I lost lots of movies that I'd taken. I was sad that I hadn't done a backup.
The guy who worked on it found some movies and photos and sent it back with a CD of the files he was able to recover. I can’t find the CD.
Well, for some reason, yesterday I started wondering about it. I wish I’d do this wondering in the mornings, but, alas, it usually happens late afternoon. And I act on it. I went into the garage, pulled the box the drive was in out of one of the storage cabinets, then came in and hooked it up to the computer I got on Woot back in 2010. The computer that has 6gb of RAM and Win7 Pro.
Well, look at that. The computer sees the drive, but it need to “be formatted”. Hmmm…
I downloaded a couple of different data recovery programs and started to run them. I wasn’t real happy with them. One found some stuff but nothing was viewable. Then I went over to the topten review site for data recovery programs and checked out the first one. Stellar Phoenix. I went to the website and there was a free version (I’ve become very fond of try before you buy software, too many times I’ve purchased before being able to buy). I installed and ran it and before I knew it, there was a list of files it had found. A long list! Yay!
So, I tried to view the list. Oh, now I have to buy it. Damnit. But I salivated looking at that list….I bought it. $49.00. For something I thought would be gone forever. I started the recovery. If it didn’t work, I had already decided to contact the company and request a refund. Since the trial wasn’t fully functional. What good is seeing what’s there if it can’t be properly recovered? A few small files had finished and I was able to view movies. Taken with my first camera that could also take video. Only fifteen seconds, no audio, but there they were. Movies I thought I’d never see again. I started to cry. I could hardly wait until they were all recovered!
This was the time consuming part. The restructering of the files. I shut down most of the equipment and left that computer running, fixing my files.
Went into the family room, had a glass of chocolate milk, some water and watched the news. Then we went to bed.
Bad idea, drinking fluids that late. I got up to pee at least eight times. And a couple of times, I came back to check the progress of the recovery. Then I’d push the button and turn off the monitor. About the third time I checked, I pushed the wrong button. Shut down the computer instead of the monitor. Argh!
This morning at seven, I started the recovery again, but it started from the beginning. And this time, it’s not the quick scan, this is a much deeper scan. Over 927,000,000 sections to scan and it’s on 219,000,000. Oh, well, it’s not like I was planning on being busy in here today, anyway. And who knows how much more stuff it will find? Hopefully it will only take a couple of days, but it’s a 1TB drive.
I just have to be very, very careful which button I hit.
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