recovering a lost partition

[simple girl]

Hi all,
I'm posting this for DH.

He had some major computer problems (work computer) over the weekend. It crashed, so he tried to recover his information by reinstalling Microsoft XP; his data was on a D partition, and he has been able to recover his data this way before.

Unfortunately, this time all the other drives are showing up as unformatted. He has lost 10 years of work

Ok all you computer gurus who know how to recover hidden data...any way he can find his data

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

havent done that in a while...

try this, or something like it

EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional 4.3.6 - Free Download EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional by YIWO Tech Ltd

then get an external hard drive with a backup program.

 

[ERD50]

Thanks for reminding me that it's time for me to do another backup.

10 years!!!!!!!

Geez, not only back it up, but make multiple backups, get one off-site (at least the data).

-ERD50

 

[RonBoyd]

Yikes! I would start with Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows and hope for the best.

In any event, if you can't solve the problem quickly (read "by yourself") stop immediately before you make it worse.

Good luck.

 

[RonBoyd]

Unfortunately, this time all the other drives are showing up as unformatted. He has lost 10 years of work

Oh, yeah. I forgot to point out that a Partition is NOT another Drive. It is merely a Folder with a Drive name. If something bad happens to a Drive, everything on that drive is affected equally -- and that includes a [-]foolish [/-] mental device like a Partition.

 

[Walt34]

DO NOT install anything on that drive!

If you do, you risk overwriting the data you want to recover.

What happens is that the data is still there, but the system "thinks" it is blank space and may overwrite the data while installing the very software that is supposed to save it. Therefore the only thing you should do with that disk is make a copy of it, then work from the copy only.There is software that can write everything on the disk to a file and then you can make as many copies of the drive as you want. Norton's Ghost is one such example, there are many of them.

Knowing how to recover a partition manually gets pretty deep into data structures and it may be worth your while to pay someone for what they know. Be prepared for $250/hour and up and a minimum of a couple of hours.

Backup drives are a lot cheaper....

If you like I can refer you to some people who do that kind of thing professionally (I used to, but I'm rusty).

 

[ERD50]

Too late for this, but...

I'm not so sure that re-installing XP was a good move. If the drive is messed up, I think that the last thing you want to do is anymore *writing* to the drive. You could overwrite something that maybe could have been recovered. As RonBoyd mentioned, partitions are not physical boundaries, so when you go to write or install on a problem drive, it may no longer recognize the boundary, and write over the stuff you want to save.

My first step would be to try to mount that drive on another computer, and just try to read partition D - then go to the recovery programs.

-ERD50

dang no 'new post was posted feature' - what Walt said

 

[simple girl]

DH says he got in trouble by trying to use GHOST; it crashed when he was doing this (he had ordered a new computer and was trying to back up the whole computer). He now realizes he shouldn't have installed XP and has ordered an external hard drive to go with his new computer. I think he has learned a hard lesson.

He spoke with the tech support for his company. They will be taking the computer and trying to recover any lost data. They have specialists who do recovery work, and they said if they can't get it, well, it's pretty much lost forever Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk, I suppose.

Thanks everyone for your advice. Hopefully this helps someone else remember to back up files externally to the computer!

 

[TromboneAl]

If the data's that important, perhaps you should mail the drive to a data recovery company.

 

[simple girl]

If the data's that important, perhaps you should mail the drive to a data recovery company.

Thanks T-Al. That's essentially what he is doing. His company (big mega-corp) has a data recovery firm they use. They won't charge anything unless they recover data (if they do, the charge is something like $600). DH doesn't really have much hope though that they'll be successful

 

[TromboneAl]

Let us know what happens.

 

[simple girl]

Update:

DH received 2 CD's of data back from the company this week.

He got everything back from under My Documents, but he lost his email files. As he thought he would get nothing, he is quite happy with this result.

We now have an external hard drive with an incredible amount of memory. Lesson learned.

 

[RonBoyd]

Update:

We now have an external hard drive with an incredible amount of memory. Lesson learned.

I hope that means an incredible amount of memory (actually the term is storage) used solely for backup purposes. If not, then you should consider a "backup to the backup" system... perhaps DVDs or flash drives. Always remember the Cardinal Proverb: "Blessed are the Pessimists for they make backups."

 

[harley]

Update:

DH received 2 CD's of data back from the company this week.

He got everything back from under My Documents, but he lost his email files. As he thought he would get nothing, he is quite happy with this result.

We now have an external hard drive with an incredible amount of memory. Lesson learned.

Assuming the emails were sent through company servers, you may be able to get the company email techs to restore them to your DHs computer. As many ex-executives have discovered, email is forever.

 

[Leonidas]

I hope that means an incredible amount of memory (actually the term is storage) used solely for backup purposes. If not, then you should consider a "backup to the backup" system... perhaps DVDs or flash drives. Always remember the Cardinal Proverb: "Blessed are the Pessimists for they make backups."

I guess I'm a ultra-pessimist then!

Everything gets backed up every night to an external drive. About once a month I manually backup the irreplaceable stuff to a different external drive. Then twice a year I backup the irreplaceable stuff to a third or fourth external hard drive and that goes into one or the other safe deposit box. USB hard drives are so cheap it's not much of a financial issue and I sleep much better.

 

[RonBoyd]

I guess I'm a ultra-pessimist then!

Yeah. That's two of us. However, in addition to all that, I try to keep hard copies of the really important in several different places. I send hard copies of my genealogical research, for example, to every known relative -- at least one of them will save it for the future... I hope. <chuckle> Personal and financial records are treated the same way... although much fewer relatives are involved.

My tens of thousands photographic images present a special situation. I have numerous hard drives and hundreds of CD/DVDs filled with copies -- I find that relatives lack great interest in saving such stuff for me. In fact, I start worrying the instant I press the button on the camera that something bad will happen. I have, for instance, a couple portable hard drives that I carry around solely to transfer the images to (with my laptop) as soon as I can.

 

[OAG]

Have you considered an On-Line backup system. There are a couple very good ones out there and the process is almost seamless if you have a high speed internet connection. Cost is pretty low (maybe $10-15 a month). I do not know what it cost to get the restoration done but they usually are not cheap and, like you learned, you do not get it all back.

 

[Leonidas]

Yeah. That's two of us. However, in addition to all that, I try to keep hard copies of the really important in several different places. I send hard copies of my genealogical research, for example, to every known relative -- at least one of them will save it for the future... I hope. <chuckle> Personal and financial records are treated the same way... although much fewer relatives are involved.

Yeah, I might send some of my relatives the genealogical stuff and photographs, but I'm hard pressed to think of more than a couple that would get backups of my financial stuff. Nobody's getting the unencrypted version

My tens of thousands photographic images present a special situation... I have, for instance, a couple portable hard drives that I carry around solely to transfer the images to (with my laptop) as soon as I can.

I haven't done that yet, but I have considered it. The compact little EEEPC and the tiny hard drives they are making now make it not such a burden to do carry something like that around on trips.

 

[RonBoyd]

but I'm hard pressed to think of more than a couple that would get backups of my financial stuff.

Yeah, confined to children but now that I think on it my brother would be another candidate.

I haven't done that yet, but I have considered it. The compact little EEEPC and the tiny hard drives they are making now make it not such a burden to do carry something like that around on trips.

I "built" my own using, for example, Krex's Hard Drive Kit with Notebook IDE or SATA drive. I figure that if they are sturdy enough for a notebook, they are sturdy enough for portable use. (BTW, assembly is not much more than Plug & Play.)

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

BTW, high capacity external redundant disk arrays are becoming reasonably cheap. I dont think I'd use them for mission critical 24x7 storage but for an external backup drive with built in redundancy, they might fit the bill.

This for example comes with two 500gb hard drives preconfigured for disk mirroring, or you can have it span the drives and produce a full TB. In mirroring, if one drive fails you'll get a warning light, can swap the bad drive out, and it'll rebuild the mirror pair.

I wouldnt recommend using it for the spanned 1TB mode. In that case if either drive fails you lose all your data.

But for a turnkey mirrored backup disk for a couple of hundred bucks? Not bad.

No reason why you cant swap out the 500gb drives in it for a pair of 1tb drives to double your storage a few years from now.

Newegg.com - Cavalry CADA-U32 CADA001U32A 1TB USB 2.0 2-bay RAID Disk Array for PC - External Hard Drives

They also have a larger model that sports 4 drives under RAID 5. So you get most of the 2TB of storage and immunity from single drive failures

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822101084

 

[RonBoyd]

BTW, high capacity external redundant disk arrays are becoming reasonably cheap.

I am not a fan of RAID -- believe it is only a scam created by disk drive manufactuters to sell more product. Fred Langa back in 2004 wrote an article that said it best... in part:

****************
Why I Don't Use RAID


(continued from previous item)
RAID was once ideal for cobbling together huge storage capacities from small, cheap hard drives. But truly enormous drives are now commonplace and inexpensive. For example, If you shop around a little, you can get a 200GB hard drive for around $100. Not big enough for you? Hitachi makes a 400GB hard drive using standard 3.5" desktop technology. Most desktop systems can easily accommodate two hard drives, so you could equip a standard PC with two of those Hitachi drives for a combined total of 800GB of capacity with no RAID or other exotica whatsoever. May I see a show of hands of readers who need more than 800 GB of live storage on their desktop systems? <g>

And, of course, drive capacities are going up all the time. So the "make a bigger drive" argument for desktop RAID no longer carries much weight.
RAID does protect your data against mechanical failures of the hard drives themselves--- a head crash, wear and tear, etc. But so do ordinary backups. And RAID does little or nothing to protect against systemic problems or problems that affect the array as a whole (worms, viruses, user error or malicious misuse, electrical problems, fire, theft, water damage, physical accident, etc. etc. etc.). In any instance where a single problem can affect the system or array as a whole, RAID can cause you to lose your data *and* your backup in one disastrous stroke.
Plus, RAID arrays are often noisy, heat-producing, and power-hungry, too. And, as Stuart said in #1, above, there can be other issues, too.
As for data security, a good backup regimen that stores the backed-up data away from the PC beats RAID hands down. With the data on, say, CDs or DVDs and stored away from the PC, then even if the PC itself or the hard drive is *totally destroyed* by some calamity, the data is still safe.

 

[Marquette]

I have a RAID 0+1 array and that sucker is FAST.

RAID may be a gimmick, but it's a gimmick I don't mind paying an extra $160 for.

 

[Goonie]

Besides having most everything backed up on CDs, as well as on several hard-drives, I've got several SanDisk USB Flash Drives that I keep copies of everything on that's important to me. I carry 2 of them with me all the time. One has all of my digital pictures that I've taken of vacations, family, gardens, etc., over the years. The other one has most all of my important documents on it, as well as stuff that I might want/need to look at or reference when I'm not at home. They take up so little room in my pocket that I hardly notice that they're there.

Having the one with the pix on it with me all the time has worked out nicely for other reasons too. There have been several times that people have asked me about different trips that I've taken, and wanted to know if I had any pix of them........"Well, as a matter of fact I do right here." Others have asked to see our garden/landscape pix, so I can just stick the flash drive in the nearest computer, and they can view to their hearts content. I also did an impromptu 'slide show' at a tour group's open-house at the request of the group's presenter because she knew I had a lot of pix of several of the previous destinations. BTW, I'll only show people the pix if they truly want to see them, and aren't just asking to be seem polite......I would NEVER subject anyone to my "home movies".

My 'document' flash drive also has some MP3's on it (but not a lot) for my listening pleasure while I surf away from home......both music and audiobooks.

 

[Leonidas]

Besides having most everything backed up on CDs, as well as on several hard-drives, I've got several SanDisk USB Flash Drives that I keep copies of everything on that's important to me. I carry 2 of them with me all the time. One has all of my digital pictures that I've taken of vacations, family, gardens, etc., over the years. The other one has most all of my important documents on it, as well as stuff that I might want/need to look at or reference when I'm not at home. They take up so little room in my pocket that I hardly notice that they're there.

I was reading that and thinking that it wouldn't work for me - I've got 15 Gb of photos. Innovation has slipped past me without me paying attention, because I thought the biggest USB thumb drive you could get was 8Gb, but lo and behold they are making them as big as 32Gig now for around $100.

Now, if I they would make a 300Gb one I could store the videos as well.

And I remember shopping for a computer with an actual hard drive in the 80's and trying to decide did I want the 10Mb or 20mb, and being told "save your money, you'll never fill up 10 megabytes!"

 

[W2R]

Besides having most everything backed up on CDs, as well as on several hard-drives, I've got several SanDisk USB Flash Drives that I keep copies of everything on that's important to me. I carry 2 of them with me all the time. One has all of my digital pictures that I've taken of vacations, family, gardens, etc., over the years. The other one has most all of my important documents on it, as well as stuff that I might want/need to look at or reference when I'm not at home. They take up so little room in my pocket that I hardly notice that they're there.

What a great idea!!!

I keep a USB flash drive with me, too. It fits nicely in the coin purse of my wallet. The only thing I have on it is my retirement/investment Excel spreadsheets, to go back and forth between home and work. But now that you mention it, I should put my best digital photos on it, too.

It just occurred to me that if my wallet were lost or stolen (which hasn't happened for 40 years), the thief might really get heartburn looking at those sheets. There aren't any passwords to my TSP or Vanguard accounts in the sheets, but still... maybe I should password protect that file.