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Well, not necessarily experts - I'd be interested to know if any of you have done any decent data recovery at all - what tools you used (for the actual data recovery, possibly for data reconstruction, and for potentially detecting/fixing bad sectors), and so on. This includes merely restoring broken/messed up partition tables.
I'm kinda being ripped off here (or at least I have the feeling I will be), so next time I get into trouble I'd like to give it a shot myself first.
Two thumb rules:
*Install the program as soon as possible after the data loss
*Install the program on a different partition than the one you want to restore your lost/deleted files.
There are a bunch of them out there. I'd recommend watching out for reviews on softwares to determine their efficiency. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Papewaio will be more helpful on data backup/recovery topic since he was working in IT sector.
Data recovery can cost in the thousands... easily.
Now for a faster, cheaper and more reliable method of getting your data back use backups.
First off you should get a CD holder and put all your photos on labeled CD/DVD's in it.
Second all your unique data that you need, be it obscure saved game files to resumes and contact lists.
Third any emails that reside on a public provider (Hotmail, Yahoo etc) back up the ones that you may require the information for, afterall your provider might fall over or one day demand that you pay per view.
What you need:
CD or DVD burner. If buying a new one get a DVD burner, the DVD's hold more information and hence you need to buy less of them and less storage containers.
Media... CD's or DVDs. I suggest whatever you buy the cheapest or the most expensive the first thing you do after burning a backup is to check that the information is actually on the media. Nothing like blank or unrecoverable backups to make you feel warm and special inside.
Storage container... Get something that will protect the media and is robust. Get a proper CD folder, don't just chuck your backups in some random tupperware container.
Labeler... Use a marker at the least, a stick on label or even better a CD labeler. Something with the date and what it is. It is great to have a backup, it is even better to know the date on which it was backed up so that you can use the latest one... or rollback further to one that is more stable.
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Other options.
Offsite storage. It could be a bank vault, a friends or a relatives place or even your desk at work. If you can put your older copies of data somewhere other then the same site as your PC you can avoid the issue of what happens if your place is destroyed or robbed.
Pre-emptive avoidance of data loss. Use a RAID array, buy two identical HD's and use them to mirror the data using a RAID 1. If one HD dies you still have the same data on the second. On the other hand if you have regularly update your backups and follow through with the proper storage of them you might as well setup RAID 0 and get twice the HD data transfer speed.
Thank you all very much for your replies. Also thank you data recovery for the PM you sent me, and to which I can't reply, since apparently you either chose not to receive PMs or because you're a new member, your Inbox may have some restrictions.
It's my fault I didn't explain my situation more clearly. The disaster has already occurred.
I'm interested to know how I can recover from it in the future, in case it happens again - because I've had quite a history of such things happenning, not all to me personally, but to machines that I am kinda in charge of.
In my case, the hard disk isn't seen by windows anymore. I can look at it under linux, but the partition table seems corrupt - the partitions are not what I installed under there.
Like I said, under windows the disk isn't even visible anymore.
I know I can use fsck under linux, which would fix bad sectors, too, BUT that would modify the partition table, and I wouldn't be able to recover the data anymore. I could use it read-only, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to fix the partition table myself manually, or even if it is possible to recover lost files just by using that.
I have a working PC, this was just a data disk, so booting up and doing stuff to the disk is not an issue - my OS is residing on another disk.
The main issue is trying to recover the data - and for that, I have to recover first, and only then try to actually fix the disk, check and mark bad sectors, etc.
So this is why I was wondering about 3rd party software to check/fix partition tables, recover partial files, etc, etc.
I know prevention is better than recovery, and that I should have backed the data up - and I had some of it backed up, just not all of it - and most likely, that will always be the case - there will always be _some_ stuff that you didn't back up.
Anyway, I'd be interested to hear if any of you have had any similar experiences, how much it cost you to recover, what kind of services you got for that money, and, as I stated in my initial post, if you've had any experience using recovery software yourselves and can point me in the right direction.
Thanks again for all your answers.