Recovering files?

[shorty420]

Ok I used some program to try and make a boot disk. Well what happened is it asks me for the drive that I want to make the disk on. I accidentally selected my 20 gig hard drive with 3 years worth of files on it. I realized what I had done after about 2 secs and clicked cancel. The program froze and my comptuer crashed so I had to restart. Well I come back and this is what I see. (at end of post) What can I do to try and recover these files. I was super pissed off at myself for having lost the files that I went ahead and said "screw it" and started formatting. Well I reallized after about 10 secs taht I could maybe save teh data knowing that there is no way you can format a 20 gig drive in 2 secs. What do you guys think? Am I screwed? Should I give up and start over? What options do I have?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Seeing as it says you have only used under 2mb.....................................looks like that format should continue.
You could try recovery programs but I don't know if there are any that good.

 

[shorty420]

Well whaT i'm thinking that the program erased the index or whatever that tells where all the files are located so Windows and DOS think that there isn't anything on there. I just don't see how a drive that large could be completely erased that fast.

 

[albybum]

If you are keeping the same type of file system, typically a quick format will just clean out the table of contents on a drive and allow you to write over all the data on a drive. A quick format on a FAT 32, 20 GB hard drive can go as fast as seconds.

In most cases, you need recovery software installed prior to such an incident. However, since this was not a main drive, it may be possible. If the files are extremely important, do not do anything else to the drive. There are a few companies that can low-level scan a drive and rebuild the HD table of contents and possibly recover data. If they are not too awfully important, I would say just wipe the drive clean and start over.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

It's probably still there you just need a program that can see it. Try searching for recovery programs. I don't think they would be cheap though.

 

[Iceman]

EasyRecovery will get it but it ain't free

 

[Nick M]

I feel for you shorty. Deleting files and not getting them back SUCKS BIG Time...I remember once accidently wiping a 200 something MB harddrive filled with awsome DOS games...

 

[shorty420]

Well I found this program on www.download.com that is supposed to recover files. It searched for lost files and I can see a lot of them (I haven't had a chance to look at all of them yet). I'll let you guys know what if I end up recovering any of my files.

 

[jonocainuk]

i know me m8s dad did a similar thing... plugged a 20gb into his pc and put a load of stuff on it to backup and then formatted the 20gb thinking it was the 20gb partition on his 40 lol.

a guy off irc gave him some progs that is apparantly used by the police to recover harddrive contents from computers that have been seized and he got all his films, music, progs and pics back so hes just slightly relieved. ill see if he still has the tool. but i remember one condition of the prog being that nothing must be written to the hdd after format otherwise it wont work... so cuz u stopped after a little bit then jus quick formatted (must be cuz it was quick), then u may get like 98% of stuff back... then again u may get none. its worth trying if nothing else.

 

[shorty420]

Thanks. If you do happen to find that you can e-mail me @ motofreak10000@go.com

 

[woody_roberts]

Been there, done that.

Used http://www.uneraser.com/ products and recovered quite easily and effectively. Download the products and see if they are suitable. Delay buying any until you determine if they are what you need.

Actually, I was amazed at how easy it was to recover my data. I had begun to install Linux and it attacked my Windows XP partitions. It was my fault, I let it do it. I lost 15 GB of .jpg files. But one of Uneraser's programs recovered a backup partition and all 15 GB.