Dataquest

Data Recovery You Can Trust

Tag: Windows

  • Where Does My Computer Store My Files ?

    When you boot up your computer, you expect to see all your familiar files on the desktop, or maybe in the documents folder. What you may not realise is that those folders are actually a bit harder to find if you look at the disk externally. It depends what operating system you use so below is a general guide of locations for Mac & PC users.

    Windows Operating System

    All user data should be stored within the user profile folder, which is created when the PCs is first used. This is usually located in the following locations depending on the version of Windows:

    Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 & XP

    Local Disk C:\Documents and Settings\User ( for example C:\Documents and Settings\John )

    Windows 7+

    C:\Users\User ( For example C:\Users\John )

    In systems earlier than Windows 7, some software may be stored in the “Program Files” folder in the root of the drive. This was considered bad practice so in Windows 7 any Program Data should be found in the “Program Data” folder on the root of the drive and not in “Program Files.” Sage Accounts can often be found within the C:\Program Files\Sage\ folder.

    Macintosh Operating System

    All user data should be stored within the user folder, which is created when the Mac is first used. This is located in the following location:

    Macintosh HD/Users/user ( for example Macintosh HD/Users/john )

  • Recovering Deleted Data

    In the vast majority of cases, deleted data is actually still lurking around on your hard drive. If you put data in the Recycle Bin or Trash, and them empty it, all you are actually doing is telling the system that it can reuse those parts of the disk when it wants. Until you replace those areas with new data, the old data will still be there.

    Recovering Deleted Data

    The Filing Cabinet

    The tried and trusted analogy is of a filing cabinet. When you delete a file, you are removing the index card from the front of the drawer, but the actual file is still in there.

    This is why it is really important to switch off your computer as soon as possible if you have accidentally deleted some files. You may not realise but even small actions like checking e-mail or browsing the internet can write cache files to the disk. That is when data could be lost.

    Overwritten / Deleted Data

    We often hear about the FBI being able to recover overwritten files. While this may have been possible on very old – low capacity hard drives (~100MB), it is unlikely to be possible on modern hard drives. The magnetic material is far too densely packed. Even then, it would only be tiny fragments of data recovered, and not whole files.

    The Problem With SSDs

    Solid state drives bring a whole new problem of their own. Due to the way the data is distributed around the device, known as wear levelling, you can never be sure of which sector you are writing or overwriting. Wear levelling is necessary to prolong the life of an SSD, but it means the drive could be moving data around behind the scenes, making deleted files much more difficult to track down.

    Specifics

    In most cases, we can recover deleted files with the original file names and folders. With deleted Mac data, this is often not possible. In that case we have to use a special type of scan, which finds all files of a given type and saves them to numbered files. This means camera photos may be recovered into a JPG folder, with files named like photo0001.jpg, photo0002.jpg and so on.

    If required we can process certain types of these files into more meaningful order. For photos we can arrange into folders by date taken, and for music files we can arrange into Artist / Album order.

    The Important Bit

    If you accidentally delete some files, they are likely to be recoverable. It’s the actions you take next which can make the recovery difficult – if not impossible.

  • Accidentally Installed Windows On Top Of Mac OS X

    We have just completed a complex data recovery, where a Mac system had been inadvertently overwritten with Windows. The Mac drive originally had over 500GB of data, so we expected to get most of it back, we just didn’t know how good the structure would be.

    It helps to visualise the layout of the data on the disk. before it was overwritten, the data would have looked something like this:

    Overwrite Mac With Windows

    Although the fresh Windows system is much smaller than the original data, it prevents you from seeing any of that old Mac data.

    Once we made copies of the drive, we were able to reconstruct the missing parts of the Mac data, and could see all the original files and folders, with their original structure.

    Luckily nobody had tried to fix the problem with this drive. Often the fixes people attempt are worse to recover from than the original problems.

  • PC World Data Recovery Know How Now Who?

    We recently noticed our local PC World store has stopped advertising data recovery services. They used to offer a simple in-house recovery backed by a large international partnership to take care of the more difficult drives.

    At some point, maybe around the time Know How replaced The Tech Guys for their support, things seem to have changed. Users are now left wondering where to go, and who to trust to recover their precious data.

    This could be a blessing in disguise for users, as they can now choose any data recovery service, potentially saving some money.

    Some tips for choosing a good data recovery lab:

    1. Give them a call and ask some questions. If you don’t like the answers then go with your instinct and try somewhere else. Data recovery takes care and attention to be carried out successfully, but don’t let somebody baffle you with jargon.
    2. Look out for additional costs. If you see adverts for £99 or less then be wary of costly hidden extras. Get all costs up-front. Note that you will probably need to add the cost of a new drive to the final bill, unless you supply one.
    3. The most you should pay without getting any data back is a small diagnosis fee. Unless you need urgent out of hours work, you shouldn’t pay hundreds without first seeing a file list, or being talked through the data by phone.
    4. Until the data has been recovered, then it is impossible to say that it can or can’t be done. Don’t rely on promises or estimates.

    If you need data recovery then give us a call. We have services to suit home users and businesses, and have been in the industry for over ten years.