Stephen said:
KEN - I SENT THE FOLLOWING ABOUT 2 HOURS AGO - IT IS NOT SHOWING -
SO SENT AGAIN
The entire thread:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/co...echnet-winxp&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1
You are giving too much information at this point. It's hard to sift
through.
Essentially - what we *must* know is that you have two physical hard disk
drives:
One 80GB and one 320GB. Formatted (usable size) will be less - thus your
numbers.
Previously you supposedly copied a LOT of data to the 320GB drive (which had
one partition on it) in preparation for some sort of installation/repair on
the other drive (the 80GB) which was your boot/system drive.
Drive letters are irrelevant at this time.
You performed your clean install and when it got to the point where it asked
you 'which partition to install Windows XP upon' - you chose the 80GB hard
disk drive and its single partition, deleted said partition, created a new
partition and formatted it. You *watched* it format ~75GB - no more?
You continued the install and you believed it got stuck at the T-13 (T minus
thirteen) stage of the install - which is where any custom apps (if the CD
has been customized) are notrmally installed. So you Googled and found out
this is a *common* (I have never had it happen persoanlly - but *shrug*)
occurence and the solution is to reboot. So you did and the install picked
up where it left off and finished the install.
Windows XP booted. You were/are in Windows XP.
Here is what I need you to do *at this point*...
Open Disk Manager...
Start buttun --> RUN --> type in:
diskmgmt.msc
--> Click OK.
When that loads you should see a window with two panes - a top pane and a
bottom pane.
From the top pane I need you to painstakenly copy the lines you see there
and post them here, seperated by a single <enter> (single spaced format) for
each individual line you reproduce.
Example:
(C
Partition Basic NTFS Healthy (System) 38.4GB 8.59GB 22% No 0%
(E
Partition Basic FAT32 Healthy 223.62GB 223.55GB 99% No 0%
From the bottom pane, I need you to look at the left side for anything
labeled "Disk #" (# is any numerical value) and I need you to tell me how
many icons labeled "Disk #" there are... (Like "Disk 0", "Disk 1" would be
TWO.)
Since there is no way you could have filled up a 320GB driove (~299GB
formatted) with only 20GB free on it and now it would have more free space
on it than approximately that now WITHOUT either formatting it or erasing
everything on it in some other way (on purpose, accident or involuntarily or
not)... *IF* you see that your 320GB (~299GB) hard disk drive (likely "Disk
1" in the bottom pane) has most of its space free (one of the colums in the
top pane is % Free - it should be fairly low if all your data is there) -
then no matter what - the drive was erased.
If that is the point you are at then you need to stop trying to figure out
the why and how and try to recover what you can - which may be nothing. The
more you mess with this system (use it in any way) the less likely you will
be to recover ANYTHING. I gave you a couple of options to look at the drive
and see if it could find ANYTHING left over. Formatting and erasing -
well - they don't really do what they sound like they do. They merely erase
a table of contents of such - or a line or two fromsaid table of contents.
This makes it harder to access the information - but not impossible.
However - every second that computer is on and everytime you do something
else - you are risking some bit of data being overwritten (since the table
of contents for the data is gone - the computer goes with the assumption
that these are 'blank pages' and it writes where ever it pleases - likely,
in the case of a nearly full drive, overwriting some parts of the data you
are trying to recover.)
I am going to repeat my posting to you again - as it seems to have been
ignored by you at some point. Perhaps you just never saw it.
You may wish to try:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4474.html
It has worked for many people in the past. (It is free)
The best product I can recommend for recovery of these files - although it
costs money - is "UnDelete". Out of all the ones I have ever used, it is by
far the easiest in situations like this. Not only that - but I recommend
installing it as a continuous use product - since it can be useful that way
too. For the $30-$50, to me, it's worth that and more.
www.undelete.com
--> home product is fine.
You can use the trial first!!
That's where you are at now. No one can tell you with any certainty *how*
you got to this point - but given the information you have given (and I
sifted through to get here) and the information you can collect following
the instructions in this response - I feel you have erased (in some fashion)
everything off the 320GB (~299 formatted) hard disk drive and your ONLY hope
is some data recovery application like those I mention above. Sorry to say
it is not a *large* amount of hope - but at least it's a twinkle.
For the future, might I suggest you purchase an external 500+GB USB or
Network drive and use that to backup (duplicate) what you have on your
computer on a periodic basis. Backups to external media is your best net
for a fall like this.
http://www.dealsites.net/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
Good Luck!
