Check disk

[40smooches]

After power failure I have lost all control of my desktop. I run an embroidery business and trying to decide what to do with this desktop. I'm running checkdisk as I type this on my laptop, only on 66,000 out of possible288,000 files to process. Has been running for two days. I am assuming I have lost all of my data off of my hard drive, am I correct in my assumption? I am very discouraged is there anyone wanting to brighten my day?

I have megafiles of vecor, clipart, jpgs of data possibly lost. some are backed up a few weeks ago, but daily work is all lost.... or is it?


lethargic in Texas....

 

[Raiddinn]

Data recovery is no fun, that is for sure. However, it is usually doable.

When a power surge happens, it usually takes out something other than the hard drive instead, so its possible that your PSU, motherboard, or some other component is blown instead of the hard drive.

You would, however, need a second computer or some sort of USB hard drive thing to test this.

If all you have extra is a laptop, there should be a device that connects to the computer with a USB cable and you just slide the hard drive right into it. That would let you determine if the hard drive is accessible or not.

I wouldn't think this thing would be super expensive, but I can't guarantee you that it won't be.

If you have another desktop laying around or you know somebody with one, you can mount the hard drive for free into that as long as you take the cable with you that connects it to the motherboard.

Anyway, there is a reasonable amount of hope that the damage is not hard drive related and that you can take all the files you want off of it.

If you had a second desktop laying around, it wouldn't hurt to install Ubuntu Linux on it for the purposes of data recovery, because it can ignore a lot of problems with failing hardware that OSs like Windows can't. That sort of OS is generally what experts use when doing this sort of data recovery process.

It is a free download online if the other attempts don't come up with anything.

Anyway, see if you can try any of the other stuff first and if you can't get it to work in yours or a different PC with Windows or with a USB connector, then we can consider talking about the Linux option more.

 

[40smooches]

Thank you I do have two other desktops one I am going to get up an going temporarily until I figure out what I can do with this one. Should I let the check disk play out? At the rate it's going could take a week?

 

[Raiddinn]

I wouldn't bother with the current check disk operation. I don't think it will help you much.

If the motherboard or something in the broken PC is the problem, then adding the hard drive as a 2nd hard drive to another computer would let you use non-broken hardware to do the check disk with on the other PC which should take much less time.

If it is the hard drive that is the problem, it would take equally long in the other PC which would really narrow things down.

 

[40smooches]

Thank you so very much for your valued information. I will get on it first thing in the morning. Your time is appreciated..

 

[Raiddinn]

Hope you get going soon, let me know how it turns out.