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The title may suggest recovering deleted files from a reformatted drive but I am talking about something more personal - emotional trauma and my own recovery from losing files in a hard disk reformat from hell.
As a confessed internet addict, who virtually lives online, the news that an error had caused not only my computer’s C drive to be reformatted as planned, but my D drive too, struck horror into this little geeks heart. Did I ever tell you I am only 5′ 2″? D drive was not only my document store but held the backups I had done of my C drive prior to the reformat.
Being quite neurotic about the possibility of losing data, I had a few precious moments of relief when I realized that I had been doing regular scheduled backups of most of my important stuff onto my 3rd drive - daily and weekly. I could restore these files and I would be hot to trot again. WRONG. Would you not expect Windows XP backup program to be reliable? Wouldn’t you think that it had matured over the years, since the dark ages of DOS, that it would have got over its aversion to a 256+ filename structure and recognize newly created folders?
Initial relief turned to dismay as I opened folders in my restored backup to find there were no files inside them. It was like peeling the layers of wrapping paper off in a game of pass the parcel and finding no surprise inside. Disappointment is a mild word for what I felt; my attitude towards Microsoft less than charitable and my language not suitable for republishing here.
Restored deleted folders
Always looking on the bright side of life I was comforted that at least I had backed up my work folder and my server files to my 3rd hard disk before reformat and all my Wordpress stuff had been copied to my laptop so that I could continue blogging during the reformat. Who needs photos when you have the subjects around you, after all my son’s Deb Ball is still fresh in memory and I have a DVD. Sob.
The good news is that my partner has weaved some magic and managed to get most of my files back from the wiped backup and document drive - most of the deleted files were really only pretending not to be there. The bad news is that files I deleted long ago have also been restored and come back to haunt me. There is no real structure to the 15,000 or more folders that have been recovered. I have to search through each one to hopefully find files I recognize.
Putting Thunderbird data back together again has been a Humpty Dumpty of a task, especially as there are remnants of about 30 versions of my mail and address book folders - the one I want and 29 backups that I don’t and they have the same filenames. I think I have got most of my photos back although some have not restored correctly and will not display.
I think I will survive this trauma but I am wondering what lack of posting will do to this blog, my rankings probably dipping. I have not been visiting others and commenting - apologies for that. If I do happen to have ongoing psychological problems due to all of this, anyone know of a therapist that deals with post traumatic software disorders? Maybe with regression therapy I will not need to restore files but will remember all the contents.
If I can bring myself to do so, I will share some of my recovery stories with you soon, with details of what I did to recover my data, as well as some valuable lessons I learned about backing up data. Only about 2000 folders to go through then I can start putting files back in their right locations so that I have a chance of finding them again. Then again I may just repress the memory of the last week completely.
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Sueblimely
drunk angry letters to the boss. 
I feel your pain - been there, done that. May 2007 and I did not know that my computer was going to get locked into an eternal loop that would only stop if I pressed this button and suddenly it was reformatting and there was no going back.
WinXP - why did you do this to me and give me no choices? I hadn’t backed up for a week or more - I’d gotten slack and I lost a lot of files and emails.
I bought a new external hard drive after that as the previous one had quit and I hadn’t replaced it. I now back up almost religiously every night, manually, so I can be sure it’s done properly and it’s not in some format that needs restoring first - I can work off the hard drive if I need to.
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Ironically the reason I reformatted was that my PC was not recognizing USB and I could not plug in my external drive to do backups. I am going to follow your example and not use compression software for backing up my important documents but I am looking for synch software for some things.
Isn’t that always the way? You’re doing something for a small reason and end up with a BIG problem.
We should learn to always expect the unexpected
I hope you get everything all fixed again soon without too much more trauma!
Thanks Bettina, I think I have got most things back. Just a matter of being able to find it all now.
I can understand how you feel. I learnt a big lesson earlier this year, and that was to back up regularly. I hadn’t and when my hard drive died (my laptop was < 1 year old) I lost over 6 months worth of family photos and days of work in spreadsheets and documents.
I am doing back ups regularly and manually but using SyncBack free version which I have found easy enough to use.
Thanks for the nod on SyncBack - I have just had a look at what it has to offer and I like the look of it - will give it a trial.
Don’t worry, Sue, we still remember you.
I had the same problem last December and I learned my lesson. Now I do a complete system backup each week, I print out all important information and even save on CDs critical data.
Lesson learned here too - I was too complacent in thinking I had a satisfactory backup solution in place. Now I am going to have backups of various forms and in different places.
My deepest sympathy - I would have gone nuts. Glad I can connect to the server at the office and have a backup of my D drive once in a while - will do it again tomorrow.
C drive is for programs and easy to reinstall. I use one day to build up when I get a new computer once very second year. During this 24 hours I’m not easy to live with
Makes you wonder if an online backup service is a good idea after all?