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Started by Tcorelli | | 2 answers
Help recover lost files after partition mistake
My son in law who is a computer science major at BYU, was given the task to partition the hard drive on his laptop and install Linux. Somewhere in the process of all this he wiped out his entire OS (windows) and all of his personal files are gone too. These include school work and more importantly -- years of journal entries. It makes me sick for him. I offered to pay for a data recovery service but now that I've discovered how expensive they are (anywhere from $500-$1700!) I am un-offering this. But there has to be a way to find these lost files. His hard drive is still good, but I just don't know anything about Linux. Do you have any ideas?
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October 17, 2014 11:47:06 AM

Boogieman_WD,
Thanks very much for your reply. It's a bummer but also what I feared. I do appreciate your comments though.

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a b G Storage
October 16, 2014 11:16:27 PM

Hey Tcorelli. That sounds very unfortunate. When you format a hard drive, basically the files are still there, but the OS is not able to read them. That's why it is important that when something like this happens - you don't try to write anything on the drive or make new partitions etc. It's highly possible that the new OS might have overwritten some of the files that were already there and made them not recoverable. You could always try with a data recovery software, but no matter how expensive it is - a data recovery company is the most reliable option in such cases.

Good luck with your drive.
Boogieman_WD

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