Question Files corrupted - Why the back-ups?

[Sraydee]

Hello Forum,

To begin I am a total layman with computers, so please talk to me like I'm an idiot. (Because I am) Anyway about 6 to 7 years while on Christmas vacation, I was using my hard drive on an unprotected mini-laptop which became infected with a virus. In response I turned off the drive and attempted to remove it. While disconnecting, the outer shell slipped off partially exposing the innards of my hard drive.

I later discovered that all my JPGs (though PNGs were left intact) and WORD files has been corrupted somehow. As the years passed I've made attempts to fix the problem to no avail. As of 1/18/2020, I tried EaseUS Data Recovery and though the preview indicated it failed to recover or repair the file I used as a test case, a new development has arisen.

While searching for a file to test I have found several backups in WORD to my corrupted files which are intact and readable. Not many, just about ten of them. Not sure why or how this happened. The one correlation, is that all the backups were apparently created on ‎Sunday, ‎May ‎20, ‎2018, ‏‎6:06:23 PM. Several years after the files were corrupted and the date itself means nothing to me.

If anyone can assist me with this predicament, I'd be very grateful.

 

[testsubject2575]

Send it to a hard drive data recovery service center.

 

[fzabkar]

What do you mean by "hard drive" and "outer shell"? Can you tell us the model number?

EaseUS is a data recovery program. It does not repair infected files. That's the job of your antivirus software or a specific "cleaning" utility.

 

[Sraydee]

What do you mean by "hard drive" and "outer shell"? Can you tell us the model number?

EaseUS is a data recovery program. It does not repair infected files. That's the job of your antivirus software or a specific "cleaning" utility.

Sorry, forgot to clarify. It was an external hard drive and the "outer shell" was the covering that seemed to come off when I was moving it from the couch to a nearby table. It was a Seagate, can't find the model its so old. Only numbers on it are: PN 9ZH9P9-RAA and SN:NA1LAEFF.

 

[fzabkar]

There should be an "ST" model number on the drive itself.

When your drive was infected, was there a ransom demand? Ransomware encrypts your files. There are decrypters for certain ransomware types, but you need to know which one.

You can upload an infected file to virustotal.com where it will be scanned by 50+ antivirus tools. That will identify the malware.

 

[Wu-Zi-Mu]

You can upload an infected file to virustotal.com where it will be scanned by 50+ antivirus tools. That will identify the malware.

There's also Metadefender Opswat if you don't want to share your data with Google

 

[Sraydee]

Can't find any identifying numbers. It's real old and clunky. I'm guessing it is close to ten years old. Technically I'm not using it anymore I retired it two years ago and removed everything to a new external drive. There was no ransomware involved, I think it was just some malware.

A few years back I tried to run a viral scan and the files, but it didn't change the outcome. Still can't read the majority of them. Might try again just for the hell of it. But I'll certainly give that site you mentioned a try.