I'm so screwed... anyone have a solution?

[djeslinger 0]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

[Frank and Duyen 0]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

I would take it somewhere else or try a web search for "hard drive recovery service".

Frank

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

You don't have your passport stamps? Boarding passes? You didn't email any photos to your fiancee or to friends? They can't email you a photo back? You didn't print even one? You didn't put ANY on a disc? A flashdrive? You don't have ANY in your camera memory disc or in the camera memory? I mean all you need is a couple of photos (we only had ONE) and copies of your boarding passes and/or passport stamps.

All we had for the petition was ONE photo, and copies of boardig passes and passport photos. What else could you possibly need that was on your computer?

[chris mcintosh 0]

I have heard a lot of good things about Spin Rite from GRC. its supposed to be able to repair discs at the lower levels, may be worth a try. Download on another system then burn it to a disc and let it run. Be warned it could take a while(couple days maybe depending on how bad the crash was).

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

[chris mcintosh 0]

The other option to repair the platter is something like this: http://www.freewebs.com/bgotchall/index.htm

[djeslinger 0]

You don't have your passport stamps? Boarding passes? You didn't email any photos to your fiancee or to friends? They can't email you a photo back? You didn't print even one? You didn't put ANY on a disc? A flashdrive? You don't have ANY in your camera memory disc or in the camera memory? I mean all you need is a couple of photos (we only had ONE) and copies of your boarding passes and/or passport stamps.

All we had for the petition was ONE photo, and copies of boardig passes and passport photos. What else could you possibly need that was on your computer?

I have none on camera or memory disk anywhere. I do have 4 pics from emails, but we must go to ecuador consulate, 4 is not nearly enough... They are really big on proving relationship PRIOR to the filing of the I-129f.

Checked on sending hard drive off to recover. Cost im told is over $1000.

[Frank and Duyen 0]

I have none on camera or memory disk anywhere. I do have 4 pics from emails, but we must go to ecuador consulate, 4 is not nearly enough... They are really big on proving relationship PRIOR to the filing of the I-129f.

Checked on sending hard drive off to recover. Cost im told is over $1000.

I would click around the web a little more. Im sure you can find a service for considerably less. I dont know how anyone can give you a quote like that without inspecting the drive first. Maybe thats worst case...dunno

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I have none on camera or memory disk anywhere. I do have 4 pics from emails, but we must go to ecuador consulate, 4 is not nearly enough... They are really big on proving relationship PRIOR to the filing of the I-129f.

Checked on sending hard drive off to recover. Cost im told is over $1000.

Ecuador consulate has nothing to say about approving a petition.

[KFM 0]

Hi, have you tried Hiren's Boot CD?

There's a program on it called GetDataBackNTFS. I've used it on several hard drives and it's gotten most of the data back. On one it got every single thing back. My advice is to get a hard drive enclosure, either 2.5" or 3.5" depending on if it's a notebook or a desktop, then run GetDataBackNTFS and hope for the best.

I know how bad it is to lose data in this process. My wife and I lost years of Yahoo! Messenger conversations when we were first going through it a few years ago.

P.S. Is it spinning at all? If not.. I don't think there's anything you can do. If it is, and neither SpinRite or Hiren's works, you can always try putting it in the freezer for a few hours, then taking it out and trying to get a little data off at a time. That's a last resort measure, though, obviously.

Edited September 27, 2010 by KFM

[Hicham♥Sara 15]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

I am so sorry to hear this. This happened to me before and just like the quote you got of over $1000 it cost me about $2000. It was a rather large hard drive that had every single picture of my girls from birth.. it was worth the cost to get all those memories back. Definitely a hard lesson in back up though. I used a service called DriveSavers and they did a great job. expensive, but great. I tried the Spinrite and it did not work for me, although I have heard of it working for others. You just have to be careful because the more you try to access the drive the more damage can be done. Companies like DriveSavers have labs that get the data right off the plates, they even deal with drives that were damaged in water or even fire. This kind of this seems to always happen at the worst time! I wish you the best of luck on retrieving your data. Worst case, at least you have those four pictures that you sent via email. Four is better than zero.

God Bless,

Sarasusan

[djeslinger 0]

Hi, have you tried Hiren's Boot CD?

There's a program on it called GetDataBackNTFS. I've used it on several hard drives and it's gotten most of the data back. On one it got every single thing back. My advice is to get a hard drive enclosure, either 2.5" or 3.5" depending on if it's a notebook or a desktop, then run GetDataBackNTFS and hope for the best.

P.S. Is it spinning at all? If not.. I don't think there's anything you can do. If it is, and neither SpinRite or Hiren's works, you can always try putting it in the freezer for a few hours, then taking it out and trying to get a little data off at a time. That's a last resort measure, though, obviously.

The computer store tried the program, getdataback.. read to 9% and locked up their computer. They tried again and it read to 8% and locked up computer again

Thx for reply, will check into spinrite and hirens.....

I also tried freezer trick and back into laptop. tried to start in safe mode. loads to same place as before and stops...

Edited September 27, 2010 by djeslinger

[Casprd 167]

Look for a product called Get Data Back, runtime software. If the drive is spinning and not giving any loud clicks or beeps, you can usually recover the files with this. This is what I for our hard drive recovery service. If the drive is giving a loud beep or chirp or a lot of clicks then you need to have the platters removed and the data recovered directly from this. There are places online that offer this service, but make sure they offer hardware recovery (not just using software to recover the data).

[JimVaPhuong 4,864]

The computer store tried the program, getdataback.. read to 9% and locked up their computer. They tried again and it read to 8% and locked up computer again

Thx for reply, will check into spinrite and hirens.....

I also tried freezer trick and back into laptop. tried to start in safe mode. loads to same place as before and stops...

If it even begins to load then the file allocation table and boot sector are probably OK. This means there certainly files remaining on the drive that can be recovered. The question remaining is whether the error is soft or hard. If it's soft then some data has been corrupted, but the platter surfaces are still intact. If it's hard then one or more platter surface has been physically clobbered. If the drive is making any noise then it's definitely a hard crash, and you shouldn't be running it at all. You're just doing more damage to it. The heads are picking up magnetic oxide paint from the platter surface and dragging this across the rest of the platter. Flying debris inside the drive could cause other heads to crash, damaging their platters as well.

A professional recovery service will be able to remove the platters from the drive and recover as much data as possible, working in a clean room.

[Phill-Xiongfeng 0]

I have none on camera or memory disk anywhere. I do have 4 pics from emails, but we must go to ecuador consulate, 4 is not nearly enough... They are really big on proving relationship PRIOR to the filing of the I-129f.

Checked on sending hard drive off to recover. Cost im told is over $1000.

how am i suppose to show the our evidence of keep in touch with each other with no phone calls and letters?

most of the time we chat one QQ and MSN a lot everyday exactly but do i have to print all the pages out like tons of pages?

[djeslinger 0]

His post is hid in the quote, Not my question....