drive crashed and lost all the data it contained. We've used lots of programs so far and managed to recover music, photos and movies that are less than 20. We are looking to recover movies that are over 20 but not having much luck. There are tons of really expensive programs but we don't want to shell out w/o some sort of idea how they work or if they are effective. HELP!
posted by mscatch22 to computers & internet (10 comments total)

"Less than 20?"
posted by grouse at 7:48 AM on May 24, 2005

20 whats?

Units of measure are your friends.
posted by jdroth at 8:18 AM on May 24, 2005

Sorry! 20 MB.
posted by mscatch22 at 8:25 AM on May 24, 2005

What operating system / type of drive / type of computer are you using?
posted by bshort at 9:11 AM on May 24, 2005

How did your drive crash? What are the "lots of programs" you've used before?

Don't make us play 20 questions (no pun intended). Help us help you.
posted by grouse at 9:16 AM on May 24, 2005

For data recovery, unfortunately, you're probably going to have to shell out some dough.

The best, in my experience, is R-Studio.

Also, if you're near a University, the Central Computing Services department (or Info Sci program or Comp Sci program) might have a data recovery lab and they'd do it for free, as a community service (or simply to practice). One of the good things about data recovery labs is that the "writing" head/pins have been physically removed, so it's not possible to further damage the data; just to read off the disk. (This has applications in computer forensics, for example.)
posted by chota at 11:16 AM on May 24, 2005

Another vote for R-Studio.
posted by BrandonAbell at 12:34 PM on May 24, 2005

And on the same "20 Questions" note, it might help to read this.
posted by bshort at 1:55 PM on May 24, 2005

chota, BrandonAbell: You guys are jumping the gun considering the OP never even told us what platform is being used.

What bshort said.
posted by grouse at 3:18 PM on May 24, 2005

Here is the method I used the last time I had a hard drive die. IBM has a similar set of instructions, in more detail.
posted by QIbHom at 3:29 PM on May 24, 2005