Data Recovery

[Doug Bernhardt]

Don't ask how it's a stupid story,BUT.......has anyone here found a decent data recovery for Vista? Hoping it's a shareware thing as there is a couple days work to get everything back. Have seen some good ones for XP and other operating systems and I'm really embarassed asking for this.

[erik winkler]

Doug,

Windows has the possibility to do a sytemrecovery.
This will put your pc phisically to an earlier date.
A few months ago I had a big problem with my software, there was a bug after an automatic update.
I tried everything and then choose for the systemrecovery and there I was with the choice if I wanted my computer to go back in time to whatever day or week I wished. Windows makes automatic copies of it self every few days and in this way you can pick one copy/date.

Just do a search in windows-help or google to find how to do this.


Erik

[Mark Summers]

Don't feel embarrassed Doug. What has happened to you has or will
happen to all of us.
System Recovery is available in XP and I'm thinking Vista should have
it too. I have used it numerous times to bring the system back to an
earlier date. Also When you know you are doing something radical you
can create a restore point before starting something big, now you
can roll back to that date and time. But usually Windows picks up you are about to do something big and creates a restore point for you.

Another question is what you do when all is lost and how do you
get it back. I have brought up this matter before. I use Carbonite.com.
I have about 7 gig of my work files backed up as we speak. You can
even recover earlier version of a file you may have written over
accidentally. Carbonite pick up your new file and sends it away
automatically while you work. A lazy mans' backup. $90./ two years
note: it will take some time, a week or more to get all the files you
want backed up but from there your daily files are backed up.
I sleep much better these day.

Hope this helps,
Mark

[Mike Jackson]

Doug,
Did your hard drive crash?

Or, are you trying to recover files you stored on a backup drive?

Or, are you trying to recover images files off a Compact Flash after you formatted it in your camera?

Mike

[Doug Bernhardt]

So there I am snooping around in my new computer loving the speed and had sorted through about 16 gigs of photos in bridge and a bunch of things I was getting ready for a font when lo and behold I see this odd looking cache of all sorts of things. Of course I realise it's the ne'r do well's at Mircosoft are sticking junk in strange places and clogging up my nice new machine. So I spy the "Recently changed files" cache of 4.something gigs and delete them all. Boy I felt smug about what a guru I was becoming...........the rest you know. I hate the idea of doing all this work again but the originals were all backed-up on DVD's etc. The only part that wasn't was illustrator stuff which amounted to about 2 days work. I'll be taking Mark's advice and create a back-up or start date but far more regularly than it's presently set for. What can I say...live and learn!! Oh....I should add that I selected all and hit delete.....was surprised to see it all go to the recycle bin rather than prompt me as there was so much and then I emptied the bin.

[erik winkler]

Doug,

When you surf in Bridge through 16 gigs of photo's even your superduper pc will clog up a little in its speed.
Therefore I suggest to go for middle quality in preview mode in the preference list of Bridge.It will pop up the photo's in bridge much and much faster and the quality is still good to preview. Hope this helps some too later on.

Erik

[Doug Bernhardt]

Eric.........the new super-dooper-no-party-pooper machine will process all that in a flash with no hiccups,stalls or other burps. It's off line and will open a 150 meg file all but instantly. My wife will bring home advice or some software tonight. She works for Archives Canada in the photo section and am sure they've had experience with this, although everything recent is Mac there. Will keep you all posted.

[Mike Jackson]

Doug,
If you are backing up one drive to another drive, check out alwaysync

http://www.allwaysync.com/

Another photographer recommended it to me. I read all the reviews and tried the free trial program. It works great.

In the past, I would have remnant files and folders on the backup drive once I moved, renamed and deleted files on the main disk. Using AlwaySync, it finds the files and syncs the two drives.

The software is free to low volume users, but if you use it a lot or if you are transferring large quantities of files, it asks you to pay for it and register it.

Also, I recently switched several of my machines from BitDefender antivirus to Norton 360 and it includes some online data storage, plus the option to buy more space. I haven't used it yet, but it looks like another option. Carbonite wouldn't let me back up external hard drives to their server. Not sure about Norton's version.

M. Jackson

[Mark Summers]

Doug,
Just to make sure you understand the logic behind System Recovery
(if Vista has it) whatever you delete from your hard drive even programs
will then show back up just as you had it before when you choose
to recover that date and time. I just checked mine and I could go
back to June 1st. if I decided, not sure you would really want to.
This is a get out of jail free card.

Mark

note; virus people are not to fuzzy about System Recovery as this
is an in-route for virus vermin. They would say disable it.

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Doug,
Your thread now has quite a bit of different aspects, which can be a good thing.

I had a thread a while back about virus detectors. I switched from McAfee to BitDefender and everything worked well for a while, but BitDefender would occasionally stop updating and servicing my XP machines. It did okay on the Vista laptop as long as it was on and was able to update itself.

Darla's machine got a fairly pesky virus (no telling where she got it) and BitDefender let it happen. I wrote the company about the problem, then 8 hours later I got a message telling someone would respond within 48 hours. If you have a virus on your system, one hour is too long. I immediately disconnected her machine from the network and from her external drives. After two weeks or longer, I never got an email or responses from BitDefender.

A friend who services many of the local computers suggested picking up the new Norton 360, so I put it on all three XP machines. The vista machine still has BitDefender, for now anyway. He gave Norton good reviews and said they have improved on all the issues people complained about in the past. So far, I am happy with it. You can run a system scan on the machine at any time, and it will run only when your system is idle. That is a big improvement over McAfee and BitDefender.

Going back to your thread and Mark's comments, to get rid of the visus on Darla's machine, I had to start in safe mode, and when there I was able to select an option to restart at a safe restore spot. When I did that, the system loaded up fine and I let Norton run a scan on the system. Everything was up and running in no time after that. The virus would not let me run any kind of EXE file, nor open the Control Panel to try to remove any old programs.

The Alwasync program is great because it analyzes the two drives and lets you know which fiile it si going to update. If the file on the backup drive is current, it won't take the time to rewrite it. That can save a ton of time if you have a lot of large image files.

Mike Jakcson

[Mark Summers]

Mike,
Some of the previous discussion about Nortorn which you brought up,
and I agree, that Norton products imbed so deeply into your computer
and suck up so much resources. How do you feel about these issues
at this point?

Mark

[Doug Bernhardt]

Am also interested in how the norton works out. Did a check on restore and unfortunately it won't restore photos and some other types of files.

[Mike Jackson]

Mark,
I've had Norton on three machines for a couple of weeks and it has done a good job of updating itself and scanning daily, along with disk insert notifications, and email scans in both directions. It also has some system enhancers such as registry cleaners and utilities to speed up the computer by deleting old temp files and redundant entries.

At this point, I can say I am much happier with it than McAfee and BitDefender. I'll probably dump BitDefender soon on the other two. Staples had a three pack of Norton 360 for $99, and I saved another $30 by using their Rewards program, plus the three pack includes some off site backup space on their servers.

Most of the recent scans have only reported detections of cookies, which it immediately deletes.

It pops up once in a while to let me review the last scan, all done while the system was otherwise idle. That's huge, as both McAfee and BitDefender trudged away and I could really tell it was running. Also, it appears Norton is only scanning the suspect file types and not every file every time. Scans are much quicker.

Mike Jackson

[Doug Bernhardt]

And the results. If I'm not mistookened, are system restore would not recover deleted photos and documents and the software I looked at from my wife seemed extremely intrusive so I took the lumps........cleaned up everything else and started to reload all my files last night. It took an evening of running between the beer fridge, bar-b-que and 'pooter. Will finish off rescanning and prepping foto's for everything lost font design way tomorrow. Thats a Friday night away from television at least!! ;=/https://handletteringforum.com/forum ... f=2&t=2529#

[Mike Jackson]

Hi again,
I checked my output computer station in the shop and BitDefender hadn't run an update or scan in 9 days. It doesn't get much of a risk of infection since I seldom surf the web from there, nor do I bring in files directly to it from outside sources, but it is frustrating to think I am depending on the virus detectors to protect each computer and it goes into some sort of deep sleep.

I stopped in at Staples and purchased another 3 pack and have now purged BitDefender from all 5 PCs.

The second node is running a scan as I write this. So far, so good!

When activated, each of the two packages has 25 gigs of off-line storage.

Mike Jackson

[Andrew Grundon]

Don't be embarrassed about the loss of data Doug, It has happened to all of us.....but VISTA??!!
You can be very embarrassed about that!
Love and Kisses.
A

[Robare M. Novou]

You might want to give "Webroot" a try.

It's been installed on my computer for 5 years now. Never had a problem, yet, (Knock on Wood).
Updates daily, Scans System Automatically at time and date you specify.
Runs in background and alerts you to bad web pages, viruses, emails, downloads, files, etc.
Plenty of settings and specs to look at to see who has been trying to get into your system, (if you are connected to the web).

I have tried Norton, and as other have said, it's too intrusive. Although the latest version sure is pretty to look at.
I Will never use McAfee or Bit Defender.

110% satisfied I am with Webroot. Good company, good product.

RMN

[Mark Summers]

I tried Norton 360. Vowed to never go Norton before but wanted
to see if they have changed and ending up dumping them again.
As Robare said just way too intrusive.
I have another product I have used for some time now. While
not a virus protector it will do spyware and Windows maintence,
i.e. registry cleanup, junk files, disk defrag, security ananlyzer etc.
You can ride with their free (lite) version or upgrade to their pro
version. Computer runs real fast and smoothe these days.
http://www.iobit.com . Works for me anyway.

Mark