Lost Computer Images Question

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Alanstevensonsgloves
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Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Alanstevensonsgloves » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:22 pm

I recently had an issue with daily blue screens of death on my laptop. I called up HP and I was advised to, with their help, re-install Windows. So I went from Windows 10 to my original Windows 8. I thought I had dragged and dropped all my saved images from my laptop to my One Drive before the change was made, but unfortunately only the names of the folders copied across, not the actual images. So I have lost years of images of my daughter, family, me, some BFC stuff etc.

So my question is, is any of this recoverable? Is it the case that nothing is ever deleted from your computer? Is there any way to get the images back?

And yes I know I should have them backed up on a hard drive or in the cloud already - lesson learnt!

HunterST_BFC
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by HunterST_BFC » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:27 pm

did the install involve disk reformating?

Alanstevensonsgloves
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Alanstevensonsgloves » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:29 pm

We made a recovery partition if that helps!

HunterST_BFC
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by HunterST_BFC » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:47 pm

Alanstevensonsgloves wrote:We made a recovery partition if that helps!
in that case you can probably get them back. Assuming the image files were also copied onto the rec' partition?

Probably worth either 1 - phone them back and ask exactly what they told you do regards system / windows 8
or 2 (better option) finding a PC prof' to help.

Without knowing the full story it's a guess that you should be able to retrieve personal folders from the partion.
Easiest way back is to copy partition to external drive the re-add content to windows 8 picture folder.

This is assuming personal folders were indeed copied to the partition.
Hope this helps.
I really do.

I know a tech who could maybe advise.
I can ask him if I could pass on his details (phone no)

piston broke
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by piston broke » Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:14 am

Take it to the police and tell them there’s porn on there. They’ll find all your photos.
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If it be your will
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by If it be your will » Tue Aug 21, 2018 1:29 am

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Last edited by If it be your will on Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If it be your will
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by If it be your will » Tue Aug 21, 2018 2:02 am

.
Last edited by If it be your will on Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chobulous
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Chobulous » Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:16 am

When you get them back open up a gmail account. You will get loads of free cloud space for you photos so put them all on there. If you have an i-phone or android, put the gmail account on there and any future photos will be automatically uploaded.

Imploding Turtle
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Imploding Turtle » Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:17 am

First thing's first don't use the drive. Don't save anything to it. If you start, or have started saving **** to it it'll make recovery so much harder for any images you're overwriting.

Second, your images are hopefully in the windows.old folder. Probably not the case, but worth a look. If you formatted before reinstalling windows then you'll need something like Recuva but if not then maybe if you go to File Explorer > Computer > Local Disk (C:) you might see a file called Windows.old. If so then they're probably in there. If not then download Recuva and hope you've not overwritten too many of them.

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Failing that pay for a professional to recover them for you. But it's important that you stop using the hard drive because you could be overwriting images that are currently recoverable.
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Steddyman
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Steddyman » Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:58 pm

Professionals use this tool. Police use it and it can recover files even after a quick format. I’ve used it to recover files from both corrupted and formatted disks.

Not cheap and you may be able to get a trial version.

http://www.x-ways.net/forensics/index-m.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by deanothedino » Tue Aug 21, 2018 4:27 pm

As IT said. Do not save anything new to the drive. When a drive is formatted (in the normal, simple manner) the space simply becomes available for use again. So anything you save could be overwriting your old data.

Given your level of expertise this is probably best given to a pro if you want the best chance of success.

Steddyman
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Steddyman » Tue Aug 21, 2018 9:23 pm

deanothedino wrote:As IT said. Do not save anything new to the drive. When a drive is formatted (in the normal, simple manner) the space simply becomes available for use again. So anything you save could be overwriting your old data.

Given your level of expertise this is probably best given to a pro if you want the best chance of success.
X-Ways Forensics is what all the Pro's use (including the police).... it's scans the disk sector buy sector to find the file signatures for known files, then recreates the FAT entries that get wiped as part of a format. Each file is a group of sectors, and each sector points to the next sector on disk for the same file, so once you have the first you can recover the file so long as the sectors haven't been overwritten.

It can also run entirely off a USB key in portable mode so you don't need to download anything to your hard disk to use it (which would potentially overwrite your files).

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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by deanothedino » Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:56 am

Steddyman wrote:X-Ways Forensics is what all the Pro's use (including the police).... it's scans the disk sector buy sector to find the file signatures for known files, then recreates the FAT entries that get wiped as part of a format. Each file is a group of sectors, and each sector points to the next sector on disk for the same file, so once you have the first you can recover the file so long as the sectors haven't been overwritten.

It can also run entirely off a USB key in portable mode so you don't need to download anything to your hard disk to use it (which would potentially overwrite your files).
I’m well aware, thanks.

Reading the OP though I don’t think this is something they’ll be confident doing. Does it sound like they even have a separate machine to download it on?

Alanstevensonsgloves
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Alanstevensonsgloves » Fri Aug 31, 2018 10:15 pm

Evening all. I tried cccleaner with no success so hopefully xways is the answer. Looked on he website, way over my head, so will need to get a profi in. Any recommendations? HunterST you mention one?

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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Long Time Lurker » Sat Sep 01, 2018 6:05 am

1) DONT SAVE ANYTHING TO YOUR CURRENT DRIVE

Just thought I would repeat that, because it is very important.

2) One Drive is a piece of crap

3) Microsoft sucks

Okay, I'm not wholly up to speed with One Drive, because I only used it long enough to decide that it wasn't something I needed or trusted. I did pick up a few things though.

One drive works differently when it is synched to either windows 8 or windows 10. When you decide to use the One Drive App in Windows 10 to add things to One Drive it will automatically synch all the folder contents to your computer. In a sense it tags them as Bobs Windows 10 files. This means that Bobs Windows 10 computer is the only one that can see and read them with explorer.

However, after moving your files to One Drive you then changed your operating system to Windows 8 and in doing so you broke the link to the files. So Bobs Windows 8 computer is trying to read files that are synched to Bobs Windows 10 computer. This might be why the folders appear empty if you are looking at them in explorer.

One Drive folders also used to be called Sky Drive folders on Windows 8, which can create confusion as the synching process is trying to form a link between something that doesn't exist. If a Windows 8 computer is looking for Sky Drive folders it might not see or find One Drive folders that were created on a Windows 10 computer and vice versa.

When you look at your "empty" folders do they have the green synched tick or the red cross?

If the folders are not synched to your computer they will register as being empty in Explorer.

Before messing around trying to re-synch the One Drive files try going to the One Drive website via your web browser, log into your account and check your folders there. It could be that the images in your folders are visible and you can download them.

The web portal isn't as finicky about synching, because it expects people to access it using different computers with different operating systems.

If that doesn't work you could try to re-synch them to windows 8 and see if that works.

If you are trying to recover the image files from your laptop hard drive read point one again.

The best thing you can do if you are considering using file recovery software is to purchase a sata to usb adapter like this

https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/USB-3-0-Device ... 243&chn=ps" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Then you need to carefully remove the drive from your lap top, gain access to another computer and attach your drive to that computer with the adapter. Then you would download the software to the computer and run it to pull data from your drive.

Another program you could use is Easus. The free version used to allow you to pull unlimited data from a hard drive, but now its limited to 500mb or 2GB if you share their link on facebook etc.

https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywiza ... ftware.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I would pick the free version and avoid the trial versions. I suspect the trial versions will have some annoying hooks built into them.

Alanstevensonsgloves
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Re: Lost Computer Images Questionr

Post by Alanstevensonsgloves » Mon Sep 24, 2018 3:35 pm

Thanks LTL. To answer your questions...

> No ticks on the files green or otherwise
> Empty files on Explorer

I will give your easeus a guy. If that doesnt help, I will hand over to the experts and pay them to have a look!

Alanstevensonsgloves
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Re: Lost Computer Images Question

Post by Alanstevensonsgloves » Mon Sep 24, 2018 4:16 pm

Didnt find the files, time for the experts! Hunter ST, if you have a name as suggested....

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