Ontrack Data Recovery - help please

[pcwilson]

Hi Guys

I've used Ontrack Data Recovery Pro 6 to recover nearly 7GB of files from a laptop that has been formatted and had Windows reinstalled.

I can see the name, file type and size of the files that have been recovered, but I am unable to open any of them. I've tried using Ontrack File Repair tool to fix the MS Office docs but without any success.

Can anyone suggest any other possible fixes, or am I stuffed?

[s27]

Are you using the trial or full version.

I read it that the trial version Allows you to view inaccessible or deleted data that is recoverable, but will probably not allow you to access or open them, unless you purchase the full version. How important is the data.

Have tried to download the trial without much sucess to date to compare results to another commercial recovery application.

Trial version did not allow me access to contents or to recover file, just what files were recoverable using this product. Indication that the data is there but to recover an upgrade to the full version is needed.



>> Edited by s27 on Thursday 16th February 22:08

[pcwilson]

s27 said:

Are you using the trial or full version. I read it that the trial version Allows you to view inaccessible or deleted data that is recoverable, but will probably not allow you to access or open them, unless you purchase the full version. How important is the data. Have tried to download the trial without much sucess to date to compare results to another commercial recovery application. SP

I'm using the full version. The laptop belongs to one of our affiliates whom we suspect is not being 100% accurate with his accounts. I've got his laptop for a couple of days to do some "upgrades". He reinstalled Windows XP last week ; I'm trying to discover what was on his hard drive before this.

[s27]

If you have 7gb of recoverable data there should be some readable data there, even if it is just text in unallocated space.

Application I use needs installed viewers to read files including docs recovered in their entirity.

Are you using recovery software on the target drive. As they have done a fresh install of the OS have you reinstalled the office package for doc files, or can you export any data to notepad

[pcwilson]

s27 said:

If you have 7gb of recoverable data there should be some readable data there, even if it is just text in unallocated space. Application I use needs installed viewers to read files including docs recovered in their entirity. Are you using recovery software on the target drive. As they have done a fresh install of the OS have you reinstalled the office package for doc files, or can you export any data to notepad

I installed the recovery software, scanned the drive, and recovered all found data to an external USB hard drive. I then uninstalled the recovery software. We don't want the guy to get suspicous. I've now connected the USB drive to my laptop and all the recovered files look good. I can see the name, size and type. I have MS Office, Acrobat etc on my laptop, but I'm unable to open the files in their native applications. If I run the recovered files through Ontrack's file repair tool they all come out empty i.e I can now open the files but there is no text in them. They just look like brand new docs.

[aldi]

If you just open them in wordpad and scan through the gobbledygook can you see any readable text at all? Is it just text you're after or is it jpegs?

[pcwilson]

aldi said:

If you just open them in wordpad and scan through the gobbledygook can you see any readable text at all? Is it just text you're after or is it jpegs?

If I open the .doc or .xls files in Wordpad I just get a long single line of empty squares with no readable text at all.

I was ideally hoping to find old Sage data (.dat, .coa, .sly and .srt) but there's no trace of any of that.