Damaged harddrive-- need to recover one particular file, but due to the damage, only perhaps 30% of the file is intact. What tools are available to just pull that 30% back? [more inside]
posted by Static Vagabond on Oct 15, 2009 - 4 answers

FileSystemHelp: I really messed up while installing Windows 7. I wasn't paying attention and marked my secondary drive for deletion (clicked on the drive, clicked delete). I then realized that this was my 1TB drive, with all of my files and pictures on it. [more inside]
posted by B(oYo)BIES on Aug 2, 2009 - 4 answers

Did my fiance's computer bork my thumb drive, and what can I do to get my data back? [more inside]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi on Jul 29, 2009 - 11 answers

Any alternatives to Norton Ghost for fbf recovery? [more inside]
posted by Jezztek on Jul 11, 2009 - 6 answers

500GB internal SeaGate hard drive disappears from Windows, Linux, and the BIOS. What can I try before I pay to have the data recovered? [more inside]
posted by Avenger50 on Jul 3, 2009 - 10 answers

Computer has "disk read error press ctrl + alt + delete" problem. I would like to get the data off it, and put it on a new computer. Is this something I can get fixed and then get the data off of it? Or do I need to pay out the nose for a data recovery person? [more inside]
posted by dios on Jun 9, 2009 - 20 answers

My external hard drive seems to have stopped working. Is there any way to get my data off of it and onto another drive? [more inside]
posted by reenum on Oct 14, 2008 - 6 answers

I have a legacy CDRW which shows up empty when mounted in either Linux or Windows. Extracting an iso image under linux via dd yields greppable strings which indicate files are hiding inside. How do I extract the files without knowing what format or filesystem they are in? [more inside]
posted by benzenedream on Oct 1, 2008 - 4 answers

I know there are dozens of data recovery question on here, but nothing that appears to address my specific question. I have an Apple Powerbook G4 laptop running 10.4.1. In preparing to sell the machine I transferred a bunch of files across to an external drive, then deleted them, emptied the trash and deleted the entire user account (while telling it not to store a disc image of that account.) Since then nothing has been written to or deleted from the disk. Now I find that not all of my files were successfully copied to the external drive so I've lost a lot of data. In particular I would like to save just one folder full of Excel spreadsheets - my past few months of accounting. What is the likelihood of being able to achieve this, either myself or using a data recovery company?
posted by skylar on Sep 28, 2008 - 6 answers

My external hard drive just crashed so can anyone suggest a Portland, OR, based data recovery service?
posted by tangyraspberry on Aug 25, 2008 - 9 answers

I am having a very unusual problem with my hard drive and CANNOT recover any data from it after trying numerous methods. Please help me with your technical expertise. [more inside]
posted by deafmute on Jun 29, 2008 - 7 answers

Recovering iPhone data to OS X 10.5.2. [more inside]
posted by Lucy2Times on Mar 26, 2008 - 5 answers

Recommendations for 'No Install' CD recovery software for a thumb drive? [more inside]
posted by whatisish on Oct 17, 2007 - 3 answers

Hard drive data recovery: Possible to get a reasonable price for it? [more inside]
posted by mikeand1 on Jun 11, 2007 - 14 answers

A couple days ago, my MacBook was stolen by one of my (high school) students. Due to the tireless work of school police and the principal, I now have it back. However, there is a great deal of data missing: pictures, music, documents, and (of course) my GRADEBOOK. Before you say it: Yes, I know I should have backed up to an external hard drive. I know MeFites have recommended companies like DriveSavers to do off-site data recovery, but I'm looking for something I can just download and do myself. I've found a few utilities available for download but I'm not finding anything that would work on an Intel MacBook. Any ideas, other than time travel and an external hard drive?
posted by elisabeth r on May 4, 2007 - 14 answers

Data Recovery Filter. I stupidly deleted (about 1 GB worth of) some precious .avi files on a DVD-RW with Toast's 'Quick Erase' feature. Data Rescue II can't find anything, and disk utility won't even mount the DVD-RW disk. (OS 10.4.7) Any way to 'un-screw' the pooch on this one, short of sendning it out to a data mining firm?
posted by rudster on Apr 19, 2007 - 3 answers

I was attempting to resize the partitions on my laptop when accidentally my laptop shut down and now I can't boot back into windows. [more inside]
posted by sk381 on Apr 4, 2007 - 10 answers

So, my friend, a new Mac user, accidentally deleted roughly five years worth of personal photos from his computer. Yeah. Is there any way to get them back? [more inside]
posted by chichimimizu on Mar 10, 2007 - 18 answers

OSXfilter: Accidental overwrite of various account files. Can recovery be done? [more inside]
posted by jadepearl on Jan 17, 2007 - 7 answers

I have a SATA hard drive with all my data (yeah, I was just about to implement a backup scheme with rsync...), and my Ubuntu installation shit the bed. I'm back up, but the partition table on that drive is kablooey. It is formated ext3, and I have little reason to suspect that the data is not there. Are there any good tools for restoring a partition table on ext3, or can this be done natively? Gparted shows the file system marked as ext3, but with a warning about not being able to open dumpe2fs. [more inside]
posted by adampsyche on Dec 12, 2006 - 5 answers

Please help me find a particular Samsung SP4002H 40GB hard drive and save my data. [more inside]
posted by Asef Jil on Dec 8, 2006 - 3 answers

My motherboard died, and now I need to hook the harddrives up to another PC to get the data off. Problem: Some of it was in the "My Documents" folder, and I can't get to it without being logged on to an admin account. I have no way of doing that, since I can't boot from the old windows installation anymore. [more inside]
posted by borkingchikapa on Sep 16, 2006 - 4 answers

So, my friend's harddrive got wiped. Lost a year's worth of high-res artwork. Does anyone have experience with using a data recovery service? I'm looking specifically for price information, how much data was retrievable, and potentially a recommendation. [more inside]
posted by still on Aug 28, 2006 - 18 answers

HDD disaster! Almost all the data I own in the world was on a HDD that got dropped on the floor while spinning (the drive was spinning, not me). [more inside]
posted by dg on Aug 24, 2006 - 9 answers

I have a harddrive with Windows XP that was accidently reimaged. During the image process the partition table was delete and recreate, the drive was reformatted and the file allocation table is wipe. Data was rewritten to the drive. Am I screwed? [more inside]
posted by bleucube on Aug 18, 2006 - 9 answers

Can I recover data (pictures) from a bad DVD-R? [more inside]
posted by bingwah on Jul 31, 2006 - 8 answers

Gah! The monitor on my Dell laptop decided to die last night. I could really use the files on my hard drive right about now. Where can I take it? [more inside]
posted by Saucy Intruder on May 7, 2006 - 23 answers

i lost a partition in a reformat, but the data is still on my harddrive. i want to get the data off. i have r-studio, but not enough disk space on the existing partition to put the other data on it, and i thought i shouldn't create a new partition to put the data on, as that could mess up remaining data. i don't have an external harddrive. is there any way i can safely get the data off? thanks! [more inside]
posted by willmillar on Apr 7, 2006 - 7 answers

Does anyone know of a good undelete tool for Mac OS X (10.4.x) that can recover AVI files from an external (FAT32) drive? [more inside]
posted by Chunder on Mar 13, 2006 - 3 answers

Help, I've just saved over a massive PowerPoint file! [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Mar 2, 2006 - 8 answers

Recommended data recovery places in New York City, specifically Manhattan? It shouldn't be a huge problem, but I don't want to just pick a name from the Yellow Pages. There is, of course, [more inside]
posted by booksandlibretti on Feb 28, 2006 - 11 answers

Is there any hope for my dying/dead Serial ATA drive? [more inside]
posted by Venadium on Feb 8, 2006 - 9 answers

I need to find people who can recover data from a broken hard-drive (featured previously here) I am in London (London, England that is) but Googling brings up such an array of hits I don't know how to choose. [more inside]
posted by Kiwi on Feb 8, 2006 - 10 answers

Can anyone recommend a company/service in the UK to recover data from a USB key?
posted by plep on Feb 1, 2006 - 7 answers

I'm having trouble recovering my data from my external HDD after I used Carbon Cloner for Mac 10.4.3. [more inside]
posted by SeizeTheDay on Dec 18, 2005 - 7 answers

I screwed up and plugged the wrong power supply into a hard drive enclosure. After the sickly smell of fried electronics wafted up to my nose, I freaked out, unplugged everything, and disassembled the enclosure. The electronics controlling the enclosure? All fine. The hard drive, not so much. One of the IC's on the drive's controller PCB is fried. My question -- is this normal design for a hard drive enclosure? It seems to me that if the enclosure recieves incorrect voltages, it would be common sense to design some failsafe idiot-proofing to keep said incorrect voltages from reaching and frying the drive. [more inside]
posted by adamkempa on Nov 13, 2005 - 7 answers

What are the best tools to protect a MacOS computer from disaster? [more inside]
posted by xorowo on Oct 27, 2005 - 7 answers

I'm hoping to recover some corrupted files that (I think) got messed up during a transfer to a Firewire drive. Could you be a lamb and step inside? [more inside]
posted by Hankins on Aug 30, 2005 - 0 answers

I'm seeking recommendations for hard drive data recovery... [more inside]
posted by docpops on Jul 5, 2005 - 16 answers

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 on May 24, 2005 - 10 answers

Is it at all possible to recover deleted files from OS X? What if they were deleted 6 months ago? [more inside]
posted by rough on May 18, 2005 - 10 answers

Is there any way to recover data from an external USB 2/Firewire hard drive that has apparently decided to stop working? [more inside]
posted by cathodeheart on May 11, 2005 - 7 answers

Data recovery, OS X, on an accidentally initialized hard drive. The guy at the shop has informed my brother that files are basically unrecoverable under those circumstances - something to do with how OS X installs a new system or some such. Is this so? [more inside]
posted by furiousthought on Nov 27, 2004 - 7 answers

Is there any way to recover files saved under a temporary profile in Windows XP? (MI) [more inside]
posted by brookedel on Oct 21, 2004 - 4 answers

My old computer died (complex, but non-HD-related). I've got a new computer. The old computer had 2 drives in a RAID 0 (striping) setup. Is there a way to get the data off them, assuming no possibility of reviving the old computer? (The new machine does have a RAID controller)
posted by davebug on Sep 20, 2004 - 4 answers

Oh dear. Mac data recovery question. One of my coursemates accidentally deleted her final year degree coursework when trying to free up some disk space on her G4. [More Inside] [more inside]
posted by armoured-ant on Mar 3, 2004 - 6 answers