ImagoX

Hi- I hope someone here can help me- a friend suggested I post here as there seem to be some very knowlegable folks here. Here's mt sit--rep:

While helping my mom reload her computer with win XP, I left my USB Maxtor external HDD connected to the system, and when the WinXP installer displayed the drives to be reformatted, it somehow showed the EXTERNAL drive as the C: volume, and I accidentally told it to delete the partition on that drive. I caught the error right after I told the system to delete that volume, but it was too late- the volume was deleted.


I got WinXP loaded OK, but now when I connect my external hard drive it thinks it needs to be refoamatted (because I deleted the volume information). It only deleted the partition formatting- I'm pretty sure and did not overwrite any of the data, and I NEED IT because I sent her backup files from prior to the reload to the external disc prior to installing XP! Is there ANY way to restore the partition WITHOUT overwriting/deleting the files on the drive?????? Naturally, if I DO reformat then any data on the drive WILL be gone forever.

I tried some apps like EasyRecovery and R-Studio that advertise that they can show you the files that can be recovered. but nothing I've tried seems to work: they simply "scan" the external drive for minutes or hours and just sit there, never even finding the block sizes or any files at all... Shouldn't the DATA still be on the drive since I never OVERWROTE any of it?? ANY help would be greatly appreciated! Please get back to me ASAP if you have anything I can use.

Thanks a million in advance.

sboulema

if you have deleted the partition all the data that was on that partition will be lost... but maybe try norton utilities, ithink they have a unwip funcion or soemthing

ImagoX

I will in no way install ANY Norton product on my PC, and neither should you (IMHO)... It puts entries ALL OVER your registry, most of which can only be removed manually and tediously if you want to uninstall (the dreaded "Norton registry spray bomb"). Are there any other options anyone knows about shy of sending out the drive for recovery at a service?

Seeing as how deletion of the drive partition and even total disc reformatting is no impediment for people like law enforcement that often recover data that people are TRYING to delete, I figure there MUST be SOME way to get the bits out, right?

yoyo

Have a look at Winternals' Disk Commander
http://www.winternals.com/products/r...kcommander.asp
, not a cheap utility though.

Geffy

OnTrack Easy Recovery Professional, also not cheap but bloody worth everypenny imo

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Zedric

Also "Lost & Found" by... err... someone I can't remember now. It helped me when my brother formatted the C:\. Got most of it back though.

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Jason Roberts

This is the reason why you must make backup copies before you do any actions such as formatting. If you had make any backups, you would be out of this trouble.

Just an advice.

Taurus

he did make backups... they were just on the external drive.

irony at it's best. }:\

Zedric

And this is why you unplug any drives you won't acctually use while installing.

Better taurus?

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Bootsy

rule of thumb:
never install an OS with other drives (zip, hd) attached thru USB, i've learned from experience...ACK

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ImagoX

Yeah, I'll never do THAT again...

I got all the data bask using "GetDataBack" by Runtime Software. I love learning experiences (not)!

Thanks for all the help!

Zedric

Success!

Oh where are our manners!? WELCOME TO THE BOARDS MAN!!

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