Data loss woes...

[fLaMePrO]

Hi ****. Kinda in a pickle here - a rather large one too. Ok now let's see, I'll try make it as brief as possible...

I originally had a dual-boot with Vista and XP. The larger SATA drive was Vista, but I got annoyed by that so chucked in a smaller older IDE and put XP on that.

So I had: 320gb SATA - Vista, never used the OS but stored files on it mainly
160gb IDE - 2 partitions, main one had XP on it that I used all the time, and then a smaller 20gb one just for extra storage.

Stuck with that configuration for a while, but just recently I decided I'd get rid of the Vista install seeing as I never used it and didn't want to go back, and put XP on it as it was the faster drive.

It went down like this: I went through each drive and got everything I wanted to keep, storing it in one folder on the IDE drive. I uninstalled my games etc so I could fit all the backup stuff there, and then proceeded to format the Vista / SATA drive and install XP on it. That was fine, except for the fact that the main drive decided to be labelled 'D' and the IDE was 'C' and 'E', but I could handle that - it was only until I went back to format the IDE drive after copying the backup stuff back over to the SATA / main drive that I started getting problems.

Now, I didn't think of it at the time, but seeing as I was formatting C drive, this was actually the one that had all the boot configuration stuff on it. So, formatting it meant I could no longer boot into Windows, even after changing boot priorities in the BIOS. After POST I would recieve some kind of error, ranging from an invalid BCD file to a message telling me to go back and choose a proper boot device.

I spent a large amount of time attempting to copy the required boot files onto both the IDE and SATA drives through recovery console and other various methods, but nothing worked. So I resorted to downloading an .iso of a bootable partition utility called G-parted. Now by this time, I wasn't really thinking straight, and after mucking around with the utility a little bit and changing the labels of the SATA to 'Boot' and disabling that for the IDE drive, just as I was about to go and try it, I noticed a copy function and thought this would allow me to copy the contents of my smaller IDE partition onto my SATA drive, so then I could completely format the IDE drive.

Sadly, it wasn't anything to do with copying files, but instead the file system. As soon as I realised this, I cancelled the operation, but the damage was done - the SATA drive was now corrupt. It said I needed to run Chkdsk to fix it, so I went and did that....after a very large amount of corruption errors, I could finally recognise it again, but this time it was only 20gb in size and all my files had been deleted!

I started to freak out, looking for un-delete programs to save my backup. After using a DOS program that displayed files on each hard drive, I found out that my files had not been deleted at all - they were actually still there, but with a zero size! I cannot believe it. They are all there, but 0kb each. My drive has shrunk, and all my files are useless. So I hereby end this mammoth post by asking: how the hell can I get my files back?

I put XP back on the IDE so as to not disturb the files on the SATA drive, and I'm sitting here using IE *shudder* looking at all my files that are so useless now....

I'm dying here, just thinking about everything I have lost is something I can't really cope with...all those save files, custom configs, videos, pr0n and games I had spent ages backing up, gone! Shocked

So I am begging that someone has a solution...otherwise it looks like a grim holiday for me

Thanks ****, I'm posting on a few different forums to see if I can find a solution, so if there's somewhere else you reckon I should go, let me know

[GDH]

The good news is that all your files are still on the drive and can probably be recovered. The bad news is that you have most likely lost the file and folder structure.

At the start of your disk is the Master File Table. Each file on the PC has an MFT record, which contains the file and folder name and tells the Operating System where the file is stored on the disk.

With all your resizing of partitions, copying files and running chkdsk, it is probably that the MFT has been destroyed.

However, you should give recovery a try as you will not know what is possible until you give it a go.

Please download and Recover My Files from www.recovermyfiles.com. I am not sure if you can now boot into Windows? If you cant, then you will need to take the drive to anther computer running windows and connect it as a secondary drive.

I first suggest you use Recover My Files to run a Fast Format Recover. You need to search the "physical drive" (in the drive selection window you should see the full capacity physical drive listed). This search probably wont work, but it is fast, so it is worth a try first. Look in Folder View of the results screen for your files and click on them to preview their content. If you can see them then they can be recovered once you purchase an activation key.

Next try a "Complete Format Recover". Search the physical drive and in the file type selection window use ONLY the default selected file types. This is a longer search, but has more chance of being successful. This time look both in File View and Folder View for your files and preview them.

If your results are no good, then the best you can do is run a "Complete File Search" of the phsyical drive for specific file types. This search finds files by their unique header and footer. It will return file names like "Recovered_Word_1" and you will need to preview them to know what is in them. A good previewing tool with a 30 day demo is Explorer View from www.explorerview.com.

Best of luck.

[fLaMePrO]

Hey, thanks a lot for your reply. I'm running a complete format recover at the moment and will leave it on overnight to finish. But the only concern I have is that most of the files I want to recover aren't documents, pictures and things like that - they are much larger files such as *.isos and *.exes, which AFAIK aren't covered by the search.

Hopefully you are right, and my files are still there somewhere, but if so, how can I get the large files I want back? And even if I do find them, how am I going to tell which is which, because all the filenames are just gibberish.

I'll see how this search goes - I've tried R-Studio, which was able to recover most of my music and some videos, but some files, although large, can't be played, and others have simply shrunken in size

Really hope I can get somewhere with this...but is there any way of scanning for everything so I can just go through it and find the more important things?

Cheers

[GDH]

If there are MFT records left on your disk, then using Recover My Files to run a "Complete Format Recover" will find them and reconstruct the file system with full file and folder names (*.isos and *.exes). This method of recovery works for large file types as the MFT record for a file tells the computer in which storage clusters the file is located so that the operating system is able to track and find a fragmented files.

If the MFT records for files have been destroyed by you disk problems, then you are limited to finding only the supported file types using a Complete Format Recover. This search finds their header and footer and you will have to open them and rename either by hand or for some file types by using a file renaming program.

[fLaMePrO]

Okay cheers - the search has been running for 10 hours and I can see a 'recovered NTFS partition' - there are a large number of files that I recognise which are in the list, which is definitely a good thing!

However, the operation has not completed as it is now 'Creating FAT Virtual Partition 1' and is only one bar - what does this mean? It looks like it is taking far too long, so can I cancel it and just get my files back? I'll leave it on for now..

[GDH]

Do you know if the data you wanted to recover was on an NTFS or FAT32 partition?

If it was on an NTFS partition then you can stop the current FAT rebuilding.

[fLaMePrO]

This doesn't look good

I can see a fair few recognizable files, so I restore them to the desktop. The ones I tried were video files, and would not play. They seem to have a reasonable file size, but just don't work...does this mean they have somehow become corrupted? Do I have any other possible choices?

It just looks to me like I may have to finally give up - it really sucks, but I don't see any other reasonable choices. Scanning with another program called GetDataBack, as suggested to me on another forum, so I'll see if that yields any better results.

Thanks

[GDH]

Download Explorer View for Windows Explorer from www.explorerview.com.

Use this program in Windows Explorer to view the files. You can change the default view to hex or text to see the raw content of the files. Compare the files that you recovered to files that you know are good and see if you see a difference in the file structure - my guess is yes, they are corrupt.