Tag: Recuva

Reformat Fun Time

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I just love to reformat my hard drive and start over from scratch.  Okay so that’s a lie, but it is nice to start fresh every now and then when my computer becomes so slow and even using crap cleaner and defragmenting doesn’t help.

The first thing you want to do before reformatting your hard drive is to back up all of your files either onto DVD’s, any cloud service or a back up hard drive.  I chose to use a back up hard drive because I don’t really feel like having to copy all of the files from DVDs or having to download all of my files again.  I won’t have to do anything with a back up hard drive, I’d just leave all the files there because they are easily accessible if I need them.  I’ve already done that, although I had a little issue when moving files around that resulted in panic and using Recuva.  See my last post.

The second step is to reformat my hard drive, but making sure I pick the correct hard drive, you know, the one that has my current operating system, not the back up hard drive, because talk about a nightmare.  UGH!

The UPS tracking says it will arrive tomorrow between 10:45 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. which means I can start reformatting either tonight before I go to bed, or when I wake up early in the morning.  I like to be prepared so I can just pop the DVD in the drive and get the show on the road, because the sooner I install the new operating system, the sooner I can get back to doing the thing I love to do, which is check Facebook and Twitter, despite the fact that I can do that on my Chromebook, Nook HD+ and my phone.  Could someone remind me why I even still use a computer? :p

I’m just kidding, of course I have a computer so I can play EverQuest, blog, money management, print packing slips and labels for my Etsy shop among many other things.  It’s not just about Facebook, although that’s mostly what I use it for.

I was hesitant to get Windows 8.1, but now I’m kind of excited to start over with a new operating system.  This should be fun.

Recuva from @Piriform

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, Daily Blog1 Comment

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I’ve been making backups of my documents from my hard drive to my backup hard drive because I am getting ready to reformat my hard drive to install Windows 8.1. Instead of copying all my files, I moved them so that they were no longer on my hard drive, well, I learned the hard way that that was a huge mistake.

On the backup hard drive, in order for me to get to the My Documents folder, I had to go through several other folders, so I wanted to make it so when I went into the D drive, I would immediately see the My Documents folder. You see, my backup hard drive used to be my main drive, so it still has the Windows installation on it, so I had to go through documents and settings. Anyway, I tried moving the My Documents folder and an error occurred with moving one file and the moving stopped which for some reason deleted everything in the My Documents folder from My Pictures down. Ouch!

So I went into full panic mode. I googled on my Nook how to recover deleted files because I couldn’t access my D drive recycle bin. I found Recuva from Piriform. I am familiar with their program called Ccleaner because I’ve been using that since 2002 or 2003. I did a deep scan which said would take 4 days, and it scanned all night and most of the next day. I was chatting with someone on my Chromebook and accidentally used my desktop computer’s keyboard which canceled my scan, but it still showed me all the files it found to recover. It took 13 hours to recover all but about 5591 or so files.

Recovering all of my files is a huge weight of my shoulders. Now I can continue where I left off so I can reformat my hard drive so when Windows 8.1 comes, all I have to do is install it.

I have Recuva in my list of programs to install with the new operating system so I will be prepared for future disaster, if that ever happens again. Also in my list are Ccleaner and Defraggler. I highly recommend these programs to anyone who needs them.