Computer melt Down

[wildseed57]

Hi All, I'm back after having a major computer meltdown, I lost all my records, photos and writings I had on various plants, projects, and studies that I had. Right now I'm using a cheap system just so I can post information and read my email.
I won't be able to retrieve anything I lost in the melt down as the system fried and started to smoke. As I had just got it to replace my old system last year I had not had time to back up everything, so now its all gone.
Luckily I was able to pick up a cheap used system with the bare basics I can at least post again.
I will be emailing in a few days to those people that I would like to get some seeds from and give out my home address in case they don't have it. As my last computer cost me a small fortune I will have to rely on this older one, till I can get enough money to buy all the software and Anti virus and firewall protection.
Mike If you read this PM me so I can find out if you can send me a few seeds Thanks
George W.

[mjc]

Don't count the old hard drive out, yet. If the machine was smoking, chances are it was the power supply that died. There is a decent chance that your hard drive is intact. You could get a cheap external enclosure to put it in. PM me to discuss it further...

[wildseed57]

Hi I will do that , I sent the tower over to my nephew, to see if he could get anything from it, so hopefully I have something left, I had been having virus problems, but I don't think that they had anything to do with it burning up. If I can get at least some of my studies and files back that would be of some help. The cheap one I have now is really a pain to use and is more like my 12 year old one which was a piece of junk.
George W.

[Hristo]

As mjc, noted most probably the HDD is fine and the data is not lost. But even if the drive is somehow damaged the data on it could be recovered. There are plenty professional data recovery labs which can do a "miracle", of course for $$$. For example check this:
www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&client=opera&rls=en&q=%22hard+drive%22+data+recovery+service&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

Most people do not know that it's not so hard to recover data even of formated drive. There are even a few freeware programs that can do that well enough.

[grunt]

George: Get yourself some online storage. Even just a gmail account will give you a Gb of storage online, and then you can't lose your stuff. If you tend to be belt and suspenders type, there are other free storage options out there as well. I also use Evernote, and have a Yahoo account, and I think there's a hotmail in there somewhere too. With all of the online storage capability for free, or a very low price, there is really no excuse for data loss any more. I periodically upload new documents (when I remember), and have taken to doing a lot of the initial work online as well.

[wildseed57]

Hi Dan & Hristo, I do have a yahoo and hot mail account, I will see what I can get back from the hard drive , my files that I had in my documents and other off line folders may be a bit harder to get, but if I can get some of them back it would really help, some of my writen studies on rare pepper species and the viruses that effect them along with other studies would for me be a big loss if I can't get them back. I had been planning a on line move to safe gaurd my files but alas that is now a bit late. If I can retreive my writen studies they will go into a safe online storage.
George W.

[bev]

If your nephew can install the hard drive in another computer (as a 2nd drive) there is a very good chance that he will be able to retrieve your files. I've been a self-employed computer technician for almost 10 years and have seen only one HD that was truly "crashed". Most just won't boot into Windows but the data is all just fine.