by John Gaudio Armed with the knowledge that Rinaldo had pulled 67 GB off of my 80 GB drive, and knowing that I had about 10GB free before the crash, I was feeling pretty good when I went down to pick up my data. I wish life was that simple. They had cloned my drive, then pulled the files off of the clone and put them onto a new hard drive for me. Yes, I have backups, but they're older than they should be. Yes, I can survive if I don't get my data back, but I wouldn't be very happy about it. What I want back most are my Outlook1.PST file, and a directory off of C:\ called "clients". While talking with Brady Essman, Craig Snapp, and Rinaldo Valenzuela, I was able to see the Outlook1.PST file. It looked good, though a little smaller than I'd expected. When I got a copy transferred to my computer and tried to open it, Outlook 2003 claimed it wasn't a PST file. A hard drive consists of directory areas that include pointers to the files, and the files themselves. Even though all the files in a given directory appear to exist in one place, in reality they may be spread all over the drive. Some files will even be broken up into many parts, and those parts may be spread all over the drive. This means that if the part of the disk that holds the directory information is damaged, your data may well be somewhere on the hard drive, but figuring out just where on the hard drive becomes "interesting." The pros at digitalmedix found a lot of my data, but it appears that the first pass missed some of what's most important to me. It's like building a jigsaw puzzle without benefit of the picture that tells you what it's supposed to look like. I remember parts of what it's supposed to look like, so when they show me what they have of the jig saw puzzle, I can provide clues to let them know what we're still looking for. Hopefully, armed with more information, they'll be able to coax more of my data from the clone of my hard drive, or if necessary, my hard drive itself. It's possible, of course, that the damage is so severe that I'll never get those specific things back, but I'm an optimist, and I know that Brady, Craig, Rinaldo, and the rest of their digital jig saw puzzle experts are great at what they do. I expect to hear from them soon. Hopefully with good news. :-) Digitalmedix can be reached at 866-DIG-MEDX, (866-344-6339.) |
