newbie questions

[blueribb]

1. Is there a detailed manual available ?
2. Does purchase price cover updates and new versions ? For how long ?
3. Why do I see 2 drives (Physical & C) ?

4. My customer tried to create a dual-boot system with XP and ME using Partition Magic but screwed up the contents of the drive. Only an error message appeared (NTDR ?? missing) or something like that. I attempted repairs using XP's Repair Console. I tried FIXBOOT, FIXMBR & CHKDSK one at a time and none helped. I then re-installed XP without formatting the drive. This allowed me to enter windows and from there I right-clicked on My Computer and chose "Manage" and then "Disk Management". It showed the C drive and another drive without a letter. I could do nothing with this other drive. I downloaded the trial version of Recover My Files and ran a scan. It found tons of audio, video and document files but some of the document files looked scrambled.

How can I just recover the original contents of "My Documents" ?

5. By reinstalling (not formatting) XP, could I have overwritten some of his files ?

6. Last Question: Before I purchase a license, I notice some companies selling Recover My Files cheaper than GetData (up to $15 less), but they don't specify the version number. Are they just selling the license ? (Froogle dot com)

Thanks in advance,
Glenn

Edit: I'm running a full scan on the drive (evaluation mode) and there's no "time remaining" or "percentage complete" indicator. It looks like it could take from 24 to 48 hrs at the rate it's running. Is this normal ? I connected the affected drive through a USB2.0/IDE device to another computer running Recover My Files.

[GDH]

Thanks for your questions....

The help file is comprehensive and acts as the manual. You can read this in the demo version. We update the program regularly so this is the be place to go for information.

When you purchase Recover My Files it is yours to keep and use as many times as you like for as long as you like - it is not time limited. To support development of the product we are moving to a 12 months subscription model where you will be able to download updates for a 12 month period, and then subscribe again at the end of the 12 months. This should be in before the end of the year.

A "physical" drive refers to the physical drive inside your computer. If you have 1 hard drive attached then you will see 1 physical drive listed in Recover My Files. As you know it is possible to have multipe partitions on a single physical drive, so 1 physical hard drive can have a C:, D:, E:, and F:. When you select to search a "physical drive" Recover My Files ignores all the partitions and just searches the drive as one big chunk of raw data. If you chose to search a drive letter, then the program will only look at the contents of that partiton.

Reinstalling windows puts the new installation of Windows at the start of the disk. Any of the original files that were stored at the start of the disk will have been overwritten by the new installation and destroyed. However most of this data is going to be the old installation of Windows and the majority of the client data should be able to be recovered.

In your situation the best results will be acheived by running a "Complete Format Recover". If the drive now has a drive letter, ie. C:, that is the entire size of the drive then you should search the drive letter. When you run a "Complete Format Recover" it is important that you only search for the default selected file types - DO NOT add more file types, particularly music or multimedia, as this will slow down the search. The program uses the default selected file types to find the old partition information. At the end of the search the entire old partition will be rebuilt, and you will be able to peruse the partition in the "Folder View" section of the results screen.

You should be able to get an indication from the search progess bar how long the search will take. I am not sure how big the drive is, but if it is say 160gb then a "Complete Format Recover" for the default selected files types will take about 10 hours to run.

Please make sure you are using the latest version, 3.80. You will need to send me the link in order for me to know if the sites are authorized distributors of Recover My Files (you can send it to graham@***getdata.com (take out the ***). If the site offers a discount then we will match the same price.

I hope this helps.

[blueribb]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

1. After 1 year, will I have to play full price again just to receive additional upgrades ?

2. The affected drive is a 120GB Seagate and contains 2 partitions. One is seen as drive C and the other is "unknown". This happened when the owner used Partition Magic and then I installed XP without formatting the drive. I will select the Physical Drive to scan the entire drives contents.

3. When doing a "Complete Format Recovery", should I search for the file extensions the customer requests or just use the default settings ? Will both give the same results ?

4. When you say "the entire partition will be rebuilt, what exactly do you mean ? And what benefit does this provide ? I'm basically just trying to recover files the customer wants.

5. Go to Froogle dot com and search for "Recover My Files", then at the top right, select "sort by price" --> low to high. Then go to page 4. Scroll down and you'll see a place called CD-ROM Shop selling it for $56.26.

Glenn

[GDH]

1. You will be registered to receive updates for 12 months. After 12 months there will be a 12 months update subscription fee. At this stage we think it will be $19.95.

2. I am not sure how you user has originally configured the drive? The second partition has probably been created by partition magic? The best thing to do is to run a "Complete Format Recover" of the physical drive.

3. When doing a Complete Format Recover, just use the default selected file types. The program uses these file types to identify the old file system and rebuild it. Adding file types to the search will give the same result, but has the ******ial to make the search much longer.

3. At the end of the search the "entire partition will be rebuilt", meaning that Recover My Files will rebuild the file system, i.e. all the files and folders. At the end of the process the results screen will switch to "folder view" to allow you to view the old folder structure.

There is a possibility that the MFT record for a paricular file has been destroyed and thus the format recover cannot get the file back. If this is the case, after you have finished saving files from a Complete Format Recover you can run a "Complete File Search" for the specific file type. This search will find the file by its actual content (ie. header and footer etc) and does not use MFT records. The only down side of this is that it will not give you the original file name which is held in the MFT.