Windows 7 Hi newbie here

[Donal J Farrell]

A friend of mine recently purchased a USB3.0 external 1Tb Harddrive. She made a system backup of her desktop computer and then sent the pc to be restored to factory defaults. in the meantime her daughter was having a problem with her laptop and she decided to do a system backup of her daughters laptop to the same drive now when she tries to restore her backup she finds that the only backup she can access is her daughters. Is there any way to restore her deleted/overwritten backup?? Please help as she has maybe lost 3 years of work!!! Can anyone help? Thanks Donal J

 

[Jimbo22]

My guess is; when the friends back up was created, it was created with the default name and destination. Then the daughters was back up was done in the same way....all the while using the same software to do the backups on 2 different systems which used the default settings and over wrote the original back up. This is why it's so important to rename the backups when created so they're easily recognized.

I don't think there's a way to get the original backup. I would chalk this up to lesson learned.

 

[badrobot]

There is a way to recover the backup file using Minitool Power Data Recovery but it will surely just give you lots of errors when trying to restore it. But your friend can still give it a shot. Partitions should have been created to avoid such problem but I guess it's too late.

 

[davidhk129]

A friend of mine recently purchased a USB3.0 external 1Tb Harddrive. She made a system backup of her desktop computer and then sent the pc to be restored to factory defaults. in the meantime her daughter was having a problem with her laptop and she decided to do a system backup of her daughters laptop to the same drive now when she tries to restore her backup she finds that the only backup she can access is her daughters. Is there any way to restore her deleted/overwritten backup?? Please help as she has maybe lost 3 years of work!!! Can anyone help? Thanks Donal J

I have a Weston Digital 1TB external hard drive.
I have 2 laptops and I regularly do system image backup for both of them using the same ext. hdd.
My 2 computers have different Computer names, and both backup files are listed separately in the ext. hdd.

My understanding is, as long as the computers have different Names, the backup files will be stored under the corresponding names. One should not override the other.
Am I missing something ?

 

[Jimbo22]

My understanding is, as long as the computers have different Names, the backup files will be stored under the corresponding names. One should not override the other.
Am I missing something ?

That's my understanding as well...but the lack of information pertaining the specifics of the backups, it's all just guess work. Another question: why is the friend sending it off to be restored to factory defaults when that can be done with out shipping it off.

I'm a bit leery of this post as a whole any way.

 

[davidhk129]

...........why is the friend sending it off to be restored to factory defaults when that can be done with out shipping it off.

To us, restore to factory settings is not hard to do. To others it can be an insurmountable task, and they are willing to take it to the pro and pay for it.
I have a high school alumni who is now a retired college professor. I couldn't teach her how to do system restore. She is afraid of computer. Her defense is.......... " back then, there were no computer courses in college ".

This is going off topic. I must stop.

 

[patcooke]

Given the limited knowledge and understanding which have given rise to the problem I suggest that the only way to attempt any sort of recovery is to let an expert examine the drive for any files which may be recovered. This may or not be possible but attempting recovery yourself by using one of the many "recovery" packages available is likely to do more harm than good. The drive should not be accessed at all if you want to preserve any chances of data recovery.

 

[strollin]

My guess is; when the friends back up was created, it was created with the default name and destination. Then the daughters was back up was done in the same way....all the while using the same software to do the backups on 2 different systems which used the default settings and over wrote the original back up. This is why it's so important to rename the backups when created so they're easily recognized.

I don't think there's a way to get the original backup. I would chalk this up to lesson learned.

Yes, we can only guess at what happened. Even if the first backup was to be overwritten, the software would most likely put up a warning that an existing backup would be overwritten and asking the user to confirm.

 

[yiione]

Try Finaldata or Easyrecovery to restore her deleted/overwritten backup.
In additional, as for USB3.0 external 1Tb Harddrive, she should partition it brfore.
It is also possible that the image file is hidden.
Last, I recommend you use the freeware with powerful function: Aomei Backupper.
Good luck