Harddrive on Aspire 4715Z

My daughter damaged her Aspire 4715Z and damaged my graphics card so have tried to recover the data with a harddisk box.
When I place the harddisk in the box, i only get the program files, Acer files, etc.. I understand that there is another
partition that stores personal data and files, but can not locate it. Have disassembled the Aspire unit and can only think that
maybe it is on the DIMM units? but not sure. Can anyone enlighten me where I can locate my personal files. Need to download them on a new computer.
Charlie

 

The DIMM units you mentioned are the RAM modules, they aren't a permanent storage medium for anything.

If you've got the HDD out of the machine in a box, I would suggest running a full checkdisk scan from the computer it's attached to. All you need to know is the drive letter assigned to the drive. Then run the following command from a command prompt:

chkdsk X: /F /X /R

X: assumes the drive letter is X, if it is something else, for example D, then the command would be chkdsk d: /F /X /R

This command will run a thorough check on the drive and could take several hours. But it should make the rest of the files and folders visible once more.

The files you're looking for will either be in X:\Documents and Settings or X:\Users

 

thank you, will try that .. I have Data K and Acer (F) folders that come up when I open the HDD. So that does not mean I should use Data K? On the Data K folder there are only numberic file numbers which all contain folder with MRT in them or are have "you are not authorized to access these files" on them. The Acer (F) seem to only contain program and computer related information (factory settings). So sorry for being a bit "dense" but which folder would they be in?

 

tried the command on the F file and got a response back saying " Access deniedI do not have sufficient privelages. You have to evoke this facility in an elevated mode". Don't know what that means or how to work around it. Any suggestions?

 

The K: drive is the just one partition that Acer set up, I rarely if ever stick with the factory partitions so I couldn't honestly say what that drive is for. The drive you want to run the repair on is the Acer (F drive. What is the end result of the full chkdsk f: /F /X /R command?

 

Hi Swarvey,

The end result is that nothing happens because I get the following response to the command

"Access denied. You do not have sufficient privelages. You have to evoke this utility running in an elevated mode."

And have no idea how I can get access. It is our computer, but there is no password prompt, so can not get anywhere with it.

P.S. Sorry for long delays in response, we are in Europe, so there is a time difference.

Update: Got through as administrator - just had to figure out how to invoke administrator code, right click on command, scan is running now and will let you know if it worked - thanks again
Charlie

Results:

73028607 KB total disk space
46728876 KB in 158438 files
115964 KB in 30244 indexes
0 Kb in bad sectors
307491 KB in use by the system
58112 KB occupied by the log file
25876276 KB available on disk

6469069 allocation uits available on disk
18257151 total allocation units on disk
4096 bytes in each allocation unit

Which all sounds and looks good, but when I look on the harddisk there are still no personal files. Looked in the users folder and searched all the files and still same amount of data on the harddisk. hmmm? looking in wrong place or did I not do something correctly? documents folder shows 0 bytes/0 folders

 

Scan Results are below:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk f:/F/X/R
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is ACER.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
201664 file records processed.
File verification completed.
1304 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
74 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
262144 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
201664 security descriptors processed.
CHKDSK is compacting the security descriptor stream...
30241 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35843232 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
201648 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
6469068 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

73028607 KB total disk space.
46728876 KB in 158438 files.
115964 KB in 30244 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
307491 KB in use by the system.
58112 KB occupied by the log file.
25876276 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
18257151 total allocation units on disk.
6469069 allocation units available on disk.

C:\Windows\system32>

 

According to the above information, there has certainly been some repairs done to the file structure of the hard disk. Next thing you'll want to try is to goto your control panel, then folder options, and enable the viewing of hidden and system files. This should bring up the majority of hidden files and folders. Did your user account on the hard drive have a password? if so you may not have the correct "rights" to access the files / folders and may need to assume control over them with the computer you have the drive plugged into.

 

Swarvey,

I will try your suggestions, but want to clear something up ... do I go into the control panel of the computer that I have the hard disk connected to and do I need to redo the command scan again so that it is reading the harddisk or wont it just be searching my computer for hidden files.

Again your help is so much appreciated

 

Everything I've mentioned above requires you to have the hard drive connected to another computer, not the one that it was in when damaged.

P.S When you say the other computer was damaged, as well as the graphics card, what do you mean? How damaged is it?

 

The damage seemed minor, just a small bit of water was spilled and we wiped it up quickly and also let it dry out for days. But whenever we turned the computer on the screen just showed one large line about 1.5 inches from top to botton and several more thin lines criss-crossing the screen. Could see some type on the left side of screen, but to faint to make you and could get no function keys to work. Try restarting in safe mode and other options, but got same results each time.

Results: Did the above steps. Changed control panel settings, redid the command prompt and got mostly the same results. A few additions but still no documents, pics, personal files.

Results are below again.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk f:/F/X/R
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is ACER.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
201664 file records processed.
File verification completed.
1299 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
74 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
262144 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
201664 security descriptors processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
30241 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35857072 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
201648 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
6469068 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

73028607 KB total disk space.
46728880 KB in 158438 files.
115964 KB in 30242 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
307491 KB in use by the system.
58112 KB occupied by the log file.
25876272 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
18257151 total allocation units on disk.
6469068 allocation units available on disk.


After doing the command prompt, will the files that are hidden be found on the harddisk or on my computer?

 

Any files that you are looking for from the damaged computer, will remain on the hard drive that you have plugged in. Not on the hard drive in your computer.

If you were running Windows 7 or Windows Vista on the damaged machine, your files and folders will be located in \Users\[your username here] in this folder you should find several sub folders (documents, pictures, videos, music etc)

If you were using Windows XP the files and folders will be under \Documents and Settings\[your username here] in this folder you would find a folder called Documents which will contain the subfolders.

You won't need to run the command prompt again, you've already repaired any file system or physical damage to the hard disk. If you still can't find the files and folders you're looking for though, you're much better off taking it to a technician to have the files pulled.

No offence intended, but by your original question about files being stored in the DIMM modules, I'm guessing your more of a novice with computers, data recovery in situations such as this can be quite technical. If you're in Australia I'd say ship the drive to me and I could see what I can do for free, but if you're not in Australia, in all honesty, you're going to find it much easier to just pay a technician to pull the files for you.

 

Still not finding any documents or personal files, so not sure if I am missing a step or it is a lost cause. Any other suggestions. I am assuming (which I hate to do) that any files found will be located on the harddisk and not placed on my other computer. Have searched both for missing files and found nothing.

 

Yes, I am probably a novice at dissecting a computer and recovering files, so I will take your advice and take it to a technician and see if they can find the files. Thank you for all your help.

Signing off : )