Help for a Chinese student

[tingge]

My house was stolen yesterday.I lost my laptop, ipad and camera. I reported to police and I know it's very difficult for finding them again. But the laptop is very important for me, because I saved all my photos in UK which is important memory of me in the laptop. The laptop may be sold for money. I just want to go to the second hand shop to try find it. I really need the files in the laptop. Could you give me some advices please? Thank you very much.

[Phanerothyme]

I'm very sorry to hear you've been robbed.

 

I fear that your laptop, if it comes to a second hand shop of any kind, will have had its hard disk drive cleaned.

 

Do you have any network software running on your laptop that might connect to a web/internet service when switched on and connected to a network?

 

You may be able to trace it that way.

 

- in the future, you could do worse than use an online storage facility like Dropbox to store your files on. 100GB is $10 a month. 2GB is completely free. It's saved my skin on a couple of occasions,

[tingge]

I'm very sorry to hear you've been robbed.

 

I fear that your laptop, if it comes to a second hand shop of any kind, will have had its hard disk drive cleaned.

 

Do you have any network software running on your laptop that might connect to a web/internet service when switched on and connected to a network?

 

You may be able to trace it that way.

 

- in the future, you could do worse than use an online storage facility like Dropbox to store your files on. 100GB is $10 a month. 2GB is completely free. It's saved my skin on a couple of occasions,

 

I don't have any network software in my laptop. That's terrible. Compare with laptop, I really care the laptop.

[onewheeldave]

My house was stolen yesterday.I lost my laptop, ipad and camera. I reported to police and I know it's very difficult for finding them again. But the laptop is very important for me, because I saved all my photos in UK which is important memory of me in the laptop. The laptop may be sold for money. I just want to go to the second hand shop to try find it. I really need the files in the laptop. Could you give me some advices please? Thank you very much.

 

Sorry to hear of your loss.

 

You're unlikely to see those photos again, unfortunately.

 

For the future, you need to back up any important data- copy onto another storeage device, seperate from your computer, for example, an external hard drive, USB stick, or burn onto a CD/DVD disk.

 

That's not just in case of theft- any computer you get in the future, will, at some point fail, with a high risk of any data on it being lost.

 

Back ups are essential for important data of any kind.

 

If you're a student, you'll likely use a PC for essays/course work etc- you really do need to back that up, as loss of that data could result in failing the course.

[tingge]

Sorry to hear of your loss.

 

You're unlikely to see those photos again, unfortunately.

 

For the future, you need to back up any important data- copy onto another storeage device, seperate from your computer, for example, an external hard drive, USB stick, or burn onto a CD/DVD disk.

 

That's not just in case of theft- any computer you get in the future, will, at some point fail, with a high risk of any data on it being lost.

 

Back ups are essential for important data of any kind.

 

If you're a student, you'll likely use a PC for essays/course work etc- you really do need to back that up, as loss of that data could result in failing the course.

Thank you very much. Luckly, I use the PC in library to finish my thesis. Maybe it's only a good news.

[onewheeldave]

Thank you very much. Luckly, I use the PC in library to finish my thesis. Maybe it's only a good news.

 

My advice- get a USB stick, preferably 2, and back up your thesis on them. Technical staff in libraries are quite capable of losing data and/or messing up library back-ups.

 

It's your thesis- it's important, and, you're responsible for it- back it up!

[Phanerothyme]

I would simply synchronise my thesis folder on the laptop with dropbox. Then I don't have to do anything, it all happens automatically

 

tingge - do you have a record of the laptop make and model, maybe even the Windows activation key, or MAC address for the Wifi card. All these things could help with tracing your laptop.

 

Even if the hard drive has been wiped, it may be possible to retrieve files from it, if it is found.

 

Also, does the laptop have any distinguishing features, like scratches, chips, or even better, your name and postcode written inside the casing (I do this with phones and laptops)?

[Rupert_Baehr]

If the laptop was registered on the University network, they may have a record of the MAC address.

[onewheeldave]

I would simply synchronise my thesis folder on the laptop with dropbox. Then I don't have to do anything, it all happens automatically

 

 

Seems like a good idea.

 

However, given the generally low file size of thesis's and photos, it would seem to be an obvious move to also put them on one (or several, if really important) USB sticks.

 

Because USB sticks are convenient and cheap, and, the likes of Dropbox are not infallible. And you can bet that their 'terms and conditions' small-print, states that they won't be accountable for any data loss.

[tingge]

I would simply synchronise my thesis folder on the laptop with dropbox. Then I don't have to do anything, it all happens automatically

 

tingge - do you have a record of the laptop make and model, maybe even the Windows activation key, or MAC address for the Wifi card. All these things could help with tracing your laptop.

 

Even if the hard drive has been wiped, it may be possible to retrieve files from it, if it is found.

 

Also, does the laptop have any distinguishing features, like scratches, chips, or even better, your name and postcode written inside the casing (I do this with phones and laptops)?

There is no distinguishing feature on my laptop, I just want to go around and hope I can find it in second hand shop