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Need urgent advice and help.

I have (foolishly) upgraded to windows XP Pro. In the process I've told the computer to delete the old 'Windows" directory as part of the install process. Subsequently, the old 'My Pictures' directory has dissappeared into the ether, along with every picture I have taken with my D70, including a recent paid job. More foolishly I didn't back anything up (I'm sure there might be a lesson there).

I know there is recovery software out there, but does anyone have and advice on which to use? I don't want to spend a fortune and would be happy with even registering shareware.

Looking forward to (as usual) good advice.

i dont have much useful advice in terms of how to get it back (others here will though) ... but i will say, do not ever ever ever use "my pictures" or "my documents" or indeed anything that is tied to your "windows profile" or windows installation ... so many people store docs in my documents, then their profile gets eaten and they dont know where its gone.

I'm sure the not havnig a backup thing will proove a valuable lesson

I'm no PC expert so this may be totaly wrong and I hope it is.

I believe that if that portion of the Hard drive has been writen over during the install process there will be no easy way of saving it.

Maybe some Pro place that would charge may be able to help.


But I would say it is gone>

Could be wrong and I hope I am.


MATT

Hi will post some links to software from our service people.
But in the mean time do not write or delete anything on your computer.

Few questions....

1 did you tell the XP installer to Format or change file system from FAT to NTFS during install?

2. How valuable is you last paid job? (professinal data rescue starts at $200 to $2000 this all depends.

3. Do you have a spare HD and access to a different computer? If yes do you have Norton GHOST or Disk image etc?

If you said yes to above and you are familiar with the above programs and willing to take the HD out of your main machine. Make a disk to disk copy.

Better to leave the original disk alone for now.

darb wrote:i dont have much useful advice in terms of how to get it back (others here will though) ... but i will say, do not ever ever ever use "my pictures" or "my documents" or indeed anything that is tied to your "windows profile" or windows installation ... so many people store docs in my documents, then their profile gets eaten and they dont know where its gone.

I'm sure the not havnig a backup thing will proove a valuable lesson

darb, Have to echo your thoughts...never ever use My Documents/Images.

valuable lesson indeed. Serves me right for using my mates copy of Windows also. I'm sure the software gods at microsoft are laughiing their asses off at me right now. I've just bought a 200GB harddrive to save everything to and was in the process of installing it when I thought "maybe I should install windows first, BEFORE I back up".

I swear, it's giving up the alcohol that makes for crazy thoughts....

Raskill... Use this http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm
It takes a while to run, but it will find any photos that are still on your HD and will restore them completely... BTW reinstalling Windows should not have deleted your My Documents folder - no matter what options you chose during the install process... It may have deleted the Windows folder, but not the Documents & Settings folders... I would double check to see if your files are still there under Documents & Settings --> User Name --> My Documents

ipc6ready:

1 did you tell the XP installer to Format or change file system from FAT to NTFS during install? Nope, left everything as it was, oddly enough I had a bad feeling I didn't act on. Yes, I'm a twit.

2. How valuable is you last paid job? (professinal data rescue starts at $200 to $2000 this all depends. $350. Photographing a landscapers work. This is my primary concern.
3. Do you have a spare HD and access to a different computer? If yes do you have Norton GHOST or Disk image etc? Have spare HD, might put that in and reinstall windows to it, make it the primary HD and ponder over the other one.

leek,

have downloaded that recovery software (it's free god bless it). Will run it shortly, appears to be fairly easy to use. Thanks for the link.

Cannot help with current situation
But in the future
Backup Backup and Backup and also get another HDD for just the OS and programs.

OUCH....what a painful lesson.

Hope you recover all your images. I'd first check your "Documents & Settings" folder, as originally suggested by Leek. You may find them in there.

I ALWAYS save my images onto a disk seperate to that of my OS (not a different partition, but a seperate disk).
And of course, backup's are essential !

Good luck.....let us know how you go.

Raskill wrote: In the process I've told the computer to delete the old 'Windows" directory as part of the install process. Subsequently, the old 'My Pictures' directory has dissappeared into the ether, .

my understanding is "My Documents" reside in "C:\Documents and Settings" directory and not in "windows" directory.

unless you choose the 'format' option...

Raskill, Leek's link worked pretty well for me in the past, I can recommend it. Sorry to hear of your misfortune

Hi,

As you changed operation system, it creates new profile folder for user even if you're using the same name. Check "C:\Documents and Settings" for similar user's folders e.g. Raskill and Raskill.local. One of them will be new one, another one old and old "My Documents" folder should be in one of them

Edit: If you just upgraded OS, and didn't format hard drive all your files must be safe and you won't need any recovery tool

Good advice from all above.

And yes, you have learnt a lesson no matter what ends up happening. I never do anything major on my machines without doing a full image backup first and that includes just things like spring-cleaning data files. OS updates and major App updates are pretty much a given for doing some sort of backup first, even if its only your most important data.

Darb, profile dirs work pretty well in XP, though still not as well as in OS X (IMHO).

Profiles are stored in C:\Documents and Settings on the newer versions of Windows, so have a hunt off the C: drive and see what you can see. Also try doing a search of the entire drive for *.jpg or *.nef (if you use RAW) while logged in as the Administrator user.

This will partially depend on which version you were upgrading FROM. Windows9x did store its profiles under the windows directory from memory and if thats the case, you are plain outta luck unless you try some disk rescuing. However, that is usually pretty useless in my experience.

Good luck.

Just want to echo what Mikhail said. UNLESS you reformatted the drive your files will still be accessible, just not showing in your NEW my Documents folder.

I actually LIKE the My Documents folder since it works so seamlessly with a whole lot of products, but I move it so the folder is at the top level of a second hard disk rather than buried in C:\Documents & Settings.

stubbsy wrote:I actually LIKE the My Documents folder since it works so seamlessly with a whole lot of products, but I move it so the folder is at the top level of a second hard disk rather than buried in C:\Documents & Settings.

possibly every program defaults to 'my documents' folder, and how do you change the default directory location to another drive, pls tell??

genji wrote:

stubbsy wrote:I actually LIKE the My Documents folder since it works so seamlessly with a whole lot of products, but I move it so the folder is at the top level of a second hard disk rather than buried in C:\Documents & Settings.

possibly every program defaults to 'my documents' folder, and how do you change the default directory location to another drive, pls tell??

Dead easy

Right click My Documents, Choose Properties from the menu taht appears, In the Target Tab is a Move button, click that and choose the folder you want to use as the new My Documents folder (In My case I have a folder D;\My Documents) When you proceeed it even asks if you want the contents of the existing My DOcuments copied across.

stubbsy wrote:Dead easy

Right click My Documents, Choose Properties from the menu taht appears, In the Target Tab is a Move button, click that and choose the folder you want to use as the new My Documents folder (In My case I have a folder D;\My Documents) When you proceeed it even asks if you want the contents of the existing My DOcuments copied across.

sweet!!!

thanks peter & John

edit: leek you deleted your post!

As a computer loser can someone tell me please why you guys dont use my Docs or my pics for storing your pics?. What should i be using insted?. Thanks

stephen wrote:As a computer loser can someone tell me please why you guys dont use my Docs or my pics for storing your pics?. What should i be using insted?. Thanks

Stephen. See my earlier post. I personally use My pictures without probs. Of course YMMV

Well, I did it. All of your advice(s) were tried. I found out the following: All of the images were deleted when upgrading from ME to XP Pro. Bugger.

Not the end of it all though, I installed and ran (all night) PCinspector, which recovered about 80% of my images. It's a great program, and it's freeware, unbelievable.

Odd that it recovered some older images rather than more recent ones, but at the end of the day I got nearly all my images back, and learned a lot. Also, on a happy note I found my paying job still existed on the micro-drive anyway, so that was good.

Thanks for all the advice folks, you saved my bacon...

Nearly a HOPPY ending