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Undo PC Restore
Because of a virus, my sister had to do a PC Restore on her Inspiron laptop. The PC Restore operation re-installs the PC's image that it had when it left the factory. As I understand it, PC Restore is in a partition of the hard disk. The operation formats the rest of the hard drive and reinstalls the system in the re-formatted area of the disk. Unfortunately some critical files were not backed-up prior to restoring the PC. I'd like to know whether there is any way to either undo the restore or whether there is any software available that could be used to find and undelete the lost files.
BELL BOY
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October 30th, 2009 19:00
KYJim
You don’t mention what critical files?
Probably academic anyhow since if they were stored on the same partition as the original preinstalled OS (normally is the case for most users) then as you say that partition is wiped as part of PC Factory image restore
You can’t undo a PC Restore
There are professional forensic IT type businesses that sell ability to recover HDD “lost data” but such techniques tend to be well out with the reach & spend of “normal” computer users
KYJim
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October 30th, 2009 21:00
They were mostly Word and Excel files. I saw a piece of software called "Recover My Files" that claims to be able to find and undelete files on formatted hard disks. It is not too expensive ($70). Maybe worth a try??
BELL BOY
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October 31st, 2009 19:00
There are lots of web sites that market data recovery software (some even free) but most are associated with recovering so called deleted data that is still occupying space not yet reclaimed/overwritten
That is, so called deleted file(s) are hidden & are only file table flagged as available HDD space
Meaning success of data recovery is time dependant, reduces even further if partition has been defragged
On the flip side, users who want to ensure ALL personal data has been removed prior to transfer of ownership, are often advised to use (in order of effectiveness), PC Restore, Windows Clean Install, DBAN software or if really restricted/classified data type files then a 50lb rock plus flamethrower :emotion-18:
In summary, the likelihood of data recovery is Zero & I certainly wouldn’t spend $70 unless the software company can first give reasonable assurance of success from a reformatted partition – but it’s your call
Maybe others can jump in here if they have a different experience or view?
KYJim
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November 1st, 2009 19:00
I got lucky. The demo version of the software gave me enough hope that Idecided to purchase it. It ended up working better than I had expected. It recovered 100% of the music files, ~70% of the JPG files, ~50% of the Excel files and ~30% of the Word files. It also recovered the Outlook PST file.
BELL BOY
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November 4th, 2009 15:00
Thanks for the feedback :emotion-21:
Quote “I got lucky” that’s an understatement – hope it was worth $70
So you can now recommend the need to use a 50lb rock plus flamethrower :emotion-18: