The Funny Noise Syndrome

A laptop is making a noise; it's quite disturbing ~ clunk, clunk, every few seconds, giving confirmation of the problems signified by the constant scandisk on boot-up, and signs of bad sectors on the hard disk platters. The computer is old, and its days are numbered ~ little point in contemplating a replacement disk. A new computer is on the cards, but there's a problem. This laptop has at least 2 years worth of private data on it, and there's no backup, not for the last year's work, at any rate. Emails, genealogy research, MP3s, family digital photos, and plenty more ~ don't want to lose all that!

Need to get that data off there now, before it's too late. The clunking hard disk seems to be in its death-throes. The trouble is, although some of the data is located in obvious places, a lot of it isn't. TechScope knows when and how to tread softly in such a minefield, and recover the bits for future use. Safely onto a CD or two, the rescue is made good before the disk makes its last gasp.

Catching up at last, from ancient to modern

This old PC has been good and reliable. It's had a few problems, of course, but on the whole, it's been great. But times have moved on, and so has the technology. Almost nothing available now, applications or Internet performance, not to mention the attraction of modern games, is small and tidy enough to suit this old dog's more leisurely pace, and modest capacity. So the day of retirement has come. And it's Hello to the new lively puppy.

Years of old data, important (and not-so important) information could do with being transferred over to the new machine. But apart from a floppy disk drive on the old PC, there's no obvious way to get that data across. And how safe is it, anyway? No network card, no USB, no CD-Writer. That's a helluva lot of floppies.

But there are still options. A network card could do it. If the old machine is still OK, and there's still room for it somewhere on the premises, it could act as a backup machine, but you get a copy of your old data, anyway, on the new PC, as a convenience. Alternatively, if the old one is destined for the retirement home (or the local tip), then let's do a hard disk transplant; and while we're at it, use the DVD-writing facilities on the new PC to make a decent backup. Anti-virus scanning, of course, is standard. Things like that. Piece of cake, yes?

Missing! Have you seen my files?
Oh. Neither have I

"About 2 or 3 weeks ago, I had a load of finance information, accounts, tax data, you-name-it, sitting where it's always sat. I go to do some work with this stuff this week, and it's all gone! We have an idea it's something to do with Junior, who was let on to the PC to do some homework off the Internet. He's only seven, and he said 'something' happened with the Recycle Bin, but he's not sure what. He's been learning about computers at school, and seems to have started some form of experimentation with Windows as a whole. Not really his fault - I wasn't watching him at the time or even expecting him to venture from his routine and the strictly designated web sites he uses. Well, whatever happened, I need that information back. What are the chances it's still there somewhere?"

Good question! What are the chances? Well, usually, the chances are pretty good. Might be worth a try. TechScope may be able to recover data that has been deleted. It depends on a number of factors, such as time passed since deletion, and the kind of activity the computer's had since then. Most of the time, a 100% recovery is not possible or likely. But whatever remains intact can usually be recovered and/or reassembled. This is because when an ordinary deletion occurs, the listed record of that data is the only thing removed - from the File Allocation Table. The data itself still remains, but Windows doesn't know about it, since it no longer has a record entry for it. Using specific software tools, it is possible to locate and recover this intact data, and get Windows to make another entry for it, as if it never was deleted. This is generally only true for data which has been deleted, as opposed to shredded or erased. The latter terms refer to methods of deletion that wipe over the actual data with random bits of other data, as well as remove the record entry. If the computer has had a lot of activity since the deletion, it's possible that other software has written to the sector of hard disk on which the deleted data was located. The chances of recovery are then diminished.

TechScope can evaluate the chances of recovery, and try to reclaim what is there. If the data is supercritical, and little shows up with our routines, you may need to approach much more specialised services, and we'll refer you on accordingly. In this case, though, be prepared to pay a high premium for such expertise.