Recover data destroyed by Opaserv network worm?

[bruincal]

One of my clients has an old Toshiba laptop with a 6GB drive running Windows 98. One day, he turned on his computer and it said "Your version of Windows is illegal. You are in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. .." etc. Of course, there is no such thing in Windows, so I searched online, and apparently he had the Opaserv network worm. The worm either destroys the system CMOS, overwrites the hard drive or does some other destructive measure.
In this case, the worm destroyed the data on the hard drive. Running fdisk from a boot floppy shows three partitions: 2 non-DOS and 1 Novell. Of course, these aren't the original partitions but just junk data caused by the worm.
The owner of the laptop is an English professor at UCLA, and unfortunately, he had several manuscripts waiting to be published and were his only copy.
I have tried numerous software packages such as GetDataBack, Recovery2000, etc, but none have been able to recover any data. I also tried to use the partition utility in PartitionMagic, with no luck.

Do any recovery experts here know any methods? We referred him to data recovery specialists, but they charge $200 just for a consultation and $3,500 for attempted recovery with no guarantees. He said that amount was just too much.

Thanks!

 

[prosaic]

The next step after trying OnTrack recovery tools and others of that ilk is a professional recovery service. Given what you've tried, and his budget constraints, the best thing you can do is to teach him how to do backups. Won't help him now, but it will in the future.

- prosaic

 

[Zepper]

There is another data recovery tool you apparently haven't tried: R-Studio from www.r-tt.com . A lot of the denizens here swear by it and you can download a trial copy that will show you what it can recover before you shell out any $$$.
. It's a shame that people have to get slapped in the face with the consequences of neglecting proper PC housekeeping like that, c'est la vie. But he's probably a flaming ivory-tower socialist anyway and deserves any 'bad luck' that comes his way.
.b.h.

 

[prosaic]

Originally posted by: Zepper
There is another data recovery tool you apparently haven't tried: R-Studio from www.r-tt.com . A lot of the denizens here swear by it and you can download a trial copy that will show you what it can recover before you shell out any $$$.
. It's a shame that people have to get slapped in the face with the consequences of neglecting proper PC housekeeping like that, c'est la vie. But he's probably a flaming ivory-tower socialist anyway and deserves any 'bad luck' that comes his way.
.b.h.

Hey! On behalf of ivory tower socialists everywhere -- I resemble that remark!

- prosaic