Drive recovery -- is this data recoverable?

[Ken]

Win2K

I attempted to upgrade to WinXP yesterday and it was unsuccessful.
Amongst the many problems created was a double entry in Disk Manager and
Explorer of the one of my multipartitioned boot drive, which has C, D,
and E drive. WinXP took my G drive (a SATA removable drive) and it
appeared as a clone of C,D, and E called L, M, and N drives. (The G
drive contains a lot of movies and TV programs, so the data can
ultimately be obtained again, if necessary). Without much thinking in
my early morning stupor, in Disk Manager, I chose to delete what I
thought were the "phantom" partitions and only afterwards did I
recognize that it was my G drive.

My question is this: not having formatted the drive, is there any
program that can recover the data (or restore the partitions) or is it a
lost cause?

Thanks and Happy New Year,
Ken K

P.S. Go ahead, Rod, and remind me of what a bone-head thing I did!!

 

[Rod Speed]

Win2K

I attempted to upgrade to WinXP yesterday and it was unsuccessful.
Amongst the many problems created was a double entry in Disk Manager
and Explorer of the one of my multipartitioned boot drive, which has
C, D, and E drive. WinXP took my G drive (a SATA removable drive)
and it appeared as a clone of C,D, and E called L, M, and N drives.
(The G drive contains a lot of movies and TV programs, so the data can
ultimately be obtained again, if necessary). Without much thinking in
my early morning stupor, in Disk Manager, I chose to delete what I
thought were the "phantom" partitions and only afterwards did I
recognize that it was my G drive.

My question is this: not having formatted the drive, is there any
program that can recover the data (or restore the partitions)

Yes, all of the decent recovery progs should be able to get them back.

I like Easy Recovery Pro, but it isnt cheap to buy.

or is it a lost cause?

Nope, definitely not.

Thanks and Happy New Year,
Ken K

P.S. Go ahead, Rod, and remind me of what a bone-head thing I did!!

Wouldnt dream of it, bonehead |-)

 

[Ken]

Rod Speed said the following on 12/31/2006 11:02 AM:

Yes, all of the decent recovery progs should be able to get them back.

I like Easy Recovery Pro, but it isnt cheap to buy.


Nope, definitely not.



Wouldnt dream of it, bonehead |-)

In the interim, I realized I had Acronis Disk Director. I was able to
recover the partitions. What appears to have happened is this. When I
recovered the partitions, they were the identical partitions of C, D,
and E. It appears that the XP install program over-wrote two drives
simultaneously, so that I did, indeed, have mirrored partitions of C,D,
and E on my former G drive. I suppose that the lesson here is that for
the upgrade, I should disconnect all of the drives that are not
essential to the install.

Am I correct that I cannot go beyond the recovery level that I have
recovered and that the previous G drive data which was over-written is
now unrecoverable? If I am wrong, what kind of money are we talking
here and would it be very time intensive to recover that data?

Thanks
Ken (bonehead)

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

In the interim, I realized I had Acronis Disk Director. I was able to recover the partitions.
What appears to have happened is this. When I recovered the partitions, they were the identical
partitions of C, D, and E. It appears that the XP install program over-wrote two drives
simultaneously, so that I did, indeed, have mirrored partitions of C,D, and E on my former G
drive.

That last is very unlikely. Much more likely that you had duplicate
entrys visible, but that there was no duplicate of the drive contents.

I suppose that the lesson here is that for the upgrade, I should disconnect all of the drives that
are not essential to the install.

Yes, that is certainly safer, not only with
an OS install, but any repartitioning etc too.

Am I correct that I cannot go beyond the recovery level that I have recovered and that the
previous G drive data which was over-written

I doubt it ever was.

is now unrecoverable?

Very likely, because at most the directory structures might have go reset.

If I am wrong, what kind of money are we talking here

Some of the free ones should do it fine.

and would it be very time intensive to recover that data?

Depends on what is necessary. If the files can be recovered by just
reversing what was done to the directory structures, that doesnt take long.

If it has to scan the drive checking for file headers, that takes longer
and is less likely to succeed if the files were significantly fragmented.

Can we assume that drive was NTFS formatted because
of the need for large files for the TV programs ?

 

[Ken]

Rod Speed said the following on 12/31/2006 12:14 PM:

That last is very unlikely. Much more likely that you had duplicate
entrys visible, but that there was no duplicate of the drive contents.


Yes, that is certainly safer, not only with
an OS install, but any repartitioning etc too.


I doubt it ever was.


Very likely, because at most the directory structures might have go reset.


Some of the free ones should do it fine.


Depends on what is necessary. If the files can be recovered by just
reversing what was done to the directory structures, that doesnt take long.

If it has to scan the drive checking for file headers, that takes longer
and is less likely to succeed if the files were significantly fragmented.

Can we assume that drive was NTFS formatted because
of the need for large files for the TV programs ?

Yes, all of my drives are NTFS-formatted

 

[Arno Wagner]

Win2K

I attempted to upgrade to WinXP yesterday and it was unsuccessful.
Amongst the many problems created was a double entry in Disk Manager and
Explorer of the one of my multipartitioned boot drive, which has C, D,
and E drive. WinXP took my G drive (a SATA removable drive) and it
appeared as a clone of C,D, and E called L, M, and N drives. (The G
drive contains a lot of movies and TV programs, so the data can
ultimately be obtained again, if necessary). Without much thinking in
my early morning stupor, in Disk Manager, I chose to delete what I
thought were the "phantom" partitions and only afterwards did I
recognize that it was my G drive.

My question is this: not having formatted the drive, is there any
program that can recover the data (or restore the partitions) or is it a
lost cause?

I think you shoul be able to recreate the partitions and the
files should still be there. I have only done thins once with
the 'rescue' command of GNU parted (free, available here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/index.shtml), but I really
don't know whether this works for NTFS partitions. If this
was an NTFS partition, you may need some other (commercial?)
tool.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

Rod Speed said the following on 12/31/2006 11:02 AM:

Ken <[email protected]> wrote

[...]

Am I correct that I cannot go beyond the recovery level that I have
recovered and that the previous G drive data which was over-written is
now unrecoverable? If I am wrong, what kind of money are we talking
here and would it be very time intensive to recover that data?

At this time it is not known whether recovery of overwritten
data on modern drisks is possible. Nobody admits they can do it
or offers the service commercially. So the first step would
be some millions for research...

Arno