let there be a way to recover my stolen data from the ethers
December 16, 2012 4:20 PM Subscribe
My stolen windows laptop was recovered, but everything on it is gone. Can I regain my documents and media?
When I turned it on again for the first time, the user account had been replaced with another and my user account was gone. Perhaps windows was reinstalled, or the harddrive was simply wiped by whoever stole the laptop. Is there a way for me to get back the many gb of music and documents that I have lost? Any help is greatly appreciated.
When I turned it on again for the first time, the user account had been replaced with another and my user account was gone. Perhaps windows was reinstalled, or the harddrive was simply wiped by whoever stole the laptop. Is there a way for me to get back the many gb of music and documents that I have lost? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Response by poster: thanks, i will leave it untouched for now!
posted by KingoftheWhales at 5:24 PM on December 16, 2012
posted by KingoftheWhales at 5:24 PM on December 16, 2012
If its not your area of expertise (and given the wording of your question I'm going to work on that assumption) then you may well be better off getting a professional to take a look at it to be honest. I hesitate to suggest this because its not actually that much of a hard task if they're just going to recover from the quick format that qxntpqbbbqxl described, but even so, if you're desperate for your files then its probably your best bet. If your location is set correctly in your user profile, it looks like there are a lot of shops near to you, go for a walk and talk to some of them, go for whoever seems best.
Just to reiterate, leave it off until the shop can take a look at it.
Glad your laptop got recovered!
(in future Google Drive and Dropbox are both great options for protecting yourself, it makes these situations hella less scary!)
posted by ElliotH at 5:39 PM on December 16, 2012 [2 favorites]
Just to reiterate, leave it off until the shop can take a look at it.
Glad your laptop got recovered!
(in future Google Drive and Dropbox are both great options for protecting yourself, it makes these situations hella less scary!)
posted by ElliotH at 5:39 PM on December 16, 2012 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Do not use the hard drive. If you're using it right now, stop. Any new activity on your part could be overwriting your old data. Mount the drive only in read-only mode.
That said, I have no idea what the best Windows data recovery tools are these days, so hopefully someone else does.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:22 PM on December 16, 2012 [1 favorite]