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Author Topic: Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk  (Read 2736 times)

Josh-H

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Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk
« on: October 21, 2013, 06:22:23 pm »

Does anyone know if its possible to retrieve files from a Canon IPF6350's internal Hard Drive?

I have a customer who flew down from Sydney for a one-on-one print workshop a couple of weeks ago and I printed a number of images for him. He just emailed me to tell me the really sad news that he  just lost his house in the bush fires that have been ravaging Sydney. Along with his house he lost all his photographic equipment, files, prints etc. (a lifetimes worth) If it is at all possible I want to retrieve his files from the printers hard drive and send them to him so that he at least has something from this disaster. Unfortunately, I dont copy clients files to my computer hard drive so I cant just access them that way - the only place they are stored is on the printers internal hard drive.

BTW: This just goes to show the extreme importance of offsite back-up.
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Justan

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Re: Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2013, 12:22:47 pm »

I can’t speak to the specifics but it is possible and usually easy to recover files from a drive provided that 1) there has not been a lot of files written to the drive since the target files, and 2) that the OS on which the drive is written support this or at least makes this possible.

Were it me, I’d contact the Cannon tech support for the printer and explain the problem. Ask them how the drive is formatted, and if they know of any tools to recover files. If they don’t know (which would not surprise me), then once you know about the OS used for the drive, you can probably find drive recovery tools that will work.

I speculate that you’d probably want to remove the drive from the printer and install it as a non primary drive on a workstation. There are probably specific steps involved for doing this right and I don’t know enough about the drive to offer factual procedures. Definitely DO NOT do anything until you've talked with support. This includes making further prints.

My sincere condolences to your friend!! What happened to him amounts to a worst nightmare for all of us, I’m quite sure. Let me know if I can assist further.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2013, 12:24:25 pm by Justan »
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Shutterbug2006

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Re: Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2013, 07:50:10 pm »

Just because his home was torched, doesn't mean the hard drive in his computer was necessarily lost forever.

Have him bring the computer to a professional who can remove the hard drive and can test it in an external drive box.

Depending on how badly he wants his data back, he can also contact one of several experts who have the ability to transfer PCB's from one hard drive to another so that he can get the hard drive running long enough to copy off the data.

Ontrack is one such place.

http://www.werecoverdata.com/landingpagegoogle.aspx?src=Google&gclid=CN3llNLUsLoCFUVxQgodUXwA2Q
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kaelaria

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Re: Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2013, 09:12:51 pm »

It aint cheap, but I'll bet The pros can indeed recover it http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/recovery-services/professional-photographers/
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Justan

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Re: Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2013, 12:24:12 pm »

The suggestions above are definitely worth a try.

Josh-H

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Re: Retrieving files from Printers Hard Disk
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2013, 06:33:13 pm »

Thanks - It does appear the files once sent to the printer are no longer in a format thats much use. They are modified by the print driver so although the ones and zeros might be recoverable, the form they are in makes them pretty useless. Ce La Vie.
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