My family's Compaq Presario SR1123WM began clicking on and off randomly. Well, the last time it did it it said that something was missing causing it to be unable to start up. Well, before I thought any better of it I clicked on Recovery. When I realized that it meant that it wasn't going to recover to the last place I desperately hit the power button, but alas, I had to complete the recovery.

Of course when I got the computer up and running again, all the documents and photos and important things that my family had saved on the computer had been completely wiped clean and it was if the computer was just new out of the box.

My question to you guys, is there any way to recover these documents, photos, and important information. My family really needs the photos and documents for their business.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

There are many programs for sale:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...ormatted+drive

Or you could try an advanced computer shop or tech service.

Either way there will be a co$t.

If you are interested in doing this the first thing is STOP using the computer.

The more you use that hard drive the further everything is buried.

Hello Mondiblue,

I understand excactly what your going through, if you do not have an external USB hard drive borrow one larger in cappacity then you internal one, if not this is not going to be cheap solution but only by an arm not the leg.

Jephree is absolutly correct you must not use your computer, read this, THEN STOP USING IT.

There are data recovery specialists out there who can recover loss data sometimes, depending on your actions straight after the loss, they can recover all of the data.

Having had to recover data for myself and for others please note in my experiance only 30% to 65% of data is usally recovered and of that only 15% to 20% of it is of any use to you, the rest is drivel.

So first, do not under any circumstances download any free rcovery programes or any programes for that matter to your hard drive overwise you will overwrite lossed data making it harder for a sucessfull outcome..

There are free data recovery programes out there most of them do a limited job and don't reconise all files, mind you the same could be said for some of the commercial ones.

One of the better paid for ones ones is from Recovermyfiles .com

Plug your external hard drive in to your computer.

If you have had to buy one UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES INSTALL ANY SOFTWARE that came with it to your internal hard drive, XP will reconise the new drive in any case.

Now pay for and download the data recovery programe of your choice to the new hard drive.

If its Recover my Files, ( £50-00 ), it will give you options of what drive you wish data to be recovered from, where to put it, ( new hard drive ), and what type of files you want it to look for it really is that simple.

Let the programe do its job, once finished you then need a barn full of time to go through all the files so take your time.

Turn the files as best as you can in to thumb nails.

You'll be amazed what these recovery programes find even the freebies, stuff you got rid of eons ago may still be recovered.

I hope you are succesfull in your endevours, I shall refrain from giving you my kick ass talk about what every person needs to do to look after their data on their PC, but I will at some time.

There can be few thing more frustrating and upsetting then loosing your data off a PC due to malfuction or ones own fault.

If you need any further help in this matter post back and best of luck.
Johanus

hi, i know the feeling, i have deleted data way too many times
i agree with the first 2 posters, don't touch it!
However, i can recommend File Scavenger, it is genius. It is what i used to get my files back, and it should work fine for you. get the demo, and if it works, i'm sure you won't mind spending some on it!
You can find it here;
http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
Good luck!

p.s. file scavenger may not be as featured as recover my files, but it's quite a bit cheaper.