Stupid me!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lunaray
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Lunaray

I needed to reinstall WinXP and I chose "New Installation" (I booted from
the CD), this brought up a DOS kind of window, or a FDISK facsimile and I
accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive (I must've
had it selected instead of my primary 'C' drive, I hate myself!! I had
everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
etc., all gone I think!

I took the drive to my 'dependable' local computer shop and I was told that
they would first have to repartition the drive and format it, so that it
could be seen again, then they would have to run a
hard-disk-recovery-program to try and get back my data; huh, how does this
work? I thought that when you formatted a drive, all the data is wiped
clean beyond recovery? Educate me!

Thanks,
Ray
 
Lunaray said:
I needed to reinstall WinXP and I chose "New Installation" (I booted from
the CD), this brought up a DOS kind of window, or a FDISK facsimile and I
accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive (I must've
had it selected instead of my primary 'C' drive, I hate myself!! I had
everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
etc., all gone I think!
Click to expand...

Bummer. Fortunately this has never happened to me, but losing everything is
a scary thought. I always triple-check to make sure I'm doing the right
drive.
I took the drive to my 'dependable' local computer shop and I was told that
they would first have to repartition the drive and format it, so that it
could be seen again, then they would have to run a
hard-disk-recovery-program to try and get back my data; huh, how does this
work? I thought that when you formatted a drive, all the data is wiped
clean beyond recovery? Educate me!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't suggest using a local computer shop for data recovery. It is a
specialist job. It's very expensive to use a specialist company; either your
data is worth the money or it's not. After hearing their suggestion I
certainly wouldn't recommend your local shop.

When you deleted the partition, all you did was remove an entry in the
master partition table. The data is still there on the drive, you've just no
longer got a starting point which tells the OS how to access it.

When a drive is formatted, one of the tasks it performs is writing to each
sector of the drive (then reading it back - it's a check for bad sectors. It
also writes the FAT or equivalent.). Writing to every sector of a drive you
want to recover data from is a pretty bad idea. It is still possible to read
the data (drives use magnetic fields, and even when you write something new
a weak signal from the old magnetic field remains), but really if you get to
this point you can pretty much say bye bye to the data - the recovery is a
few orders of magnitude more difficult, and there's no way you can recover
everything.

At the moment you still have a good chance of recovering most of the data.
The files should still be there, as should the links between the clusters.
Have a think about how much the data is worth to you. I would suggest you
either get a specialist to recover the data. If not by all means go a
cheaper route - either try recovery yourself or find someone who has done
this sort of thing before. If you go this route, though, assume that you
will not get any data back, that way you can't be disappointed.

Definately stay away from the local shop though. Their idea will destroy the
data, and make it virtually impossible for others to fix. This isn't a
situation where you try the cheapest option first and then try something
else if it doesn't work.

Gareth
 
Lunaray said:
I needed to reinstall WinXP and I chose "New Installation" (I booted from
the CD), this brought up a DOS kind of window, or a FDISK facsimile and I
accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive (I must've
had it selected instead of my primary 'C' drive, I hate myself!! I had
everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
etc., all gone I think!

I took the drive to my 'dependable' local computer shop and I was told that
they would first have to repartition the drive and format it, so that it
could be seen again, then they would have to run a
hard-disk-recovery-program to try and get back my data; huh, how does this
work? I thought that when you formatted a drive, all the data is wiped
clean beyond recovery? Educate me!

Thanks,
Ray
Click to expand...

Try this
http://www.billssoftwarepicks.com/s.../backups/Acronis_Recovery_Expert_Acronis.html

Craig
 
I needed to reinstall WinXP and I chose "New Installation" (I booted from
the CD), this brought up a DOS kind of window, or a FDISK facsimile and I
accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive (I must've
had it selected instead of my primary 'C' drive, I hate myself!! I had
everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
etc., all gone I think!
Click to expand...

Have you tried R-Studio? There's a demo avaliable:

http://www.r-tt.com/RStudio.shtml
 
Lunaray said:
I needed to reinstall WinXP and I chose "New Installation" (I booted from
the CD), this brought up a DOS kind of window, or a FDISK facsimile and I
accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive (I must've
had it selected instead of my primary 'C' drive, I hate myself!! I had
everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
etc., all gone I think!

I took the drive to my 'dependable' local computer shop and I was told that
they would first have to repartition the drive and format it, so that it
could be seen again, then they would have to run a
hard-disk-recovery-program to try and get back my data; huh, how does this
work? I thought that when you formatted a drive, all the data is wiped
clean beyond recovery? Educate me!
Click to expand...



*****************DO NOT***********************
let them partition and format the drive, it will only make things worse


partition magic 8 has the ability to undelete a partion
but hopefully you have not yet made any attempt to undo what you have done
or you will be out of luck
 
Lunaray said:
I took the drive to my 'dependable' local computer shop and I was told
that they would first have to repartition the drive and format it, so that
it could be seen again, then they would have to run a
hard-disk-recovery-program to try and get back my data; huh, how does this
work?
Click to expand...

It doesn't.

I thought that when you formatted a drive, all the data is wiped
clean beyond recovery?
Click to expand...

Not beyond recovery but MUCH harder to recover. Either spend the money to
have a pro recover it or take your chances with "self recovery" software.
I've never personally been down that road but I'd sure do some research
before I did anything!
 
Just a suggestion, but before you try any kind of recovery the best
insurance is to try to clone a copy of your drive to another location.
That way if the recovery fails you can always restore the cloned image and
try something else.
 
Just a suggestion, but before you try any kind of recovery the best
insurance is to try to clone a copy of your drive to another location.
That way if the recovery fails you can always restore the cloned image and
try something else.
Click to expand...

You're right, Sandy. IIRC, R-Studio specifically asks you to ensure that you
copy to a different partition, and to ensure that you don't install it on
the partition you want to recover.
 
For what it is worth I once lost access to a MacOS partition. I did format
it and got a lot a lot of data back of it. The trick was to do a soft/quick
format which simply allows access to the partition, it just writes something
to say this area can be used. ALL THE DATA IS STILL THERE UNTIL OVERWRITTEN.
Then I used some recovery software (Norton in my case) to get back my stuff.
One problem I did have though was that the recovered files were not all
properly named and I didn't know what they were until I opened them in a
text editor, found out what they should be and renamed and associated they
with the correct application.

So in short, your local computer shop is not mad it can be done that way.
And I'm sure it can be done better than I did as my experience was 6 years
ago and a complete DIY job.

Good luck
Maria
 
Thanks to you all who've replied to my post with your suggestions & links to
help me with my dilemma! I've copied & pasted your comments into a
document, and I handed to the technician working on my HD, and he basically
agreed with everything you've said! As for trusting my local computer shop
to tackle this, I do! They have a knowledgeable staff and I've given them a
lot of business, so they want to help me! :-) I sure hope they can!

I'll post again with the outcome! Thanks again all!

Ray
 
If you deleted the partition only then your data is still there. Whatever
you do DO NOT let them format the drive. I believe you can still create a
partition but you might have to use a program such as Partition Magic if
FDISK doesn't work.
 
and I
accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive
I had
everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
etc., all gone I think!

ll the data is wiped
clean beyond recovery?
Click to expand...

GetDataBack freeware with registration...

-- Regards, SPAJKY
- http://freeweb.siol.net/jerman55/HP/Spajky.htm
Celly-III OC-ed,"Tualatin on BX-Slot1-MoBo!"
E-mail AntiSpam: remove ##
 
| On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 01:31:33 -0700, "Lunaray" <[email protected]>
| wrote:
|
| > and I
| >accidently deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive
| > I had
| >everything on that drive: pictures, documents, emails, programs, MP3's,
| >etc., all gone I think!
| >
| >ll the data is wiped
| >clean beyond recovery?
|
| GetDataBack freeware with registration...

Actually, it's free to try only. FAT32 version is $69 and NTFS is $79.

http://www.runtime.org/prices.htm

Larc



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