Aug 31

One of the frequent request I receive as a computer support technician is: Can you recover or find my photos? And the answer is, you guessed it; maybe. But the odds of recovering data/photos is greatly increased with the right software.

Baring any mechanical failures of a drive, files that have been deleted, even cleaned out of the Recycle Bin, most likely can be recovered.

That’s the good news. Even better news, now the average person can recover deleted files with a powerful program called Handy Recovery.

Handy Recovery

Handy Recovery Capabilities

Handy Recovery can recover all types of files on all types of drives and all types of formats. Handy Recovery can recover media files in all formats, including: RAW, JPG, JPEG, TIF, GIF, RiFF, TIFF, AVI, PNG, BMP, MPEG, MOV, WAV, MIDI, QuickTime, etc.

Specializing in multimedia recovery, Handy Recovery can be used for CF card recovery and other camera storage media. Handy Recovery can recover files on other media such as Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro Duo, miniSD, MultiMediaCard MMC, SD Card, SmartMedia, xD Picture Card, CDR / CDRW, PDA, DVD / DVD RW, Zip Disk, Hard Disk, PCMCIA PC, Floppy Disk, Micro Drive, any compact flash devices.

Format types that are supported are FAT 12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 + EFS file systems.

Features of Handy Recovery

The interface is easy to understand and use and gives you valuable information about your disk and files right up front. Files that are deleted are displayed with an x. The bottom pane shows a thumbnail of the image. The probability of recovering the file is listed also which is very handy.

find deleted files with Handy Recovery

As a computer professional, I use Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional to recovery data. Ontrack cost $2,000 a year to use and is one of the best recovery programs in the industry. I tested Handy Recovery and compared it to Ontrack.

For the test, I used a Sony memory stick out of my camera. The memory stick had 77 photos on it and has been in use for several years in which time I have taken hundreds of photos. I ran Handy Recovery on the stick with the images, and both programs found the 77 images and several hundred images that had been erased.

handy recovery

I then deleted the image files and ran a scan again; once again, both programs found all 77 deleted files and the other deleted files as before.

Results

Both programs found all 77 deleted files and several hundred files that were deleted up to 2 years ago. Handy Recovery showed more information about the files found and showed a thumbnail of images.

Handy Recovery–2.5 year old image

It took about 10 minutes to scan the memory stick in both programs. Handy Recovery has the option to run an extended analysis and you can choose which file types you want to search for which can save time.

Both programs allow you to choose individual files and folders to recover, but only Handy Recovery lets you preview the images first in a preview pane.

With Handy Recovery, you can browse the contents of your disk like in Windows Explorer. The only difference is that you see deleted files and folders along with the file and folders that have not been deleted. The program can search for files by name or type and show the probability of a successful recovery for each file. Recovered files can be saved to any disks accessible on your system.

Bottom Line

Handy Recovery is a powerful program that can recover lost file from any media. Handy Recovery is performed just as well as a professional, $2,000 program. Handy recovery is easy to use, affordable, and is a must have for anyone who wants to find and recover lost files.

Aug 30

Blue Screen

Today a user brought in her Dell D620 laptop. She said that she got a blue screen
and then she was turned the computer off and then it would not restart.

Laptop Overheating

She handed me the laptop and it was very hot, probably the hottest I have ever seen a laptop get. I opened the lid and the laptop was still on and the wireless was on also. The unit was on but there was no image on the screen. The user stated that she put the laptop away in her bag after the blue screen until she could bring it in. The laptop had been in the bag for about 6 hours, running, with no ventilation. This is bad.

I took the battery out of the unit and let it cool off. I removed the hard drive to see if I could get any data off the drive with Norton Ghost but I could not even get the disk to power up.

Old Freezer Trick

I tried the freezer trick where you wrap a hard drive in plastic and set it in the freezer for a while then try to access the data again. Well, after about an hour and a half, I took the hard drive out and it fired up and I got a Ghost image.

No Backup!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the user does not have her data backed up and she was very worried when I told her the hard drive had failed.

A new hard drive is on the way and the user’s data is safe and ready to be put on the new hard drive.

What caused the failure? Well the blue screen may have been an indicator of hard drive problems. But I think that in this case the heat caused the failure of the hard drive.

Lessons and Tips

  • If a computer starts getting blue screens or other errors, take it in to have it serviced.
  • Back up data.
  • Back up data.
  • If the computer will not shut down;
    • hold the power button down for about 10 seconds
    • unplug the power
    • remove the battery
  • Do not put a running computer in a bag.

And did I mention to back up your data on a regular basis?