Do any of the file recovery software programs actually work?

[Mark Bolton]

Super long story but had a nightmare situation with the Windows10 April update (which I thought already installed but actually was installed on one computer Friday). The entire thing went haywire due to a cracked touch screen on the laptop (touch was disabled prior to update but the April update re-activates the touch causing uncontrollable erroneous clicks). Needless to say, two days of fighting with the upgrade which was not to delete any personal files and many are gone.

Im running a trial scan with EaseUS and its in the deep scan which will take quite a while but wondered if anyone knew if any of these actually work. I have searched and looked through the C drive with command prompt and dont really know what other recourse there is. It saved most everything but some important files that were in the users/public sub folders are gone.

Thanks.

[Alan Rutherford]

File recovery programs can work. Files and folders are deleted by changing a single character in the filename. That makes them invisible so you can't see them without a special program and it marks the space they use as available to re-use. Then as the computer puts more stuff on the disk the contents of the file can might get over-written or the name might disappear from the list. The file recovery programs can list those files. They can also make an intelligent guess about how successful recovering them will be. They can work very well if they have something to work with. That is, if the spaces on the disk have not be re-used. You won't know until you try it. I haven't had to use one for a while but you shouldn't have to spend much if anything to find out. Good luck.

EaseUs is not on the few lists of programs I found in 60 seconds on Google, but they seem to have taken over the Wikipedia listing. If it's not too late, try one or more others. You should be able to run them without installing on the hard disk and search without actually changing anything or you risk doing more damage.

[Mark Bolton]

Thanks Alan, I will do some looking. This scan hasnt changed anything just waiting to see what it finds. I will do some more looking.

[Frank Pratt]

No backup of those files?

[Bob Bouis]

The most important thing to do if you want to recover any files is stop using the device immediately. Just downloading and installing the file recovery program could easily overwrite any data that might be left. You need to pull the hard drive out and put it in another computer.

[Mark Bolton]

No backup of those files?

I obviously wouldnt be asking about data recovery if there were backups would I? We run full system backups periodically but not daily. Most critical files are fine and were no problem other than the colossal headache of having to set everything back up again manually. Windows updates run all the time without a hitch as this was should have. However the April update seems to run more like a clean install (without warning) as compared to any update since Windows 7 (for us). Having gone through this myself you can read endless accounts of people having touch disabled devices that went through countless updates since Win8 and never had a single issue. The April update however re-enables the touch which with a malfunctioning or cracked screen can cause utter chaos. With the setup screen buttons covering the entire screen if you have a crack or malfunctioning digitizer it can be clicking anywhere an everywhere the instant the screen becomes active (perhaps before you even see whats happening) and you are basically helpless if you dont catch it in time.

I thought we caught it but not fully. Fingers crossed.

[Mark Bolton]

Well... Im completely astonished (though Im no computer guru by any means) but the deep scan found recoverable files on the drive back to 2012 and low and behold everything I was looking for an more is right there. And agreed with regards to the drive. Thats what we did. Parked it and left it be. The things we were looking for were specific and are recovered but we are still scanning through the recovered files to be sure. Time to re-evaluate how and what gets in the daily backup. Any input will be greatly appreciated.

[James Tibbetts]

Mark I don't know how much data you are backing up, but big usb hard drives are pretty cheap and fast.
Is there any reason not to mirror your drive completely?

[Mark Bolton]

Is there any reason not to mirror your drive completely?

Other than lack of knowledge and skill I can only guess the answer is no.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I rarely deal with Windows any more, but modern operating systems have good hourly backup systems that just work automatically. Macs for example build hourly generations of files, then switch them out daily, then weekly, so you can go back months or to a specific time of a file. Anything like that in Windows? That would be my recommendation.

And online backups... Because one backup is really none, and two is one. There's so much risk in having a single backup. And if it's at the same physical place as the main data, it's so easy to lose to fire or theft too.

[Frank Pratt]

Veeam Agent for Windows has a free version that is excellent. Much better than the Windows built in back up.

[Mark Bolton]

I rarely deal with Windows any more, but modern operating systems have good hourly backup systems that just work automatically. Macs for example build hourly generations of files, then switch them out daily, then weekly, so you can go back months or to a specific time of a file. Anything like that in Windows? That would be my recommendation.

And online backups... Because one backup is really none, and two is one. There's so much risk in having a single backup. And if it's at the same physical place as the main data, it's so easy to lose to fire or theft too.

I agree with the single backup issue and these files slipped through the cracks. While Im not a fan of any of the big daddies, and simply dont have the time, nor the brain capacity of my younger days, to go off the reservation with an alternative OS I am stuck with Microsoft. I have a personal abhorrence for anything Apple (perhaps feeds into the ritual/routine thing) as I cant seem to give myself over to their control though this experience leaves me questioning that mindset.

We have quadruple backups of what we (use to) think is critical. Im leaning towards the total solution at this point (full image/backup). I have had a hard time getting my old world head around the cloud but it may be time.

[Mark Bolton]

Veeam Agent for Windows has a free version that is excellent. Much better than the Windows built in back up.

Thanks so much Frank. Im headed there now to read. I appreciated it greatly.

[Carlos Alvarez]

as I cant seem to give myself over to their control though this experience leaves me questioning that mindset.

It's a myth, or really, very old info, that Apple somehow locks down their computers. They are far more open than Windows. Much of Mac OS is based on Unix, and it is fully compatible with much Unix/Linux software. I can compile common tools for it (if they're not already included). There's nothing preventing me installing anything. The iDevices are locked down much more, and that's why my customers experience 3x as much Android support issues as iOS issues.



I have had a hard time getting my old world head around the cloud but it may be time.

Any way you do it, getting backups offsite is important. There's nothing wrong with online backups. It's just a target hard drive on another network, no big deal.

[Roy Petersen]

Files and folders are deleted by changing a single character in the filename.
Not exactly. The "pointer" that tells Windows there's a file and where it stops and starts is removed. That marks it as available space for the OS to use as it needs to. If it just changed the name, that would have Windows leave that space alone, and not "delete" the file and use that space allocation.


The most important thing to do if you want to recover any files is stop using the device immediately. Just downloading and installing the file recovery program could easily overwrite any data that might be left. You need to pull the hard drive out and put it in another computer.
^^ This. If the files were marked deleted, you may wind up installing over the space they occupied. Any writes to disk should be avoided. Best bet in this case would be to hook up a large enough drive to it via USB, and clone it sector by sector with whatever software you have already installed. Many will run from a USB stick for circumstances like this, where you're trying to copy a damaged drive.

As for keeping copies of files, something like SyncbackSE is a lightweight backup program that you can set to keep x amount of running copies of your docs, emails, pics, whatever, and save it to a 2nd drive, or even network attached storage. If you tell it to copy and not sync both ways, it won't delete any at the remote drive. We use that and a few other tools here. Never a problem with it.

[roger wiegand]

I run Carbon Copy Cloner to keep a local disk image backup every other day as an easy way to recover from hardware failures and Crashplan Pro for off-site, minute by minute backup. When disaster strikes I can reload the most recent disk image then fill in changed files from Crashplan. I can recover everything from crashplan (and have done so successfully a couple of times), but it is slow. Starting with a recent image kept locally makes it go quite quickly.

[Mark Bolton]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. We are looking into everything offered. Much appreciated.

[Grant Wilkinson]

PM sent, Mark.

[John K Jordan]

Thanks so much Frank. Im headed there now to read. I appreciated it greatly.

My computer consultant highly recommends Macrium Reflect for backups. I've been using it for a year or so with some inexpensive 2 and 3 TB USB drives. It can easily be set for scheduled or on-demand full, incremental, or differential backups. Very quick. (It's not free but it's not expensive.)

The biggest key for robust backups is to keep more than one. When I worked for a living I'd be sunk with any data loss. I kept backups in at least three independent places and often backed up several times an hour. Now I'm retired and just play with the computer two backups is enough for me, updated three times a week.

JKJ

[Mark Bolton]

PM sent, Mark.
Got it, thank you!!

[Mark Bolton]

My computer consultant highly recommends Macrium Reflect for backups. I've been using it for a year or so with some inexpensive 2 and 3 TB USB drives. It can easily be set for scheduled or on-demand full, incremental, or differential backups. Very quick. (It's not free but it's not expensive.)

The biggest key for robust backups is to keep more than one. When I worked for a living I'd be sunk with any data loss. I kept backups in at least three independent places and often backed up several times an hour. Now I'm retired and just play with the computer two backups is enough for me, updated three times a week.

JKJ

So of course "three independent places" means three completely different physical locations. I considered myself in decent shape (and wasnt too bad off even if we'd lost what we thought we lost) but it has given me a cold chill thinking what if something more critical went poof. Im locked down on the cloud end at this point. Not sure whether to count two cloud options as 1, and 2, and then use an external here as the third. I often think that many backups are thumb drives/external drives and if the shop burned to the ground those two would be poof. The cloud was the remote.

Its miserable to have to invest all this time and effort into such things lol.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I'm unclear on what you're asking. So just some thoughts... A local hard drive backup is good. That's your primary backup for the most common failure--human error, and for the second most common--a hard drive failure. Backups onto cheap flash drives are sketchy, some have a high failure rate. Two separate online backups is excellent, and are indeed two more "locations." I also do yearly archives onto a Blu-ray, and that goes to another site.

My companies both use Google Apps/Drive for primary storage, so that's already backed up in several ways, and then the automatic sync to our machines means we have MANY MANY copies of the data. Basically the working data is its own backup, automatically.

[Mike Nolan]

Two things to remember.
At least one offsite backuo.
Occasionally test your backups. That is restore some file from each backup.