How to retrieve lost files in external hard disk?

[serene7an]

Please help.... I so depressed now...
I was prompted by my computer to create backup image for me new computer. 6 DVD was needed but since I don't have I used my existing external hard disk.
I already have my past photos in it and once after the backup completed, the photos all gone!

Please suggest to me how I can retrieve back. I know there are professionals who can help but it needs a few hundreds to thousands for the service. Is there any other solutions other than this?

Thank you!

 

[noobiee]

do not do any transferring now

waiting for pro to come in and advise

 

[commach]

Install PC INSPECTOR ™ File Recovery free edition, one of the best recovery software for picture file and try to retrieve as much as possible, don't pinned too much hope for full recovery as some photos are likely overwritten.

No offend, if you backup these photo only to the external hard drive, you will lost all of them when the external drive failed even without this incident. If it's that important, backup at least two copies.

 

[Rogue]

Do not copy,move,edit or defrag your drive.

I recommend using Piriform Recuva to recover most of the files.

Recover then use one or all of the cloud storage to add one more layer(s) of backup. E.g Google drive, dropbox, onedrive, etc.

 

[serene7an]

Would it help if I use the image backup to do a recovery on my laptop? I was told by some people that there is a possibility that the image backup hide my existing files.
Layman here... just hearsay...

 

[uniquely_ad]

U mean u overwrite ur existing(with photos) external hd to create a windows image?

 

[ykgoh]

What TS is referring to may be Volume Shadow Copy (aka VSS, Volume Snapshot) kind of backup that Windows transparently make on the file system behind the scene.

TS can try a free tool called Shadow Explorer to see if it can find any disk volume image snapshot on your drive.

See screenshots below on roughly how to use Shadow Explorer.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Added links to Shadow Explorer and screenshots.

 

[ykgoh]

Anyway my 2 cents. If TS is not sure what to do, better leave it to a pro. If u anyhow run and experiment with recovery tools on it, they can make things worse.

Best is to do an exact bit by bit raw image clone of the external drive, then try to recover as much as possible from that image. This way to avoid possibility of further overwriting by any tools that you may use.

 

[uniquely_ad]

Thats why i need to understand further on what TS did den i can advise properly..cause ive attnded a similar case and all i did was mounting the external hd and i can see back the files

 

[serene7an]

Yes, my existing photos in my HDD has been over-written while creating my image recovery. Not sure if it was auto reformatted or deleted, etc.

 

[serene7an]

my laptop is a HP.

 

[uniquely_ad]

Means u use hp software to overwrite it?

 

[mosmos]

Yes, my existing photos in my HDD has been over-written while creating my image recovery. Not sure if it was auto reformatted or deleted, etc.

I think you may not be getting your data back after over-written~

 

[ykgoh]

I suspect TS used this HP Recovery Manager utility to make the disk, and since it assumes it is a USB Flash drive, it could have done some kind of disk/ISO image writing (i.e. the old FAT/NTFS file system was destroyed totally) to make it bootable. Similar to Rufus and UNetBootin kind of Flash drive writing.

At the bare minimum, the first 20+ GB of data on the disk might have been overwritten completely, and since the file system was overwritten, TS can only pray for the best that the rest of the disk is untouched and recoverable.

Need a tool like Recuva that scans the whole disk for unused/orphaned sectors containing user data and hopefully can piece back the whole files. The original file names and directory names may also be missing and TS has to organize and rename any recovered files one-by-one.

Some utilities that TS can consider, and use the Deep Scan if available to recover as much as possible. http://www.7tutorials.com/file-recovery-tools-recuva-restoration-softperfect-pc-inspector-diskdigger

 

[serene7an]

I suspect TS used this HP Recovery Manager utility to make the disk, and since it assumes it is a USB Flash drive, it could have done some kind of disk/ISO image writing (i.e. the old FAT/NTFS file system was destroyed totally) to make it bootable. Similar to Rufus and UNetBootin kind of Flash drive writing.

At the bare minimum, the first 20+ GB of data on the disk might have been overwritten completely, and since the file system was overwritten, TS can only pray for the best that the rest of the disk is untouched and recoverable.

Need a tool like Recuva that scans the whole disk for unused/orphaned sectors containing user data and hopefully can piece back the whole files. The original file names and directory names may also be missing and TS has to organize and rename any recovered files one-by-one.

Some utilities that TS can consider, and use the Deep Scan if available to recover as much as possible. http://www.7tutorials.com/file-recovery-tools-recuva-restoration-softperfect-pc-inspector-diskdigger

Exactly, i was doing something like this.