Paragon Rescue Kit 11 Help

I downloaded this thinking it would be able to search for files that were possibly still accessible on the harddrive of the computer I am using which was reformatted. How do I even get the software to load? It was saved to my documents. I am not the sharpest tool in the tool shed when it comes to this stuff.

 

Ok - first post by me here.
First things first - I do NOT work for Paragon. I just happen to be dropping by and reading questions and saw this question. So I am answering from past experience trying to recover files.

1. You said you had a reformatted hard drive but you also said you had downloaded the software. First rule of thumb in these situations is "Do not put anything new onto the hard drive that is having problems". The reason is simple: If you put something onto the hard drive - it will overwrite what is already on the hard drive and you will lose stuff.

2. I am going to take it that the system you downloaded the software to is a different system than the one that is having the problems. If not - see #1 above about wiping out what was on the hard drive. You may be lucky and not have wiped out what you are trying to save - but if you saved the program to the same hard drive you are having problems with - there is a good bet that you have mucked things up and you will not be able to get the files back. I keep saying this because it usually takes three times of someone reading bad news to accept it. So be prepared for the worst - but hope for the best.

3. What you will need to do is to get an external USB hard drive container for the hard drive in the system that got reformatted. (We will call this system the first system/computer.) Take the hard drive out of the other system and put it in to the USB container. Do not plug it in or anything yet.

4. Install the software onto the second computer.

5. Plug in the external USB hard drive container to the wall outlet and plug the USB part into the second computer's USB port. If the second computer has problems reading the hard drive - don't worry. DO NOT REFORMAT IT AGAIN. Just tell the OS "No - I do not want to reformat the hard drive" and let it just sit there. You should still get a hard drive icon if the disk drive is usable. But even if you don't get an icon for the drive - don't panic. Just continue on.

6. Go to the hard drive on the second computer and create a folder on your desktop called something like "Rescued Files".

7. Start up the recovery software. Look for the USB disk drive. Ask the software to scan the USB disk drive and to recover the files on it. Tell the program, once it finds all of the files, to restore them to the "Rescued Files" directory on the second computer. If there are too many files or not enough space on the second computer to store all of the files - then pick the files you really need to recover and just recover those.

7a. If the program says it can not find the hard drive - then either the hard drive is not spinning up or some other hardware problem is happening. At this point you can try unplugging the USB cable and plugging it back in or you may have to get professional help. This is a game stopper. The program has to be able to see the hard drive before it can work on it. If you can't get it to come up - you need to stop. However, you did not say that the hard drive was dead. Only that you reformatted it. So these instructions assume the hard drive's icon will show up properly.

8. Once the software is through recovering the files - DO NOT USE THE USB DISK DRIVE YET - exit the program and look through the files to ensure that these really are the files you wanted. If not - delete the files in the "Rescued Files" directory that are wrong and go back to #7 and try again.

9. Once the files you wanted are restored, then you can turn off and unplug the external USB disk drive, take the disk drive back out of it, put it back into the system you got it from, and then do whatever else it is you wanted to do with the first system.

10. Get a jump drive (or SD card, DVD, CD, floppy drive, or a piece of paper) and copy the files onto this device so you can then copy them back to the first system's hard drive again. Do so.

Your files should now be restored. Some problems you may encounter:

A. You wrote stuff to the first computer's hard drive thus wiping out the original files. This would mean you are out of luck trying to recover the files because you wrote something over what was there and so it isn't there anymore.

B. You plugged the USB cable into your Ethernet cable slot. Pull it back out and put it into the actual USB slot.

C. You bought an external USB disk drive unit for IDE drives instead of SATA drives. Just put it back into the box, go back to the store, and get the right kind of external USB disk drive. If you got the SATA one instead of an IDE one - do the same thing.

D. You are too afraid to take the disk drive out of the first system. Then go to Best Buy, Walmart, Fry's, or where-ever it is you go for computer stuff and pay them a lot of money to do the same things I've listed here.

E. Why does it take so long? It is not easy to trace down each and every file fragment. Think of taking a bag of marbles, opening it up, and tossing the marbles into the air. Once they've landed pick up the marbles either from the smallest to the largest or use the rainbow to pick up marbles going from dark blue to dark red. That is what a file recovery program has to do. It is not easy and takes quite a while to do.

F. Make backups. There are a lot of really good backup programs (like the one from Paragon). Get one and use it religiously. You should make a backup once a week. Really good backup programs will then do what are called incremental backups. Again, once a week is usually more than enough. If you had a backup - you wouldn't be having to do this now.

Notes: I know this sounds brutal but you are in this situation because you don't have a backup of your system. It doesn't matter how big or small your computer is - you should back it up. Before you do anything major - you should make a backup (like reformatting a hard drive). Most backup programs allow you to set when they will do the backups. Like I've said - once a week is usually enough.

Past Experience: My home network was hacked the week after I had done my first major backup in months. I had bought a program to let me do backups, had set everything up on my systems, and had completed the backup when a hacker gained access to my network and mucked everything up. I had to wipe and reinstall only enough of my software (ie:The backup program) in order to recover everything on all six computer systems. Then I had to fight the hacker to get them off of the routers. (Which they broke back in to six times until I went to WPA2. [We were using WPA before.]) If I had not backed up the systems the week before - it is likely that I would have lost everything.

These are the steps to recover a reformatted hard drive. I hope they help you to get your files back.

Later!