So a couple of days ago, I decided my computer was starting to lag too much and I should reinstall it. The original plan was to create a new partition (using my trusty sysresccd which has qtparted. A free hard drive partitioner that can resize ntfs.) on my hard drive to place all my files into and reformat the other partition. Then after reinstalling the OS I would place the file back, then join all the partition back. Sounds great right? On paper it did, but when I went ahead and executed it, a big giant head exploding problem happened. My computer crashed while partitioning. Naturally my first hope was to check if my files was still there, no dice. At that point a part of me died.

Thankfully some of my most important files are up there in the cloud (or servers) on flickr, and on my webspace. If I learned nothing from this accident, believe me, I learned a lot, at least I learned the importance of uploading your files online/backing up your files. Although some were saved through online backups, a lot I wasn’t able to recover. For one, I don’t know how I’m going to get all music files back (is there a way to import mp3s from your mp3 player?). I’ve also lost a bunch of my websites that isn’t online. But what I miss the most is my time laps project. I took a picture of myself for over a month while doing an orthodontic process (maloclusion) and it is all gone. Sure it would’ve been ok, if it was a normal “a picture a day” project. I mean I could have started over. But this, is a once in a lifetime project. I can’t go through the process anymore, so all that is gone. But enough about me.

I know I made a lot of mistakes a long the way that might have prevented me from recovering my file. Probably the most important thing is to not the hard drive as much as you can. If not touching is possible, then don’t. I don’t know if it’s true but I’ve read that all files that was once on your hard drive are still there until they are over written.

So now you’re probably wondering where to begin. One of the first thing I did was install an OS to try and use a program to recover the files. This wasn’t a very smart Idea. Do this when you’ve exhausted the option of using live CD. So what should you do? I contacted Kevin Purdy of Lifehacker to get his opinion (not that I think the other Lifehacker writers are any less technologically inclined than him)

- If your disk really has been borked, you can still get your important data back. Check out Gina’s guide to doing so with a Knoppix CD, or another guide on File Recovery software: http://lifehacker.com/software/disk-recovery/recover-data-from-a-crashed-hard-drive-146386.php http://lifehacker.com/software/notag/geek-to-live–rescue-files-with-a-boot-cd-192982.php Hope I can be of some help!

If you are unlucky as me and still wasn’t able to recover the file, you could try using some recovery software. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea but I installed windows and downloaded Restoration and PCInspector to try and rescue my files. In my experience, PCInspector was able to recover more files but Restoration can be used without installing. So I suggest you try Restoration first of a USB drive or the likes then try PCInspector.

So where did I go from there? Well after being inspired by Kevin’s post on lifehacker I decided to give Ubuntu another try. After all I have nothing to lose, literally. So far I’ve got it nice and running. More on that maybe later. Well good luck to you if you happened to have bad luck like me. P.S If you know how to import mp3s from an mp3 player, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

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