[NTLUG:Discuss] Needles in a haystack

[David Ross]

Lenrek Xunil wrote:
> OK here's what happened.  Two weeks ago.  My bro's wife asked me to look at
> the Windows XP PC.  They had just bought a new hard drive and new memory as
> I had recommended, and they had installed both, with the new drive as the
> slave drive.  The old memory was bad, and it may have correpted some OS and
> registry data.  I went to look at it, and tried downloading an antivirus.
> The thing was so slow and messed up that it would keep freezing, and I'm not
> one for waiting for a windoze machine... so hard shutdown.  I do this from
> time to time on various PC's without much problem.  After the hard shutdown,
> I tried to boot up in safe mode.  Right after that, I was not able to bring
> up windows.
>
> What I should have done at that point is take it home, put the drive on my
> PC (where it is now), and back up the data.   I could have planned out what
> I was going to do, such as back up the data, set the switches, install the
> OS on the newer drive, etc.  But she insisted that I stay and work on it. It
> was close to midnight on a weekday, and I had been a long day. I think it
> made her uneasy not knowing, but I should have told her it was best to
> wait.  Users conclude that if the PC doesn't boot up, the data is lost and
> the PC is broken.  I just didn't do a good job at explaining and making her
> feel at ease.  I was tired, and I had get up at 5 am to go to work.  So I
> wasn't in my best frame of mind.
>
> I boot up with SuSe 9 to see what I can do.  I knew I needed newer tools,
> but to download an OS, burn it, LEARN IT, etc.... just not enough time -- I
> wanted to get some sleep.  My CD's were corrupted and I wasn't having much
> luck with Linux.  By then it was about 2 am.  I thought, well, I'll just
> install Windows on the second drive.  I didn't even bother taking the hard
> drives out, setting the  master/slave switches, etc.,   So I booted up the
> Windows install disk, and made sure that I formatted the new drive (slave)
> and not the old drive (master) with the data.  Yeah, bad idea.  Of course if
> you install on the second drive, it still is going to change data on the
> first, at least the MBR. Somwhere I must have hit enter and it formatted the
> first partition on the old drive, the one that had the windows installation
> and the "documents and settings" folder.  I noticed after the installation
> was done.  Eventually I had to leave, and told them not to touch the
> computer.
>
> I've been so busy these past few weeks, and I wanted to make sure I didn't
> make the same mistake twice, so I took my time and waited until I got into
> the right frame of mind.  So here I am, two weeks later, running test disk
> on that old drive.  It's been running for hours.  I want to access the
> user's documents, and I was hoping for something structured like restoring
> "documents and settings" with the folder structure intact.  Instead, there's
> these directories that look like "recup_dir.109".  And in them is all sorts
> of text files, html files, jpg files... a LOT of IE cache stuff.  There a
> few word docs, some open up, some don't.  Makes it real hard to find the
> important files.  I can't tell.... did you save that picture or were you
> just looking at a myspace page?  There's no way to know.  Many people used
> this PC, and each family member logged into their own account.  I don't just
> want to hand them a CD of scatter files and say, "ok, here you go".  It's
> like handing them pieces of broken glass.  And it also infringes on each
> member's privacy.  Who was looking at that?  I'd rather not know, and I'd
> rather they don't have to ask that question to each other.  I just want to
> give them back the documents they had in each of their "my documents" folder
> with minimal hassle.
>
> ANY SUGGESTIONS???????
>   

Personally I like using Trinity Rescue Kit
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12

But since you mentioned a format before the re-install it's probably 
going to be difficult (but not impossible)
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