Windows 10 the new Trojan Horse...

Hey Everyone.

Okay lets get started at the beginning. Years ago, lol when I was still an active user, I had a laptop running on Windows Vista. A family member, who is a computer engineer, kept bugging me and telling me that Vista is horrible and that I should go to Win7. I ignored him because I had no problems. There was no compatibility issues with anything. But as the years went by, my Laptop giving problems (this was not WinVista causing it, the laptop was 12 years old). Eventually I got myself a SeaGate 2TB External Backup drive because my laptop was overheating all the time, freezing regularly and I had to travel around with my work data.

Eventually my laptop was unusable, shutting down almost every 15min. Due to my expanding field of software, I had to upgrade to a top of the range Gaming PC (working with software that requires super processor speeds and graphics, this was my best option)

Unfortunately my new PC came with Windows 10. First thing I noticed was I had lost the use of all my collage software worth about $1000 (For me in South Africa, this is about R25,000) This caused great anger on my part, because the new version of this software is now 3 times the price. But I got over it and moved on.

With the vast amount of work coming my way, and competing in local competitions (came in 2nd in South Africa), I had little time to organize all the work, personal and even sensitive data stored on my External and put it on my PC hdd. Just to give you an idea of the amount I'm talking about, it was 1.7TB, I had a 10 years worth of 3D designs, 2 years worth of blueprints, several classified word projects and more than 100,000 photos that I took myself for I am a nature photographer and artist aswell.

Long story short, I had to update my Win10. I had no problems before, so I started the update. Within seconds, a pop-up notification came one saying something like This update will cause your video and music files to become unreadable. We recommend cancelling this update. And that's what I did, I cancelled it and continued with work. About two days later, after starting up my computer, I received a message that the last update was unsuccessful, and now my entire 2TB external drive is unreadable! Win10 updated anyway, even though I cancelled it!

I lost ALL my data! The only data I didn't lose was the data saved on my desktop, and the auto backup files in my recycle bin.

I read that a large number of lawsuits have been opened against Win10, with settlements of $10 mil because of unauthorized updates causing damage and loss of both software and hardware, so I am not the only one.

But this brings me to my question:
What is the best course of action to restore my lost data?
Yes, I already tried recovery data, spent hours searching for one with good reviews. Most of them are super expensive aswell with horrible reviews.
I have even sent SeaGate an email regarding my situation (I'm not sure that email reached them though, it was not a @seagate email, but it was the only address I could find for SeaGate. So if any of you have another address for them, please provide it aswell).
I will be contacting a local Data Recovery Specialist soon aswell, but who knows how much they will charge? I just bought an apartment, I do not have a lot of money now.

Please, Do any of you have any suggestions that I can try myself WITHOUT screwing this up and losing my data forever?
Thanks

I posted this thread a while ago about people suing Microsoft over windows 10

www.abovetopsecret.com...

i am a bit of a noob when it comes to computers but good luck yip i even have Vista on 2 machines

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Thanks! Lol so im guessing you're the wrong person to ask about how to get in contact with windows 10 to get them to sort thim out for me?

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

SATA cord under $15.00. Data all still there... Remove just hard drive, pull ribbon strip off.

Plug one end of SATA cord into it (ribbon) and other into USB of a second computer.

Open files...youll see the defunct drive listed. Click it open.

The 2nd computer will see all your files there...cut and past them elsewhere.

2nd computer most likely (Ive done it 3 times in 20yrs)...now has the music, photos....WITHOUT the new Win 10 encrypted system update.

Ford Motor Company IT Director showed me that.... Your files are still there... Just needs reading and transfer to another comptr via SATA cord-ribbon pin to USB.

Easy. Got me out of virus, browser hijack and dead comptr. Good luck and message me anytime... MS

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Ahhh great thanks!!!!!

I will let you know when i made progress!!

Just one question, do you get SATA cables for external harddrives, or adaptors?

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

I was in a computer class once with a bunch of Apples guys. They were saying how much better Apple was than PCs. And then I overhead them talking about the latest upgrade and how the new O/S was not compatible with their existing hardware. And then I thought, "gee, they have the same problems as PC users."

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion
Hey Everyone.

Okay lets get started at the beginning. Years ago, lol when I was still an active user, I had a laptop running on Windows Vista. A family member, who is a computer engineer, kept bugging me and telling me that Vista is horrible and that I should go to Win7. I ignored him because I had no problems. There was no compatibility issues with anything. But as the years went by, my Laptop giving problems (this was not WinVista causing it, the laptop was 12 years old). Eventually I got myself a SeaGate 2TB External Backup drive because my laptop was overheating all the time, freezing regularly and I had to travel around with my work data.

Eventually my laptop was unusable, shutting down almost every 15min. Due to my expanding field of software, I had to upgrade to a top of the range Gaming PC (working with software that requires super processor speeds and graphics, this was my best option)

Unfortunately my new PC came with Windows 10. First thing I noticed was I had lost the use of all my collage software worth about $1000 (For me in South Africa, this is about R25,000) This caused great anger on my part, because the new version of this software is now 3 times the price. But I got over it and moved on.

With the vast amount of work coming my way, and competing in local competitions (came in 2nd in South Africa), I had little time to organize all the work, personal and even sensitive data stored on my External and put it on my PC hdd. Just to give you an idea of the amount I'm talking about, it was 1.7TB, I had a 10 years worth of 3D designs, 2 years worth of blueprints, several classified word projects and more than 100,000 photos that I took myself for I am a nature photographer and artist aswell.

Long story short, I had to update my Win10. I had no problems before, so I started the update. Within seconds, a pop-up notification came one saying something like This update will cause your video and music files to become unreadable. We recommend cancelling this update. And that's what I did, I cancelled it and continued with work. About two days later, after starting up my computer, I received a message that the last update was unsuccessful, and now my entire 2TB external drive is unreadable! Win10 updated anyway, even though I cancelled it!

I lost ALL my data! The only data I didn't lose was the data saved on my desktop, and the auto backup files in my recycle bin.

I read that a large number of lawsuits have been opened against Win10, with settlements of $10 mil because of unauthorized updates causing damage and loss of both software and hardware, so I am not the only one.

But this brings me to my question:
What is the best course of action to restore my lost data?
Yes, I already tried recovery data, spent hours searching for one with good reviews. Most of them are super expensive aswell with horrible reviews.
I have even sent SeaGate an email regarding my situation (I'm not sure that email reached them though, it was not a @seagate email, but it was the only address I could find for SeaGate. So if any of you have another address for them, please provide it aswell).
I will be contacting a local Data Recovery Specialist soon aswell, but who knows how much they will charge? I just bought an apartment, I do not have a lot of money now.

Please, Do any of you have any suggestions that I can try myself WITHOUT screwing this up and losing my data forever?
Thanks

Try using a system rescue disc. That's what I did when the master boot record got corrupted on my hardrive. I was able to revover the data. It may still be on the hardrive.

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion
Long story short, I had to update my Win10. I had no problems before, so I started the update. Within seconds, a pop-up notification came one saying something like This update will cause your video and music files to become unreadable. We recommend cancelling this update.

That's strange, I never saw any message like that.

I lost ALL my data! The only data I didn't lose was the data saved on my desktop, and the auto backup files in my recycle bin.

When you say you lost your data, what do you mean, exactly? Are the files missing? Is the disk unreadable?

I have recovered many missing files with free programs, but without knowing what do you mean I can't really say if they will work in work case or not.

I found this, see if it applies to your case or not.

a reply to: ArMaP

Yes, that was the message I received, but i canceled the update, but it did it anyway a few days layer..

And in response to what I mean with lost, I cant access my external drive anymore. I tested it on another Win10 pc, also on a Win7 laptop. When i try to explore the external drive, i get a message saying this decive need to be formatted

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion
a reply to: ArMaP

Yes, that was the message I received, but i canceled the update, but it did it anyway a few days layer..

And in response to what I mean with lost, I cant access my external drive anymore. I tested it on another Win10 pc, also on a Win7 laptop. When i try to explore the external drive, i get a message saying this decive need to be formatted

That means windows can't read the drive. The data should hopefully still be there as long as you don't format it. Formatting it will erase everything.

a reply to: dug88

Hehe yes, whenever I see the Format word, I just look for the Cancel button.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Thanks for the Advise. I found a video of how to open my external drive and we have an old computer that was also replaced with a new Win10. I also have to correct cables, so all I need to do now is get the old computer up and running again, put Win7 on there, and run this thing like a normal HDD (thats if everything goes as planed)

I will keep you updated as I go, I'm actually busy opening the External drive now, just thought I should let you know that I'm making some progress

It may be possible to recover your files by installing linux along side of windows (dual boot) then from linux you can reach into windows and pull your files out. I have done this in the past on a hard drive that I couldn't boot using windows.
a reply to: IndependentOpinion

originally posted by: IndependentOpinion
Yes, that was the message I received, but i canceled the update, but it did it anyway a few days layer..

Yes, that the thing I don't like in Windows 10, it forces all updates.

And in response to what I mean with lost, I cant access my external drive anymore. I tested it on another Win10 pc, also on a Win7 laptop. When i try to explore the external drive, i get a message saying this decive need to be formatted

OK, that explains it. It looks like a normal disk failure, unrelated to the Windows update.

originally posted by: dug88
That means windows can't read the drive. The data should hopefully still be there as long as you don't format it. Formatting it will erase everything.

In fact, the usual way Windows formats disks (quick format) doesn't delete the files on the disk, it only deletes the "table of contents" that says where all the pieces of each file are located on the disk. There are several unformat utilities that look for the files on the disk when they do not find the allocation table and so are able to recover all files. In many cases, those recoveries also recover deleted files we forgot about, but as they weren't really deleted, they were still there.

Some years ago, someone in the company I work did a "zig" instead of a "zag" and, instead of making a copy of a pen drive they activated the creation of a recovery disk (using the software that came with the computer, a Lenovo) into the external hard drive used to make backups. I spent two weeks recovering all the files in that 1 TB disk, but almost everything was recovered, only the few MB used by the recovery disk were completely lost.

Recently a friend of mine lost her Ph.D. work on a corrupted memory stick.
None of the windows apps or university technicians were able to recover any files.
I managed to recover 95% of her work using linux tools.

You will need to install testdisk, which is included in most linux distributions, although I think there is a windows version too.
Instructions are to be found here
and elsewhere on the web.
Good luck!

a reply to: Dr X

Testdisk also works in Windows, it's what I use the most.

a reply to: IndependentOpinion

You can use a friends computr to read.... Then put it onto an external or flash whatever drive.

It's just a ribbon pin jack and other end is simple USB plug n play.

It's just your files are still there but the OPERATING SYSTEM UPDATE changed it's ability to read them with new encryption ...


This saved all my life's work more than once! Oh... and save a few extra copies elsewhere too. Every year or so I save my entire "C" drive contents... Even the old ones saved multiple times this way. I just say"C" drive copy 8-30-17 or something.

PS 1 patch chord is the easiest out of all the above suggestions by far. In 5 minutes I was looking at all my old stuff!!

Good luck!

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
PS 1 patch chord is the easiest out of all the above suggestions by far. In 5 minutes I was looking at all my old stuff!!

If that's the problem, a bad disk is not going to be recovered by a new cable.

As in anything else, the more components you have the more possible points of failure, so an USB drive can fail because of a bad USB connection on the computer (happened to me a month ago), a bad USB cable, a bad USB interface, a bad internal connection between the disk and the USB interface or a bad disk.

In most cases I have seen, the problem was either the USB interface inside the external disk case or the disk itself.