Computer is fried. Can I recover my files after removing HD?

My laptop got a short, started smoking, and died. I sent it into Geek Squad to have them recover the files by removing the HD. Unfortunately, what they see appears to be CTM’s “baseline” without the files I added later. ???

Is there any way to recover the files as they were in the “current” state without being able to boot from the HD?

It was running on Vista x64 in a Toshiba Satellite. I don’t know which version of CTM, but whatever was the most current version as of April 23, 2011.

I have not backed up my files since April. (I know…I know…) It won’t kill me not to get them back, but many hours of work will be lost. Thanks a million if anyone can help.

It sounds like used CTM v2.8. When CTM gets abruptly disables like in your case when it gets hooked up to another system you will see the system at the moment of the base line.

As far as I know there no way to retrieve the files made after that date.

Thanks for your response. I’m not sure how CTM works or where it stores the files, but would a program for recovering deleted files possibly work? Is CTM using different tables for locating the files? They must be on there somewhere…

They are on there, but not in the form of “files” as we normally see them. CTM stores your data in the unused part of the hard drive in a proprietary data stream, literally one big chunk of data. Sort of like it is using its own file table that is added to the Windows file table (laymans definition only).

CTM knows the internal structure of the data stream (i.e. which bits of data make up a particular file), but recovery tools only know about the standard Windows file structure. They won’t look at the “unused” part of the disk, and even if they did, they couldn’t parse the CTM data chunk into individual files.

Ewen :slight_smile: