How can vista survive a format!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter DianaH
  • Start date Start date
D

DianaH

Ok ... I just spent the last 1/2 hour formatting my c:\drive ... was getting
ready to do a clean install (of XP) and low-and-behold ... vista and all the
files are still on the c:\drive. WTF!

How the _____ to I get rid of it. I want my computer back! I'll go with
Vista when it's out for retail .... meanwhile .. I need my computer to work.

Please ... can anyone help. Thanks
 
Vista likes to "steal" drive letter C: on install whether or not it's
actually on the first partition of the drive, so in a dual boot scenario you
could have Vista on C: and XP on D: when booted to Vista and the exact
opposite when booted to XP. Most likely you formatted the wrong partition
because of this or something similar. Vista does not survive formats.

If you're doing a clean install of XP, just boot from the XP disk and format
the partition your installing XP on when given the choice during the install
program. If Vista is still on a different partition when you finish, you can
just format that partition from within XP.

-Mike
 
Don't answer this ... I did a very bad thing ... not sure how it happened!
If anyone knows of a "unformat" utility ... I'd be happy to hear about it.
Thanks.

Ok ... I just spent the last 1/2 hour formatting my c:\drive ... was getting
ready to do a clean install (of XP) and low-and-behold ... vista and all the
files are still on the c:\drive. WTF!

How the _____ to I get rid of it. I want my computer back! I'll go with
Vista when it's out for retail .... meanwhile .. I need my computer to work.

Please ... can anyone help. Thanks
 
Thanks Mike.
I was certain I typed format c:\
It was my h:\drive that contains all my data and
software/upgrade/update/utilities, etc. that got pooched. I'm totally
miffed by this. It's never happened before.

I'm going to try a dos unformat with the /L switch and hope it recovers my
files. There's a few years of work lost ... lots of graphic files that I've
built ... I'm just beside myself.

I'll see if you have any other thoughts ... before I attempt to blitz this
drive again.
Diana

Vista likes to "steal" drive letter C: on install whether or not it's
actually on the first partition of the drive, so in a dual boot scenario you
could have Vista on C: and XP on D: when booted to Vista and the exact
opposite when booted to XP. Most likely you formatted the wrong partition
because of this or something similar. Vista does not survive formats.

If you're doing a clean install of XP, just boot from the XP disk and format
the partition your installing XP on when given the choice during the install
program. If Vista is still on a different partition when you finish, you can
just format that partition from within XP.

-Mike
 
Restoration file recovery has worked well for me, it's free, works well and
doesn't have a lot of complicated settings.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Remember that DOS can only see FAT partitions, so when booting with a DOS
disk, your first FAT partition automatically becomes drive C:. Try checking
the volume label before formatting and try to do it with XP setup program;
you can't format an NTFS partition with a DOS boot disk.

-Mike
 
I find it interesting that the fat drive (my h:\drive) took on the letter
c:\ ... but like you say ... the dos boot can only see fat drives.

I'll check out the site you sent and see what it can do for me. Thanks.

I appreciate the explanations ... I was a little suspicious ... which is why
I included the type of drives. I can't believe this is happening. I've
lost a bazillion utilities that I've accumulated over the years (including
various boot disk utilities) on that h:\drive.

Having said this ... when I got my main drive (just over a year ago), I was
able to format it after creating the NTFS partitions. I wonder why it's
behaving different now. And ... now that I think a bit more ... I remember
.... I removed my other physical drive (h:\ = FAT) to avoid this problem ...
should have done that this time ... damnnnnnnnnnn.

Unfortunately the "unformat" command (within dos) doesn't unformat the FAT
drive. I wonder why that isn't happening.

Anyway ... I'll check out that site. Thanks again.

Restoration file recovery has worked well for me, it's free, works well and
doesn't have a lot of complicated settings.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Remember that DOS can only see FAT partitions, so when booting with a DOS
disk, your first FAT partition automatically becomes drive C:. Try checking
the volume label before formatting and try to do it with XP setup program;
you can't format an NTFS partition with a DOS boot disk.

-Mike
 
Yes i agree with **__Mike__**,
Always remember if you have dual booted XP and Vista, say you already have
XP on C: and you then install Vista on other drive say E: (if you have that
partition), then Bootloader is taken over by Vista and now if you boot into
Vista , it'll be seen as on C: and XP will be shown on diffeent drive. And
Here dont / never try to change drives of Vista while running, else you'll
loose XP .

And again if you boot into XP , it'll be shown on C:.
So its better to give Vol. label while installing so that it can be
identified easily.

Also if you want to uninstall Vista , there are tools such EasyBCD, which
makes editing and managing of Vista bootloader easy , in that thers' an
option to restore XP bootloader, which when done will restore XP bootloader
and on reboot will goto XP and from there you can just format the Vista
partition and also some Vista files (bootrelated) can be deleted from C:.

Vista likes to "steal" drive letter C: on install whether or not it's
actually on the first partition of the drive, so in a dual boot scenario you
could have Vista on C: and XP on D: when booted to Vista and the exact
opposite when booted to XP. Most likely you formatted the wrong partition
because of this or something similar. Vista does not survive formats.

If you're doing a clean install of XP, just boot from the XP disk and format
the partition your installing XP on when given the choice during the install
program. If Vista is still on a different partition when you finish, you can
just format that partition from within XP.
Click to expand...

So remember to give Vol. label for identification.
 
I didn't have a dual boot. I'd originally installed Vista (beta 2) over
existing xp, but it wasn't a happy event ... it's been rather gruelling, so
I decided to reformat my main drive c:\ and named it as such. the strange
thing is ... when I'm in dos, my h:\drive which was originally called my
data drive, took on the name 'main' as it was the drive (fat) that got
formated, instead of the intended c:\drive.

I'm running the utility that Mike pointed me to. I'm only concerned with
how far back it will recover files. I try to keep old versions of
utilities/software/drivers. etc., removed from that drive. It saves me time
and disk space during searches.

Here's hoping that utility works. It doesn't seem to be recovering the file
names as they were, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Thanks for your input.

When I proceed again ... to install XP, clean, i'll use the utility that
comes with the CD ... that way ... I'll know pretty much for sure, that it's
installing onto the correct drive, which should be the c:\drive (NTFS).


Yes i agree with **__Mike__**,
Always remember if you have dual booted XP and Vista, say you already have
XP on C: and you then install Vista on other drive say E: (if you have that
partition), then Bootloader is taken over by Vista and now if you boot into
Vista , it'll be seen as on C: and XP will be shown on diffeent drive. And
Here dont / never try to change drives of Vista while running, else you'll
loose XP .

And again if you boot into XP , it'll be shown on C:.
So its better to give Vol. label while installing so that it can be
identified easily.

Also if you want to uninstall Vista , there are tools such EasyBCD, which
makes editing and managing of Vista bootloader easy , in that thers' an
option to restore XP bootloader, which when done will restore XP bootloader
and on reboot will goto XP and from there you can just format the Vista
partition and also some Vista files (bootrelated) can be deleted from C:.

Vista likes to "steal" drive letter C: on install whether or not it's
actually on the first partition of the drive, so in a dual boot scenario
you
could have Vista on C: and XP on D: when booted to Vista and the exact
opposite when booted to XP. Most likely you formatted the wrong partition
because of this or something similar. Vista does not survive formats.

If you're doing a clean install of XP, just boot from the XP disk and
format
the partition your installing XP on when given the choice during the
install
program. If Vista is still on a different partition when you finish, you
can
just format that partition from within XP.
Click to expand...

So remember to give Vol. label for identification.
 
Well ... it's 2:00 am here, so I'm gonna sleep while the utility recovers my
data drive. It's been running for about an hour and it's only 22% done, so
it's gonna take another 3 ours at that rate.
I'll see what it looks like in the morning.
The files look like they were named with a hieroglyphic font. Is that
binary code that they are being name with. I'm now wondering if there's an
easy way to recapture the names of the files. There's over a million files,
it would seem ... that are being recovered. that makes me think it's
recovering more than what was lost in the format ... and that's gonna be
scary.

Anyway ... good night and thanks for your help.
If I get a chance to respond before I head for work, I'll let you know how
it all panned out.
Diana

I find it interesting that the fat drive (my h:\drive) took on the letter
c:\ ... but like you say ... the dos boot can only see fat drives.

I'll check out the site you sent and see what it can do for me. Thanks.

I appreciate the explanations ... I was a little suspicious ... which is why
I included the type of drives. I can't believe this is happening. I've
lost a bazillion utilities that I've accumulated over the years (including
various boot disk utilities) on that h:\drive.

Having said this ... when I got my main drive (just over a year ago), I was
able to format it after creating the NTFS partitions. I wonder why it's
behaving different now. And ... now that I think a bit more ... I remember
.... I removed my other physical drive (h:\ = FAT) to avoid this problem ...
should have done that this time ... damnnnnnnnnnn.

Unfortunately the "unformat" command (within dos) doesn't unformat the FAT
drive. I wonder why that isn't happening.

Anyway ... I'll check out that site. Thanks again.

Restoration file recovery has worked well for me, it's free, works well and
doesn't have a lot of complicated settings.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Remember that DOS can only see FAT partitions, so when booting with a DOS
disk, your first FAT partition automatically becomes drive C:. Try checking
the volume label before formatting and try to do it with XP setup program;
you can't format an NTFS partition with a DOS boot disk.

-Mike
 
Hi,

One more information for reference: depending on the importance of the data,
and if they are critical, try consult this one: http://www.drivesavers.com/

I used them years ago for data recovery from a broken HDD, and they "were"
professional and the fee "was" reasonable.

I don't know how are they doing now and if they have changed like the
company called Mxxxxsoft, but in any case, if you can't recover from some
utilities, you might want to consult them or other similar services IF your
data are important.

PS: You could also contact them (or other data recovery service) at the same
time when you're trying other utilities to know what are Dos and Don'ts
before damaging your data further.

Hope this helps.
 
OK, lets hope , you will recover all your required files (though with some
different file name.)
btw , how did you format? was it from dos prompt?

Will it allow to format the same drive ,if you are running DOS prompt within
OS?
Its always best to use diskmgmt tool to check about your drives status and
manage/ format your various partitions when in windows, if you are not having
any tool.
And i think Vol. label wont change with your partition, it'll stick with
that partion , even if drive letter changes.

& if you want to install an OS and do formatting etc. then use its own built
in tool which you'll show your disk partitions/ file system etc. while you
use your OS boot CD/DVD.

Also there's an interesting article which may not be related but can be
useful in some cases as : "This guide can be used to recover XP only in one
case: While doing a clean install of Vista, you accidentally selected the
wrong partition to install to, and as such, you wrote Vista to the same drive
as XP. It won’t recover an upgrade from XP to Vista, nor will it help you
“unformat†your partition if that’s what you did."
http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/188
 
you do realise if you install vista on what XP reports as the D drive,
then when you boot vista it defaults to C: drive...
 
Mike,
I used the utility, and it found a bazillion files (only looked for one
extension at a time), but it looks like it will only restore one file at a
time. The bad news ... it found files that I'd deleted ages ago (not just
from the unformat) and I suppose that's the consequence of this process.
Can you think of a way to restore more than one file at a time ... it even
asks what you want to save it as ... so that adds another step to restoring
each of the files.
Diana

Restoration file recovery has worked well for me, it's free, works well and
doesn't have a lot of complicated settings.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Remember that DOS can only see FAT partitions, so when booting with a DOS
disk, your first FAT partition automatically becomes drive C:. Try checking
the volume label before formatting and try to do it with XP setup program;
you can't format an NTFS partition with a DOS boot disk.

-Mike
 
I have a physical drive partitioned into "C" and "E" under XP pro.

I want to install Vista on that "E" partition.

Are you suggesting that when finished Vista will have appropriated my
"C" ? If so - what happens to the XP OS?

That aside - I fail to see the relevance of your post to my suggestion
that the OP should have had a current backup. Can you explain?
 
Unfortunately, no; it's one file at a time. The few times I have used this
it has been to get a few files I didn't realize were on the partition I had
erased. There are other programs out there, but even when trying ones worth
several hundred dollars, I have not seen any that work much better than this
free one (although in your case, I guess one that will restore multiple
files at once would be better)

I'll leave it to someone else to suggest a better utility if they know one,
but I will say this: be weary of trial programs which may find your files
and then tell you that to restore more than one of them you need to buy a
license (they may not even be able to restore the file properly after you
buy the license). Also, be sure that none of the programs perform any write
operations on that partition. You want to stick with read only programs.
Since you said your format took a long time, I assume you did a long format
( "format c:" as opposed to "format c: /q") the long format makes it harder
to recover files.

I guess my best advice at this point would be to use the program I
recommended to recover your "must have" files anything that can be
downloaded again, just download, and then consider looking at other programs
or a file recovery service (where you ship them the hard disk) as another
poster recommended. I think the "reasonable price" the poster was talking
about highly depends on the value of the files, you can poke around on the
web to see what it will cost.

** The main thing is not to write any files to that partition (via storing
files there or running a program which writes to it) because each time you
do, it becomes less likely that you will be able to recover files. If you
have an image utility and can set it to make a sector by sector image of the
partition, you can do that and then you will have a copy of the partition in
its current state in case some program does write to it. A normal image is
useless because it only copies "existing" files, so it will copy nothing. **

Good Luck

-Mike
 
Of course you are correct.
We should ALWAYS have back-ups of all important data.
Even if nothing bad happens during an installation, a catastrophic hard
drive failure can occur at any time taking all data with it.
The data is often irrecoverable when this occurs.
Additionally, when making major changes, it is prudent to make a back-up
just before starting.
 
Frankly Tim, I'm not sure what to expect after all of this has happened. I'm
rather miffed by it.

A year ago, when I reinstalled XP onto this same partition (clean), there
were no casualties. I formated the drive after setting the partitions and
all was good after the install. (note that at that time, I had removed the
2nd physical drive).

I wasn't after nor have I had a dual boot, if that's what you mean.
 
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