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Data Loss due to Dell Recovery USB Drive
Apologies if this is not in the right forum. I have just tried to reset my Alienware 17 r3 (came with SSD and HDD from Dell - has had second SDD installed). Windows came installed on the SSD.
I used a recovery drive which I created from the system image and application which Dell offer. I used the recovery option because I wanted the system drive to be erased and reinstalled using factory settings, due to strange issues with the laptop’s performance.
However, when the system restarted, my old desktop appeared and to my horror I found my entire HDD (1tb of data) had all been deleted and replaced with windows.
Firstly, what do I do to get my data back!? This was Dell’s own recovery application - surely it should know which drive contains the system it is supposed to replace? How can I get my data back? I presume it is as just a quick format.
Secondly, how can I stop this happening again? Disconnect the other drives?
ejn63
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November 25th, 2017 18:00
You can try a utility such as Recuva (piriform.com) -- but the chances of getting everything back are close to zero. If this was Dell Backup and Recovery, it does reset everything back to factory configuration (you were warned about that several times during the recovery process).
Pkhk1987
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November 25th, 2017 21:00
Yeah but surely it should leave your data on other drives alone - the point of recovery as far as I am concerned is to recover the system if there is a problem - not to delete all your data on drives other than the system drive (which it didn’t touch). I have never used a system recovery tool that has done this. It just targeted the wrong drive - never even asked me which drive to use.