Panic at 12AM

I made a huge mistake
huge mistake


   So I needed to securely erase my mac's hard drive. My dad downloaded a bunch of applications that he didn't know were malicious. Yes, the typical "You need a media player to play ur video" application. Which then put in several other applications that put pop up notifications left and right and make everything not so fun. One in particular could scan every photo on the drive and pop them up on the screen. How r00d. I was getting tired of searching for these things in the library so I decided that I should securely erase the hard drive to make sure that they would just be purged from existence and not work at all. I was tired of sitting in front of the computer in paranoia that there's something that is possibly monitoring my activity. Then I sat down and watched Mulan as the hard drive securely erased. Then that's when I remember, There are photos on that drive Family photos. A thousand at least. Securely deleted. SECURELY. 00000s were written on the drive so that the information was not able to be retrieved by typical software. Not sure how I'm going to get back a single photo. A local computer shop near me can do forensic level data recovery... but at prices ranging from $500 to $4000, I'd have to sell my artificial human kidney on the black market for those photos! Now with the OS reinstalling I'm going to try data recovery software and see if I can still get anything at all. But I don't think I can get anything. I didn't use maximum security deletion because I'm not selling this thing.

   Anyways, i'm really not sure what to do or how to get these files back without selling my (artificial) body parts that cost a leaf ton to make back on my planet or turning into a CIA Agent and doing some forensics work on the computer and- oh by the way the title of this post sounds like a band name

the purpose of this post is because I just wanted to write two paragraphs about my major heart attack in my mini heart

A shame to hear that, Jan. Hope you can recover those memories

Backup backup backup

Fithboy wrote:Backup backup backup

I cannot second this enough.

Buy USB hard drives, make multiple backups, lock at least one away in a hidden fire proof safe, never leave them hooked up to your pc/mac.

Do the backups then unplug and store in a safe, secure place.

So sorry you've lost all those memories.

Sorry to hear that. It's a shame to lose memories like that

Something similar happened to me a while back. I was updating windows and it crashed; when I restarted it wouldn't let me in and all my restore points were gone. Had to wipe the whole computer. I can sympathize with that. Sorry to hear it happened to you.

The chances of getting it back are slim now. And any that you do, wont be full pictures. Be partials because they wont be able to recover all the data for each picture.

Data recovery is that expensive. I have an external harddrive that I got when my father passed away. It was his and had some memories on it that I was keeping. One of my pitbulls kept knocking it down off the desk, and eventually it crashed. I have it put up in a safe place for that day when i can afford to pay for the recovery.

Good Luck.

Also, backups isnt for everyone. To make a backup nowadays on a moderm pc requires a really large harddrive to do. Most peope have 1-2tb drives in their pc's now, and a backup would require atleast a 1tb drive just to give enough room for growth as they add more to the drive. The avg user cant afford a spare drive to leave laying around as a backup drive. Hell I cant afford one and im an advanced user my self. xD