Virus? Left with nothing, Recovery tool?

[Pyonic]

Ok so a friend brought me his pc which gave him the no bootmgr error message. After hooking up the hard drive to my PC there is nothing left on the drive apart from a folder called [(^_^)]...He explained he clicked on an email attachment his PC just died...So virus yes?
What I want to do is recover all the data and have it in the original location on the drive, is this possible?
I know data recovery tools exist but normally they don't know the location of the files! Any suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[the great randini]

put it back in his pc and run startup repair??? its really foolish to hook up someone else's possibly infected hdd to your pc...


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/startup-repair

 

[Pyonic]

put it back in his pc and run startup repair??? its really foolish to hook up someone else's possibly infected hdd to your pc...


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/startup-repair

Thanks for the advice, I had already tried all these options but no luck. I did a virus scan and no malware plus there is nothing to infected as there is nothing on the drive any more!

 

[TyrOd]

put it back in his pc and run startup repair??? its really foolish to hook up someone else's possibly infected hdd to your pc...


http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/startup-repair

You want him to run startup repair(which will obviously start overwriting system data) when he is worried about recovering his data? Lol

Don't do that.

What you'll want to do is make an image of the drive then work with the image to recover your data using the data recovery software of your choice. Of course, it's pretty likely that some or all of the data is corrupt/overwritten by the virus, so basic data recovery software won't help you.

 

[James Mason]

I feel like all his data is probably gone... though maybe not. With how quickly it all got "erased" it's possible the virus made the computer do a "quick format" and it told the hard drive that all the data on it could now be overwritten.

The problem is how to recover it, i've used computer forensics software that can see "deleted" data on a hard drive and recover it, but it's not cheap and I wouldn't recommend it for this.

If he has data that he CAN NOT lose, then he needs to get in contact with a data recovery company. I don't think regular people have the funds to get access to the tools needed to recover data lost this way.

 

[TyrOd]

I feel like all his data is probably gone... though maybe not. With how quickly it all got "erased" it's possible the virus made the computer do a "quick format" and it told the hard drive that all the data on it could now be overwritten.

The problem is how to recover it, i've used computer forensics software that can see "deleted" data on a hard drive and recover it, but it's not cheap and I wouldn't recommend it for this.

If he has data that he CAN NOT lose, then he needs to get in contact with a data recovery company. I don't think regular people have the funds to get access to the tools needed to recover data lost this way.

A quick format is very simple to recover from even using inexpensive software. The vast majority of data recovery labs will charge you $300 and up for this type of recovery.\

The most commonly used tool for doing data recovery from a formatted drive is GetDataBack which has a free trial and costs $70-90 Dollars.

Most labs don't have custom software, however the ones that do will do a more complete job of recovering your data than GetDataBack but also charge you a lot more.

 

[James Mason]

I feel like all his data is probably gone... though maybe not. With how quickly it all got "erased" it's possible the virus made the computer do a "quick format" and it told the hard drive that all the data on it could now be overwritten.

The problem is how to recover it, i've used computer forensics software that can see "deleted" data on a hard drive and recover it, but it's not cheap and I wouldn't recommend it for this.

If he has data that he CAN NOT lose, then he needs to get in contact with a data recovery company. I don't think regular people have the funds to get access to the tools needed to recover data lost this way.

A quick format is very simple to recover from even using inexpensive software. The vast majority of data recovery labs will charge you $300 and up for this type of recovery.\

The most commonly used tool for doing data recovery from a formatted drive is GetDataBack which has a free trial and costs $70-90 Dollars.

Most labs don't have custom software, however the ones that do will do a more complete job of recovering your data than GetDataBack but also charge you a lot more.

The problem with recovering the data himself, is what stops him from also recovering the virus?

 

[Pyonic]

Ok I've started to use the GetDataBack program you suggested! It's taking forever but seems to be finding files which is a good thing! Thanks for all the help, may need some support in a bit, it kinda looks confusing! xD

 

[TyrOd]

Ok I've started to use the GetDataBack program you suggested! It's taking forever but seems to be finding files which is a good thing! Thanks for all the help, may need some support in a bit, it kinda looks confusing! xD

It can be confusing, it's not really a beginner tool. Let me know if you need help.

 

[Pyonic]

Ok I've started to use the GetDataBack program you suggested! It's taking forever but seems to be finding files which is a good thing! Thanks for all the help, may need some support in a bit, it kinda looks confusing! xD

It can be confusing, it's not really a beginner tool. Let me know if you need help.

Ok the tool has finished and I have selected all the data I wish to save. What must I click to copy it over to the drive?
http://gyazo.com/64e051862a5128e3b81e9686eb0339b4

 

[TyrOd]

Ok I've started to use the GetDataBack program you suggested! It's taking forever but seems to be finding files which is a good thing! Thanks for all the help, may need some support in a bit, it kinda looks confusing! xD

It can be confusing, it's not really a beginner tool. Let me know if you need help.

Ok the tool has finished and I have selected all the data I wish to save. What must I click to copy it over to the drive?
http://gyazo.com/64e051862a5128e3b81e9686eb0339b4

Is the data you need there? If yes, then you'll need to buy the license to copy it. I think it's like $70 or $80 dollars.
If you're not sure, look through it first to make sure.