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AAAAARGH - any help???

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  • AAAAARGH - any help???

    Im totally ****ed. My computer used to turn itself off for no reason, I took it to a repair shop and they told me it was the power supply, then I got a call later saying it was the "system board" and it needed to be changed. All together it came to £240 ($360!). It was a hell of a lot, but OK. Today I collected my PC, I turned it on at home and THE HARD DRIVE HAS BEEN FORMATTED! When I called the shop to ask what the hell they had done and how on earth they had deleted all my info without asking me first they were extremely agressive and said that "even an 8-years old knows that when you change the system board all the contents of the hard drive are deleted" plus apparently there was a banner somewhere in the shop saying that customers agree to back-up everything (everything? the whole 20Gbs?) or they'd leave the computer at their own risk. Besides I have put HArd drives on lots of different computers with different systemboards and it has always worked without having to format them first

    So anybody knows if there is any way to get the info back? Data-retrieving companies? Can I sue these people somehow, take them to the citizen's or consumer's bureau? Does the fact that there is a small banner somewhere in the shop saying that I have to back up everything mean that they are untouchable even if they delete all the info without even asking first? And does it make any sense saying that if you change the systemboard then you lose all the info on your hard drive and that customers are supposed to know about it even if they have never studied computing in their lives?

  • #2
    That is one reason that I always do my own work.

    But as to your problems, I doubt there will be much in the line of legal action, but then there might be as I'm not familiar with English law. Here in the US you would probably have no problems suing, hell, everyone else does. :(

    And changing the mainboard does not cause the data to be lost. If they have told you this, then they are outright lying and I would challenge them to contact me if they would like to hear it personally. Data does not magically go away when changing out a motherboard. It does sometimes force a reinstallation of Windows when the chipset used is a good bit different from the original, but the data will remain. They had to reformat.

    Regarding the data recovery, you're looking at roughly $1000 per gigabyte of data with no guarantees of success. At least those were the prices that I have seen most recently for professional data recovery. You might see if they did a quick reformat or a full format. If full, then the data is pretty much a goner. If they did a quick format, then the data could still be there without header information on it.
    Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill
    My Toys

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    • #3
      You may be able to recover the stuff yourself. (Remember, the more you use your machine, the less the chances are that you can recover things.) Here is an example:

      http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

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      • #4
        As far as i'm aware if they have a sign saying you needed to back up your info than you can't take legal action against them. Then again they might have needed you to sign a contract for that to be true.Try asking your legal representitive:thumb:

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        • #5
          in line with the recovry efforts, there is another program called r-studio, which you can download a trial of (I do believe), which can recover data from up to 3-4 previous formats... It works very well, and should suit your purposes.

          http://www.r-tt.com/RStudio.shtml

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