Data Recovery Forums - Help & Discussions

ramasan · Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 3

why o why. ok thats out of my system.

i have two identical drives. one happens to be the internal system drive, the other in an external USB case.

i had JUST finished consolidating and copying all data from laptop and my old system to the second disk (D2). i was going to blow away all the data on D1 and do a clean install.

i start windows XP install and get to the partitioning stage. i *forget* to turn off / unplug my external usb drive. i see two identical drives and go to the "C" drive and delete the partition, hit esc, then L, then get ready to install and get an error that XP can install on that drive.

at that point i realize what i have done, turn off the external drive and reboot.

now that machine is installed properly, but i have my disk which shows up with the partition, but unformatted.

i have tried various disk utilities, and they find data - but nothing will pick up the file names and directories. one utility was able to see jpgs, but the file names were incorrect.

my thought is to do a quick format on the existing correctly sized partition. well, that is sort of my thought.

i am pretty sure all the data has to be there and it shouldnt be too painful to get it back.

any thoughts?

edit - if it makes any difference, this is a seagate 7200.10 - PATA 320G drive. NTFS partition.

ramasan · Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 3

just an update - using demo recovery tools, i can definitely see the data. i think its basically all there, but i am having a hard time seeing the actual file names and directory structure.

what i seem to be getting is data presented in file type categories with generic names, eg:

Microsoft Word Document - .Doc (file001.doc, file002.doc)

etc

while retrieving the data will be good, recreating and sorting the thousands of JPGs will be a monumental task.

how likely will i be to recover the directory structure and original file names?

vicky · Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 60

Try any recovery software in which you can search the data after scanning it in demo mode.
This will make the job easier. Secondly if you know the time when the data was created or modified this can also be helpful in finding the data.
Try Geeksnerds Data Recovery Programs.

Best of Luck

ramasan · Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 3

well i guess this will sound like a commercial, but i suppose thats the point of these forums.

i tried several other demo versions of software - active @ (something or other) acronis, and a few other ones i dont remember.

none were able to see the directory structure and file names.

after installing the demo and a scan, Geeksnerds saw *EVERYTHING*.

i busted out the CC on the spot, got the registration and my data is being restored as we speak.

dont know why your app could see the info and the other ones couldnt, but your FU is greater than theirs, your secret sauce tastier, and all my 4 and 2 year old pictures from the last 3 months are NOT GONE FOREVER.

gush gush gush

vicky · Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 60