OT - file undelete utility needed

James Mcquade · Oct 30, 2015

Everyone,

I was at a customers site and placed several files on a jump drive. I then went to the office and placed the files on our server as per our procedure. No problem, we used those files on the server with no issues and I then deleted those files from the jump drive. The drive crashed before the backup could run.

Last night our hard drive failed so I called the customer and explained what happened since we are on very good terms.

I just heard from the customer and his drive has the blue screen of death when he started the pc.

Can anyone recommend a file undelete utility that will work on jump drives that they have used?

The files can be recreated from scratch if necessary, but will set the project back 1-2 months.

thanks in advance,
james

jrwb4gbm · Oct 30, 2015

Google Recuva, might work, I don't know if it works on jump drives.
Link:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

mk42 · Oct 30, 2015

If the customers PC "only" has a BSOD, then he can mount it as an external/extra drive on another PC and access the files from there. The OS might be bad, but the rest of the files are often still good.

Phil Buchanan · Oct 30, 2015

I use this to recover flash drives plus it's free. I have used it to save a couple bad situations for customers.

http://www.easeus.com/resource/drive/usb-flash-drive.htm

James if I understand correctly you placed the files on your server and lost a hard drive before your nightly backup?

1. You may want to think about a hot sync for your server in addition to your backup

2. A single HD failure on a server should not lose data if your RAID is setup correctly. maybe something to look into.

James Mcquade · Oct 30, 2015

Thanks for the replies.

PBuchanan,

Its being looked into as to what happened.

james

Aabeck · Oct 30, 2015

All the PLC & HMI files I have stored on the network drive I also make a copy & keep because I got bit by a drive failure & when IT restored it the backup they used was about 2 months old. Everything I added or changed since then was lost.

No more trusting IT to do what they're supposed to do, I rely on myself now.

daba · Oct 30, 2015

Aabeck said:
All the PLC & HMI files I have stored on the network drive I also make a copy & keep because I got bit by a drive failure & when IT restored it the backup they used was about 2 months old. Everything I added or changed since then was lost.

No more trusting IT to do what they're supposed to do, I rely on myself now.

I'll second that .....

Phil Buchanan · Oct 30, 2015

Aabeck said:
All the PLC & HMI files I have stored on the network drive I also make a copy & keep because I got bit by a drive failure & when IT restored it the backup they used was about 2 months old. Everything I added or changed since then was lost.

No more trusting IT to do what they're supposed to do, I rely on myself now.

Sounds like your IT people are doing data integrity work of which the do not have the required skills.

Having backup is only one part of the puzzle. You should also have real time replication onsite and fast replication offsite in addition to incremental and full backup strategies both onsite and offsite. Cloud technology is a good way to implement this.

A plan like i have given you above inspires confidence and is what you IT team should be striving to accomplish.

Losing critical customer date / intellectual property that takes that much time, effort and money to create is inexcusable.

I would not have much faith in them either if these results are a product of their efforts

Aabeck · Oct 30, 2015

PBuchanan said:
Sounds like your IT people are doing data integrity work of which the do not have the required skills.... Cloud technology is a good way to implement this....

I agree, that's why I save my copies in my OneDrive folder, and it's automatically downloaded to my home computer & my laptop as soon as I save any change.

(also, for some unknown reason OneDrive gets through the firewall & I can transfer any file between home & work that the firewall would report to IT or prevent.)

P.S. - guess what my opinion of IT guys are?

ASF · Nov 1, 2015

Whenever I see someone looking for an "undelete" function, it makes me cringe. Straight away you know that something has gone very badly wrong

Hope you get it working James!

Interesting looking software too, PBuchanan...think I might have to download that one and have a play with it!

James Mcquade · Nov 1, 2015

We were in the process of upgrading our server to a newer system and as you said, something went very wrong.

We ended up buying Norton utilities in hopes of restoring the drives.

thanks for your replies.
james

rdrast · Nov 2, 2015

James Mcquade said:
We were in the process of upgrading our server to a newer system and as you said, something went very wrong.

We ended up buying Norton utilities in hopes of restoring the drives.

thanks for your replies.
james

Ach... Norton? Seriously?
All "Norton" products ceased to be viable when Peter Norton sold out to Symantec.
There is virtually nothing you can't already do with Windows itself that the utilities act as a clunky front end for.

George Graziano · Nov 2, 2015

Cleanroom House - costs @ 1000.00, but usually recovers most of it. This will work for the Hard drive, I think they take the hard drive apart. Not sure about the thumb drive.

James Mcquade · Nov 2, 2015

rdrast,

If Norton utilities doesn't work, what program would you recommend?

regards,
james

James Mcquade · Nov 3, 2015

rdrast said:
Ach... Norton? Seriously?
All "Norton" products ceased to be viable when Peter Norton sold out to Symantec.
There is virtually nothing you can't already do with Windows itself that the utilities act as a clunky front end for.

rdrast,
I hate to admit it, you were right.
Norton utilities is worthless, absolutely worthless !!

the software found several files and recovered them, but the files are corrupt.
Most of the files were never discovered and there is no directory structure.

regards,
james

OT - file undelete utility needed

James Mcquade

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mk42

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