Currys/Knowhow deleted my C Drive without my knowledge

[funkychick7]

Hello everyone, newbie here

 

Ive searched through the forums and found similar cases but expect for one important thing.

 

 

Ok so heres my story

 

My 4month old HP laptop's cd/dvd drive didnt work - it couldnt burn cds or even read them.

So i took it in because i had the knowhow insurance.

 

the rep in the knowhow section in currys, took my details and said it will be sent off so it can be looked at.

 

bearing in mind this was the 1st time i have had a laptop, i had no idea that needed to back anything up and i didnt even think of backing anything up because it was a cd drive fault and not anything to do with the drives itself (im thinking of things like viruses)

 

also the tech guy at currys didnt say anything either.

 

 

1 week later, my laptop arrives back at currys and i went to collect it but couldnt check it as the battery was completely dead. So once it was charged at home, i switch it on and see they have completely re-installed windows and all my saved work and photos in c drive have gone...

 

luckily couple months ago i decided to partition my hard drive, so anything i saved on d drive was saved.

 

 

Also i do monthly backups normally at the end end of each month, so anything i had not saved from march 28th onwards was not saved on my external hard drive and there was a fair bit of files

 

 

i phoned up knowhow straightaway and they said that the techguy shouldve warned me and he will email currys. But i have no faith left in them as it has been a rollercoaster ride ever since i have bought the laptop and the accersory bundle... (the sales rep tried to make me look like a liar and say i didnt buy the acc pack, but i proved him wrong as i made him write that i was owing an acc pack on the reciept itself. But after many emails to customer service - who are biased people anyway - got sort)

 

 

 

So i want to know is what are my rights and what can i get out of this as i had important work saved and photos saved on it too.

[AndyOrch]

Thread moved to the appropriate forum.

 

Regards

 

Andy

[funkychick7]

thnk you Andy

[Conniff]

There is nothing you can do. You will need to prove there was negligence by Currys and that you did in fact have stuff that should have been backed up by you on the hard drive.

 

 

There are companies who can recover deleted files but it is costly.

[dx100uk]

your files should probably still be there

 

try the undelete function in glary utils

[honeybee13]

Hello funkychick.

 

We received your report asking for one of your threads to be deleted. As far as I can see, they have all been merged into this thread now, and tidied up to eliminate duplicates.

 

If you can't see what you just posted, please try hitting the Refresh button on your browser.

 

HB

[rebel11]

Hi funkychick7

 

Don't use your PC, there are lots of free programs that should recover pretty much all the data. If you want info on which ones just ask.

[funkychick7]

thankyou for all your replies..

[funkychick7]

Hi funkychick7

 

Don't use your PC, there are lots of free programs that should recover pretty much all the data. If you want info on which ones just ask.

 

 

please can you tell me what to use?

[rebel11]

It's free, you need to download it onto another computer so you don't overwrite stuff, use the deep scan. Follow the instructs. See how that works, then report back. Remember to save the recovered files to a different computer or media.

 

Do that then you can deal with Currys.

 

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

please can you tell me what to use?

[labrat]

the usual get out is that theres a section on the store sheet you sign stating "i understand it is my responsibility to backup my data" or words to that effect

 

recommend some good recovery software, deft is good but a little tricky to learn

[rebel11]

TestDisk / PhotoRec (also free) by chance?

 

the usual get out is that theres a section on the store sheet you sign stating "i understand it is my responsibility to backup my data" or words to that effect

 

recommend some good recovery software, deft is good but a little tricky to learn

[Conniff]

It's free, you need to download it onto another computer so you don't overwrite stuff, use the deep scan. Follow the instructs. See how that works, then report back. Remember to save the recovered files to a different computer or media.

 

Do that then you can deal with Currys.

 

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

 

I've used recuva and it actually works.

[dx100uk]

if they scrubbed the partition

 

then

 

easeUS ToDo 6.1 free is good

 

or file scavenger 32

[dave748]

It looks like someone has already told you this

but you should be able to get the files back using some free file recovery software,

they've probably overwrite or re-formatted your C: Drive,

 

this doesn't delete any files but mealy alters the file allocation table

leaving the files still intact on your drive.

 

This software will scan for these unallocated files and should list them for you to recover,

it may list a lot of different files so may take some time to trawl through them

to pick out the ones you want to recover.

 

Can't guarantee it will recover everything,

some files may have been over written by the new OS install making it difficult for the software

to recover the entire file.

 

Good luck.

[Conniff]

Of course, if they changed the hard drive, then there will be nothing to recover

[rebel11]

If the 'cd/dvd drive didnt work', they are very unlikely to change anything else, unless they are in a generous mood and have nothing better to with thier time.

 

That's a good point. Did they say what was changed, funky chick?

[labrat]

unfortunatly they do theres a newish QA process that tests cpu, mem, hdd etc

 

it sounds like the cd/dvd not working might have been a reg fix and someones refreshed/remastered rather than edit the registry