I'm so screwed... anyone have a solution?

[RokNRich 7]

For 2 grand you could make another trip down to see her and have a nice vacation to boot

Good luck, after my first couple of hard drive crashes I've gotten much better about backing up data.

[Barbara J 115]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

Does your fiancee not have any pics she could send you. Surely you were not the only one who took photos , she hopefully has some and USCIS for 129f petition really only need 5 photos of the two of you together dates and place written on the back.

You know we never had to supply chats on pc at all was just photos and a letter of how we met. Oh and 2 affadavits from people who knew of our impending marriage and who had met me whilst I was in USA. Good luck though

[MJ&RJ 7]

Information for all people that own a computer and this is universal knowledge. The cost to buy a small portable hard drive is minor in relative to the cost of getting that digital information back. You can even use free online storage services to keep your information backuped online and accessable anywhere in the world.

[garfield529 47]

DropBox is a great website that offers 2 gigs free for data storage. Not a lot for storage of pics, but great for chat logs, ect. You can share with your fiance(e) also.

[Puppy eyes 0]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

Hello there, im no computer geek but own a computer company..platter cannot be bad unless u dropped it<local computer store you took it to not know how to retreive your doc. Put the hard drive in your freezer for a few hours then back into your laptop and hurry n retreive your docs,if that dont work again to the freezer and put onto another computer as a slave, may need an adapter from laptop hdd to regular pc, throught the other pc booted regurly into windows acces your laptop hdd, spin rite get data rite is a good software but mostly when you delete some files you now want back

[Casprd 167]

You could also try getting a new drive (they're fairly inexpensive) and load up a new copy of the OS. then connecting your current drive as an external drive to see if it will read, or trying the software recovery option. Sounds like the hardware is functioning, just some heavy corruption.

[nancy garcia 0]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

Hello, I understand completly your feeling about loosing all of your proves for filing K1 petition, the same happen to me also. what i did was called microsofot and asked them is there was a way to recover my files from msn and other files, they told me there is not a way to do it, they dont keep records, I also e-mailed skype with the same question they replied the same answer. what i did was i sent with my petition the reciept of the place where my pc was repaired, and also the e-mail i sent to skype, and their replied. also i sent e-mails that it nothing happen to them , statements from my phone provider. maybe your fiancee might have copies of your pictures and she can send them to you. My petiton got approved now we are waiting for the visa interview. good luck.

[Choo.143 3]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

Here is what I used before and works as good as it says I thought I lost everything and saw this covered on G4Tv a couple years back and tried it out when others told me all is lost this recovered it like a charm....word of the wise..this is what I do, after each conversation I print out a hard copy or save it in .xps format and upload it to dropbox a free online 2GB storage and which she can access as well if she needs anything

<p>

Spinrite Overview<p>

Spinrite FAQ

[Rob and Jill 82]

Have been saving msn conversations and all pics on laptop since jan of this year in prep of K1 filing. 2 visits to her with all the pics as well. I was about to file this coming week, all forms and relivent info was on computer. WAS is the operative word.

My hard drive crashed yesterday. Took to local PC store to retrieve the file that contained all the info, said they cant retrieve. EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO FILE IS GONE !!!!

Anyone here a computer geek? (PC store said platter is bad)

Does your fiancee not have any pics she could send you. Surely you were not the only one who took photos , she hopefully has some and USCIS for 129f petition really only need 5 photos of the two of you together dates and place written on the back.

Only one other person jumped to the obvious answer? OK, Two. Gary said something about getting the info from somewhere else as well.

You mean to tell us, if everything YOU have/had, your fiance has nothing she/he could contribute to filing? Nothing?! Come on now...If you're talking on MSn than it should be stored somewhere on your fiance's PC, at least a few conversations should be there. There are also phone bills, receipts, proof of your trips, etc etc out there.

You should stop wasting your time trying to find a hard drive recovery service, bite the bullet and start looking for OTHER information to use. Sorry, I don't think an MSN log is going to determine whether or not you get a visa, no matter what consulate you're going to use.

[djeslinger 0]

Thx for replys all but.....

Ecuadorian consulate IS THE ONE that approves the visa. read Ecuadorian embassy reviews. As i said before. They are BIG on proving relationship!!! So plp going through there are encouraged to frontload the original app.

She has a few pics yes.

Her comp was not configured to save the chats.

Comp was dropped whil running, platters will not read. ^&%##&%^

COmputer store already tried to slave and read.... pls read all the posts...

BOTTOM LINE, IM SCREWED. cant get the info...

[Frank and Duyen 0]

Thx for replys all but.....

Ecuadorian consulate IS THE ONE that approves the visa. read Ecuadorian embassy reviews. As i said before. They are BIG on proving relationship!!! So plp going through there are encouraged to frontload the original app.

She has a few pics yes.

Her comp was not configured to save the chats.

Comp was dropped whil running, platters will not read. ^&%##&%^

COmputer store already tried to slave and read.... pls read all the posts...

BOTTOM LINE, IM SCREWED. cant get the info...

Thanks to this thread I just bought a WD 1 tb drive just for back up. djeslinger I wouldn’t be so quick to give up. While I was reading reviews for various drives I read that some people are freezing their drives and are able to recover their data. I wouldn’t give up until the drive was physically destroyed. If thats really the only place all your evidence lives then you need to get it back. Best of luck!

[Filipina Lover 1]

I always worried about that too, so that's why I made sure my girl had copies of everything I had, plus I scanned it all and kept it on a USB drive in my pocket. I wasn't taking any chances.

Always think of what can happen and have a back up plan.

Have the computer professional type up a letter saying that your drive is ruined and cannot be accessed and then explain that in your petition and show the letter and hope they have mercy on you. Give them everything else you have.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

Thx for replys all but.....

Ecuadorian consulate IS THE ONE that approves the visa. read Ecuadorian embassy reviews. As i said before. They are BIG on proving relationship!!! So plp going through there are encouraged to frontload the original app.

She has a few pics yes.

Her comp was not configured to save the chats.

Comp was dropped whil running, platters will not read. ^&%##&%^

COmputer store already tried to slave and read.... pls read all the posts...

BOTTOM LINE, IM SCREWED. cant get the info...

No, you're not screwed. Computer stores don't have any magical ability to recover data from a hermetically sealed hard drive. They can't do anything you couldn't also do. That does NOT mean that nothing can be done.

A typical hard drive has multiple platters. Each platter has two recordable surfaces. Unless every circumferential inch of every track on every platter surface is either completely erased or destroyed, then there is data that can be recovered. The computer store is trying to get the broken hard drive to read it's own data using heads that have already collided with the surface of the platter. This is like smashing a pair of glasses into a page of a book with a hammer, and then saying that the entire book is bad because you can't read any other pages with the broken glasses. Even if the heads are not smashed, the gap between the two pole pieces is going to be packed with magnetic oxides from the paint that was scraped from the platter surface when the heads crashed. If they heads can still 'fly' then they might be able to read some data, especially on the outer tracks, but the pulses are going to be weaker and stretched because of the magnetic material in the gap.

I know what I'm talking about. I was an engineer at a magnetic media company for three years. I've seen hundreds of crashed heads.

There are data recovery services that will open your hard drive in a clean room, remove the platters and clean them, and use CLEAN heads to recover the data. They have a huge head start if the file allocation tables are intact, which yours obviously are or you wouldn't even be able to begin to boot the system on that drive. Do those services charge a lot of money? Yes. Is it more expensive than making more trips to Ecuador to start documenting your relationship over again? Not even close. For example, SalvageData can recover most physically crashed drives for between $300 and $800. If I were in your shoes, I'd consider it money well spent.

Warning: In theory, it might be possible to recover the data by simply cleaning the heads. DO NOT TRY TO DO THIS YOURSELF! The drive is sealed for a reason. The heads fly on a cushion of air generated by the spinning platters. They are under spring tension, so they fly a few thousands of an inch from the surface. A single particle of dust is like a boulder at that height. If you open the drive in any environment that is not almost completely devoid of particulates in the air (a clean room, class 100 or better) then you'll destroy the rest of the platter surfaces when you start up the drive.

[Darnell 8,478]

I second/third/fourth any movement into a disk salvage company.

[djeslinger 0]

Thanks to this thread I just bought a WD 1 tb drive just for back up. djeslinger I wouldn’t be so quick to give up. While I was reading reviews for various drives I read that some people are freezing their drives and are able to recover their data. I wouldn’t give up until the drive was physically destroyed. If thats really the only place all your evidence lives then you need to get it back. Best of luck!

Glad to read this. At least some good came from this. I would have printed all this info in the next 2 days. In addition, I HAVE A JUMPDRIVE now, but it never occured to me to back up these pics and the archives.

I am aware it can be sent to certain companies to retrieve info. But is is VERY expensive and im told will take up to 2 months.