Take care!

[Loose rivets]

Just in case anyone thought that my idea of having more than one Explorer was a good idea...It may not be. in W7 anyway.

I have now lost my secondary hard drive. First time I could boot with it, but second time it had lost hal.dll This may be total coincidence, but it was perfect till then.

Trying to access it from W7 on the 'Fast Drive' gave lots of errors. The file I was working on with 20 sub-folders has gone. I backed up to it several times a day prior to this. Some 120 thousand words. Hope me sticks are all okay.

The only connection is that I introduced a second copy of W7's explorer into the main drive, but in another logical drive.

With XP I had as many as six Explorer shortcuts for different targets - done it for years - perfect.

With W7 I now keep the original Explorer.exe but just mod several shortcuts. So far so good. Don't know why I didn't do that before.

%win etc then the target and switch e.

But there's a spook in the machine, and I may just find that I lose a lot of photos. Try to recover them tomorrow when me head's clear.

[green granite]

Why not just map the targets to libraries? Then you can click on the explorer icon on the task-bar and open the appropriate one. Working with multiple copies of explorer running is not a good idea.

[Loose rivets]

well, I should have said that it's only the Shortcuts that are duplicated. Most times I had three or four icons on the Task Bar. The pop up file names remind quickly where its headed for. This works fine up to Vista.

Now, about

Why not just map the targets to libraries?

I quite simply had no idea ( how to go about) about this. Is this okay with W7? It seems I was inventing a method of driving my car with a tiller, while it was fitted with a steering wheel.

R

[Loose rivets]

It's now looking rather bleak. Most of the stuff on the old drive was...old. But I'd made one horrible mistake. First time since 1983 that I've lost data.


When I changed to W7, I stripped the new faster drive and copied across quite a bit of stuff. However, somehow, I didn't copy all the photos. Thousands of them. It was my intention to filter out the dross as I did it, and then I forgot. ( I do a lot of forgetting these days.)

The old disc is really corrupt. My book folder has gone, along with its 20 or so sub folders. Just gone. That's backed up in six places and three addresses, so hopefully that'll be okay. But the DVDs of the photos may or may not be at the kids houses. I'll know later today. Whatever, they'll be out of date.

I just could never imagine something like this happening to me. A few of the pictures can be seen in thumbnail form. Any attempt to copy them fails.



The old disc may just have failed.

It may have been got at by a virus. I was using Avast until recently, but not in the last few days.

Or, it may have been messing with the master disc and Explorer. It occurs to me that the self cleaning of Explorer out of logical E drive was a clue to W7 getting rid of things it doesn't like.

There is a chance I may recover the files, but time is an issue now. I'm supposed to be remodeling the house while the Rivetess is away, and three weeks from her return, it looks like I've thrown a hand grenade into it, then got drunk before starting work. Nights are spent on the book. Neighbors are getting up when I go to bed.

Son has just phoned. he's found Zar. Free or $49 Anyone know about this, or have recommendations for another recovery program?

[green granite]

Have you actually lost the data (as in wiped) or is it that you cant find it? I deleted a sub folder in one of my libraries and lost the entire library set of files, so I created a new folder in the library and named it the same as the one that had disappeared and it said that the folder already existed and did I want to merge them? I said yes and magically the old files reappeared.

What happens when you do a search in explorer for one of these missing docs?

[Sprogget]

There was an issue with library management in 7 that meant it was overly easy to delete files permanently. I'll have a dig round the register & see if I can find it. Can't remember if it was rc or earlier builds.

[Loose rivets]

I used to be fairly good at rescuing data, but this was in the DOS days. Now, things are orders of magnitude more complex.

Remember, now I'm only able to see into the old H-disc via W7 on another physical drive.

The old drive C is termed H, but this has always been so whilst in new drive mode.

Some of the folders show as normal. Some even show a few thumbnails of the pics. Just a few, leaving the black pic thumbnail where a pic used to be.

Any attempt to copy any of them usually fails. eg, after 15 mins, I got ONE picture in the 'Emergency folder.'

I was warned. Ever since I fitted two physical drives, (18 months) I've occasionally got a CHKDSK routine on full start up. I took this to be something I had to live with by switching between drives at BIOS level. Lately this had gone away. But it may just have been a forewarning of what was to come.

I'm off to try creating another folder, but not very hopeful, as the windows folder is totally un-getatable.

No, thanks, but it merged the folders, but didn't improve the contents. It's so strange that in a few cases it can show the thumbnails. There they are, loud and clear, but then the system 'cant find' or 'corrupt' etc pops up when I try to view them.

Some folders report empty when I know there's pic in them. It's chaotic.


Gone 4pm here. I'm off to swim with the kids....that's if me @#$%^#$ Mercedes can cover a mile without have to be towed home. I dunno...telly, low millage car, computer all total junk ... I'm jinxed.

True about the car. 33k and its had three total "STOP! and convey to workshop" breakdowns in as many months.

[Loose rivets]

Zero Assumption Recovery. $49

Any other fully functional - and safe - free programs out there?



Tried to recover system from HP's recovery disc that they had me make. I know that it will totally reinstall, I've done it, but I tried to just recover. What a joke.

It kept telling me it couldn't find files. Well I know that! the only other option was to destroy data with a format and full install.



Downloaded ZAR Free trial allows 4 folders. Hah! the other 214 will have to wait.

It seemed quite professional, but with one horrible shortcoming. When it set about its task it did not show me which drive it was working on. This really gave me a case of tight te$ticals. I had highlighted H in a simple list of drives, but never did it respond to that command or show me where it was going. Anyway, it did a little de-frag kind of screen session and then lots of other things.

It then showed a tree of the sick drive, so I started to breath again.


I then copied the four folders to another drive. (to be safe, it was the partition of the sick drive which still works normally.) anyway, there they were.

So, it seems to have proved that the data is there, but if the backup DVDs don't show up, I'll have to buy the full works to get everything out, since one four-folder session took half an hour at least.

[Bushfiva]

Try Convar's PC Inspector File Recovery:

CONVAR & PCinspector Data Recovery Datenrettung recupero dati datarecovery rcupration donnes

It's free and has worked very well for me on hard drives and USB sticks.

[Loose rivets]

Thanks for that. Looking!

ftp or http. never been asked for that before.

Dowloaded both.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Thanks for that. Looking!

ftp or http. never been asked for that before.

Dowloaded both.

They'll be identical. FTP and HTTP are just the methods for delivering them to you. FTP = File Transfer Protocol, HTTP = Hypertext Transfer Protocol. FTP is usually faster, but can get caught up in some firewall configuration scenarios - hence the reason for offering both methods.....to download the same file.

[Loose rivets]

Thanks Mike. I'd assumed it was something like that.

Tried the quick one first Then loaded the other one...just in case. Exactly the same.


Bush It all looked logical till it asked me to pick a logical or physical drive. I tried both, but it flashed a screed saying something like Hang on a moment, then nothing. Tried all sorts of things. Always the same.

It can see the two physical drives. I pick the faulty one, then I can pick Find or Scan the drive.

This was a bit unnerving.

"This will also clear all lost drives that have been found from the list! Are you sure to proceed?"

Nothing.


Looked through the popdown menus, everything much the same as the side buttons. So, a total NO Go

[Bushfiva]

Sorry it didn't work for you. The command layout doesn't seem particularly logical. On the off-chance you didn't follow through to the bitter end:

You did something along the lines of highlight the drive in the popup (logical or physical: the prog doesn't really make it clear that you can choose either), clicked the green tick, get to the main screen. The message you saw refers to the internal list of lost drives it builds: when you "rescan", which is what you must have clicked on, it throws the list away and starts over. Don't rescan

At this point, the software knows all the files the OS thinks exist. In the folders column, you have "root", "deleted", "lost" and "searched". The latter two will be empty.

Assuming all your lost files are still lost, at the main screen you click on the tab with the red cross (plus sign). This pops up a "select cluster range". Leave the defaults, click the green tick and let it work away. This will populate the "lost" folder.

After this, you go through the folder list looking for stuff you'd like to recover, typically, in the "lost" and "deleted" folders: click and ctrl-click to select items.

Finally, you save them (on another drive) using the second tab down with the floppy disk icon. This is the only time data is written anywhere, so make sure you're not writing it back to the original drive!

(Additionally, when you're looking for files to recover, you can also use the magnifying glass tab to search on something like "*.jpg" if you're just after images. These results are placed in the "searched" folder. Each search replaces the previous one, so if you're looking for jpegs, NEF and gif for example, that's 3 separate search and save cycles. Note that it searches through the files listed in "root", "deleted" and "lost", so make sure you do the full red cross scan cluster thing first)

[Loose rivets]

Thanks! If only manuals could be written like that. However, I'm outside a bottle of something nice tonight, and won't risk pressing any buttons till dawn.

Will report back.

R

[Loose rivets]

Bushfiva

Finally found a moment to devote to the disk recovery, but having printed out your last post, and gone through the Tutorial, it's beginning to look like it may not run on W7.

It's got that feel. Some things go, then a next step just doesn't do anything.

Following the main screen, I go to the Select Logical or Physical drive. Highlight the second of two options, which is the right size for my slave drive. I am able to get the screen which gives the starting and stop points. Default or full scale, nothing happens. The Tools / Find Lost Data option is grayed out.

At no stage is any kind of tree or file list acquired. In fact, there is no sound of the drive running.

Ah, well. I'll have another bash when I get a moment.

R

[Bushfiva]

may not run on W7

Yeah, it does.

OK, either I messed up my original instructions (likely since I was working from memory) or the program's working differently on the only machine I have to hand (unlikely).

Start prog > choose language > select the type of recovery you think you want to do: recover deleted files, find lost data, find lost drive. Click on the tab to the left of the task you want to do. As far as I can tell, these only control the way the info is presented on the screen that follows.

On "select drive", click on the logical partition you want if one's listed. If you think your partition isn't listed, click on the hard drive of interest, then "find logical drives". In the sector popup, leave the defaults and click the green tick.

If you've got the partition you want now, then the green tick bottom right of "select drive" will no longer be grayed out. After you click that, the rest of my previous instructions should still apply. I can't help if you still don't have a partition to play with at this point, since I've never used this utility on a drive where it's not worked.

[Loose rivets]

Mmm...obviously something is wrong. Since it works on W7, that takes that out of the equation, though like Photoshop, it's the total absence of a reaction to any controls that make me suspicious that my install may be lacking in some way.

If you think your partition isn't listed, click on the hard drive of interest, then "find logical drives". In the sector popup, leave the defaults and click the green tick.

The bold is where it just ignores me. Folds its arms and looks the other way...Oh, no, that's the wife.

It's nearly 4 AM, I'll have another bash now while I'm wide awake. I'm competing with G-C for insomnia championships.


Edit

Click on the tab to the left of the task you want to do. As far as I can tell, these only control the way the info is presented on the screen that follows.

I think, only the top and the bottom one respond at all.

[Bushfiva]

Highlight the partition you want to work on.

[Loose rivets]

Yeh, it's as dead as a Do-Do once its got past the sector band selector.


As I said, I've tried various settings including leaving it alone. Having said that, it does flash up a 4" square light blue screen saying wait a moment, for a subliminal amount of time. There is a partition on the faulty drive - it was the restore section , but it seems to be empty but fully functional.

Anyway, the point is that this partition never gets displayed. Once you pick the physical drive, nothing ever gets displayed again.


Thanks for you input on this by the way. One is not desperate for these photos for the next few days, got to see if the DVD is in London yet.

I still feel the most likely scenario was that W7 tried to reach to an XP drive and do a CheckDrv on it. this is the one time that I let it run.

The prog arrived at 5,971Kb BTW...seems to install perfectly.

[ECAM_Actions]

Earlier Betas deleted the actual files when you removed them from the library (what a bloody stupid thing to do!).

AFAIK the latest RCs changed this behavior so they merely became SHORTCUTS, not the actual files.

I really wonder where MS are. It isn't like they haven't had enough practise already...

ECAM Actions.