Now then lads here's a tale I didn't think I'd tell.
Last week I dropped £85 worth of Btc into my 'Evolution' account to purchase a healthy selection-box of party prescriptions.
Couple of days later I turn on the main PC to a failed boot and an endless 'auto repair' loop by Windows 8.1 Pro rather than the usual 'windows failed to start, what would you like to do'.
Apparently it's a big problem with Windows 8 and the only way to potentially fix it is to 'repair installation' with a Windows 8 disk and turn the new 'auto repair on fail' setting off (it's on by default).
Piece of piss I think to my self and sling in the Windows disk, unfortunately the Windows disk I threw in is an 'auto install' disk and needs no user intervention at all to get to the functional desktop after telling the PC to 'boot from disk' and closing the drawer.
The disk auto format's the master drive and installs Windows on a single partition in about 3 mins.
As soon as I realised, I flicked the switch and pulled the drive out.
The arse has fucking puckered up good an proper now as I slowly realise that not only in my own stupidity have I just formatted the drive but on the desktop was a folder with my Evolution login details in it.
That wouldn't have been so fucking bad if I didn't go and have my password reset mnemonic in the very same folder like a fucking retard instead of in a couple of backup's like my Btc wallet.
So I've reinstalled Windows over my entire Evolution details with £85 sat in the account and I have no way of accessing it cos when I plug the drive into another PC it shows up as a brand new, fresh windows installation.
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........
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Head fucked and proper raging inside at myself I've spent the last 4 days learning about data recovery, how an operating system files data and what's theoretically possible concerning the recovery of a couple of .txt files containing access to my £85.
Yesterday I phoned a proper data recovery firm in Leeds and explained the problem to get a ball park quote.
The bloke said that because windows had potentially installed over the data to be recovered it would need a proper forensic search and I was looking at around £400 - £500 depending on the size of the hard drive to be searched and a 3 day turnaround, if there's no data to be found there's no fee.
Fuck that shit I said, the data isn't worth anywhere near that much.
Then carry on with your Windows installation and walk away, take it on the chin he says.
By now I'm starting to come to terms with having to walk away from £85 sat floating around deep cyberspace in a ghost account, then making a whole new account to spend the other £85 sat in my backed up Btc wallet on more drugs to cheer me up over losing the first fucking £85!
So after snipering 3 or 4 forensic data recovery software suites from torrents It's just taken me 3.5 hours to recover my .txt files with all the information intact using just the first piece of software.
2 hours or so for the software to deep scan the 160GB hard drive and the other 1.5 hours for me to trawl through all the recovered .txt files to find the relevant ones.
Logged in and confirmed.
Piece of piss!!!!
I wasn't gonna tell the story if I failed, I was just gonna keep it to myself.
Now there's an 8th of Molly with my name all over it!