An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Alarmed & Angry & Confused & Mischievous & Sad & Sickly

So the guy I took my laptop to could not recover the data. He expected so and he told me, but I was hoping beyond all hope that this wasn’t true. There are however more advanced data recovery services that will be my follow up. There are two problems with this however:

1. It is going to take a while. A couple of weeks maybe.

2. Well just read the following from the FAQ on datarecoverygroup.com:

Data Recovery FAQ - Are there instances where lost data cannot be recovered?Yes.

There are instances where the damage to the hard drive is so severe that data recovery is not possible. This usually occurs when the read/write heads actually “crash” and gouge the magnetic storage media to the point where the data is destroyed.

However, in a number of cases data recovery was possible at the time the damage first occurred, but became non-recoverable through the use of commercial recovery software. This software is designed to recover data from working drives. If your drive has experienced a mechanical or electrical failure, the use of recovery software can cause permanent loss of your data.

I of course did not use commercial recovery software since my computer went from working to completely not working. I am afraid however that the service guys simply used commercial recovery software not aware of the fact that if the hard drive is making funny noises, there is a hardware problem which cannot be fixed with software. I am afraid what he did may have made the problem worse.

My immediate reaction of course is the flip out and tear this guy apart. He’s a professional and he’s supposed to know these things. Of course, this is Turkey, and you cannot have the same expectations as in the US. To be a consumer here you must be much more knowledgeable as it seems that a lot of the burden rests on you, not the vendor. For me, this is a hard lesson learned. If my data is permantly lost and whoever I go to next says you shouldn’t have hand it over to them, I can assure you no computer technician is ever going to touch my laptop anywhere outside the US again.

Now for my own interest I will compile a list of what I lost:

1. All pictures taken after September 2006
2. All movies made after September 2006
3. All contact information in my address book. This includes many people from Switzerland and the Marshal Islands
4. The newer  episodes of Southpark, Big Love and The Office
5. All the information and prices lists for our potential international clients.
6. All the information for the English manuals and documentation that I was working on.
7. A lot of other work files.
8. A boat load of software. Actually Leyla has a CD with all of it, but she didn’t give it to Patrick as she said she would, so I have no idea what happened to it.
9. All my information for my various online accounts, bank accounts credit cards. I might have a copy of this file from September 2006, but I have added a lot since then.
10. The worst thing of all is how nicely organized I had everything. It is going to take me a week or so to get back to that level. I am hoping I can import the backups I made of my old emails so that i can get back most of the email addresses I had in my address book.
11. All my music.

If there was one person responsible for this (obviously not me), just someone I could scapegoat, they would be really really sorry. More sorry than I am that I didn’t back up in like I had planned to.

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