Tech Bleg
Update: Hats off to Comp USA who recovered all the images (and some more from ages back) from a Mini SD card.
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Last night, the desktop computer crashed hard. We’re pretty good about backing up stuff but we haven’t done a back up since last week. So, all of our Christmas photos were on there, including my boy’s first Christmas. We want the pictures back.
After it crashed, I kept trying to reboot and googled up the error message. The solution from Microsoft was the same as it always is and they said to reinstall windows. I did. However, in the reinstall, it kept getting to a point where it said something like unable to create file system32 and it kicked out of reinstall. I went to Comp USA and grabbed a USB external HD case. Put the hard drive in it to see if it could be read and it could. However, all that is there is the Windows directory. It’s all gone.
So, first, when did reinstalling windows format a hard drive? Second, can I get my stuff back?
Update: Also, the data was on our flash card but was deleted. Is that a better route?
December 30th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Whew. Congrats on getting them back.
As for the formatting thing — I’m not sure. It didn’t with 98, but I’ve never been able to install XP without it wonking up the drive something fierce.
December 30th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
I had a similar incident recently and used software from Runtime software that I was very pleased with. Were you able to recover the hard drive or just the flash card? Wishing you good luck! http://www.runtime.org/
December 31st, 2006 at 11:05 am
Here is the place if you really need the data, http://www.drivesavers.com/.
You can try some of the hints.
That usually works.
If the hints do not work, get your credit card ready for a workout.
Expensive, but good.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:37 pm
If you have an OEM copy of windows, it will always try to reformat the HD before installing.
Even the full version of Windows will assume you want to format the hard drive … you have to tell it not to.
I recommend backing up to CD-Rs, and checking them afterwards to make sure they are readable … more than one backup has failed because the backup media writer was bad and no one double checked it.
December 31st, 2006 at 8:20 pm
As a general rule, anytime you have _any_ problem with a hard drive that will require reinstalling the OS: STOP, do not write to that drive until you have made a complete backup of _all_ files on it that you care about in the least little bit. If you cannot boot the system then put the drive in a different system as a _non-booting_ drive and make the backup there.
Glad to see you were able to recover the files you wanted.
January 1st, 2007 at 1:14 am
For the future, Acronis 9.0, and back up to a standalone HD. Acronis will also back up to DVD-Rs (all versions). Maybe Linux in your future? It’s my project of the year for next year, to get right out of Windows.
January 1st, 2007 at 1:20 am
That error msg sounds a lot like your sectors are set to a size too small to handle FAT32. If you can change them to 16-bit, it should work. If you can’t change them, you might be stuck with FAT16, which only required 8-bit sectors, and was the basis for WIN98. NTFS works with 32-bit sectors also, except in the very latest processors, which can use a 64-bit version.
January 1st, 2007 at 3:08 am
Happy New Year, Uncle!