Totally bummed

[Eollie]

So Tuesday morning while doing a typical reboot my pc went boom and got stuck in a repair bootloop. I went into panic mode and started googling to see how to fix it. Pretty much I was boned as a registry edit must have blown a gasket.

I looked around for a way to backup important stuff so I could just reset to factory default. Everything kept saying use clonezilla to make a backup and then you can copy paste later... Well I guess if you have two identical HD's or the one your backing up to is slightly larger that will work. However it created a problem for me. I tried to mount the drive via VM/Ubuntu to copy the stuff and it would fail. After spending 8+ hours with a buddy on vent and via team viewer to attempt to get this to work I finally gave up and just restored the image. Copied the items and did a reset again. Everything was going great until I realized I needed some more stuff. I started this yesterday and was pulled away briefly for some turkey day stuff. Well when I came back I was frustrated and inadvertently restored the old backup over my saved stuff. Well no big deal right? Actually very big. As I had moved stuff from the portable HD to the internal HD in a attempt to restore the backup to the smaller internal HD.

So about the time the restore said it was done, I realized I had just deleted my entire music directory and some pretty important files.

Ive tried a couple different methods to recover the files. Currently Im using easeus recovery wizard. And also running another recovery program on the portable to see if I can find a ghosted copy. There are some important files I lost like prior year Tax docs and copies of military files. My biggest irritation is the lost music files. Mainly cause they are uploaded to google music but I have no easy way to get them back.

I had a couple projects saved for live wallpapers based on some prior bootanimations and some new ringtones and notification tones that were lost also. I thought some of these were getting uploaded to dropbox and ubuntu one but I guess I had closed the upload tools at some point.

If anybody knows of a way I can get these back pm me the info.

 

[watskyhotsky]

oh, the tales of failed hard drives and lost data...

I had my entire work portfolio on my laptops hard drive, as well as new projects and customer contact info.

I used to bring my laptop home by throwing it in the trunk of my Goldwing, little did I know how much shock stuff in there goes through. After a few weeks of this, I ended up nuking the harddrive and cd drive, cracked the screen. Tried all the data recovery methods I could but it was too far gone..

I dont know any way to help you, If I were you, I'd go buy a brand new quality hard drive with a good warranty, and re-install your OS's. and start rebuilding your library of lost stuff

 

[Eollie]

Thing is the hard drive doesnt seem to have failed. I have a sneaky suspicion it was a reg edit I did to install a third party theme.

Most of the problems have been from the clonezilla backup. Had I known the option I was instructed to do from about 15 different tutorials was not what I needed all this would have been avoided. However you live and learn.

 

[watskyhotsky]

3rd party theme for what? Windows?

Windows 7 allows for 3rd party themes with the UxTheme patcher, and the 3rd party themes can be dropped into the resources folder and chosen from windows native theme chooser.

no registry editing needed whatsoever.

if your using a version of Windows below 7... well thats just kinda sad

as for ubuntu, when I needed to theme it they were easily available from the visual settings, no deep changes in the OS needed either

 

[kalaniboy]

I can't send PMs yet. So here it is...

Sorry to hear of your problems. I've been there, done that. I once nuked my mbr after installing, then uninstalling linux. I learned from that incident, and found useful tools that I hope can help you out.

An all inclusive recovery tool is called Hiren's Boot CD. Get version 10.6, as it includes Ghost 11.5; my favorite backup/restore image program. Hiren You can then install it to USB (if your computer can boot from usb) or burn it to a CD. For a USB install, use YUMI YUMI - Multiboot USB Creator (Windows) | USB Pen Drive Linux.

I'm no expert, but here's what I'd do. Boot up Hiren's Boot CD into Mini XP mode. Run, either Rucuva or Active Undelete on the internal HD. Recover needed files to external HD, and hope they weren't overwritten. You can do a full backup with ghost, but that's up to you.

After all is said and done; reinstall OS, and get everything how you like it with drivers, apps, settings. Then do a ghost backup of main drive. I keep all my personal files on another partition. That way, if anything goes wrong again I just restore with ghost. It usually takes less then 10 min.

Best of luck, this might not be the solution to your problems, but hopefully it is helpful in some regard. Feel free to PM me with any questions. I'll get back as soon as I can.

 

[MasterTec]

If I helped you help me with my Dr. Pepper fund push the yellow button

I can't help you with your problem but I wanted to rub it in your face that my G/F works for DrP and I get it free all the time!

 

[Eollie]

@watskyhotsky yes there is another patcher that does some reg edits. uxtheme patcher also does these same only with a pretty UI. I was having a issue getting a theme to take properly and was advised to use the uxtheme patcher to "fix" it. That is when it went into a repair boot loop.

Ive decided to forgo the themes and just deal with bland.

@kalaniboy I was using Hirens newest release. I use to have the 10.5 and couldnt find it. However since then I have found a copy hidden on my laptop. I used the parted magic and clonezilla to clone the image. However if you do a image the only way is to mount it via ubuntu and my VM install was giving more issues than I could handle.

Im more than likely screwed with recovering my stuff. But it was a definite learning experience. From now on no more trying to juggle backups between hard drives and portable HD's.

 

[JerryScript]

Just FYI- I've had HDD issues at work, and found a local company (father and son actually) that can recover most files, even after some pretty disastrous disc rewrites. They were able to recover our entire accounting backup from a HDD that had been inadvertently hooked up to another PC while it was running, which of course destroyed the mbr and allowed lots of files to be corrupted. They only charged $120, took 2 days to complete the recovery, and it was well worth the money to avoid researching and re-entering 2 years worth of accounting data!

Do not go for the ones who advertise data recovery services, they will charge an arm and a leg, cheapest I found online was close to a grand with a two week turnaround, and no guarantees. Find someone local who does this sort of work.

And, btw- Git can help you juggle stuff, but it's a pita to learn.