Partition/Data Recovery

WEEEEE, the joy of lost data. I knew this PC building session went too smoothly.

Well, here's the problem:
- Last night I built my new PC (yay). Since I kept the case, it involved swapping the motherboard, putting in the goodies in it, plug everything together, reinstall Windows etc. etc. Just to make sure that I don't accidentally reformat the wrong drive, I purposely did not connect my data drives.
- I have three internal HDs: two SATA and one IDE. I thought since I have more SATA ports to play with (compared to my last mobo), why not use that IDE to SATA adapter on my IDE drive? It won't make it any faster, but it will save me to use one IDE drive.
- Once Windows was installed, I checked that everything was working. Great, time to connect my data drives.
- The SATA drive worked on first try.
- The IDE-to-SATA drive? It was detected by the bios, visible in the device manager... But lookie, it is missing from the list of HDs.
- Quick look at the computer management tool confirmed my fear. Somehow, the 160GB full HD is marked as empty. Previously, it had two partition. A small 2GB partition for Windows paging, and the rest for Data. It also happened to be my most unproblematic drive, hence I used it to store a lot of things and backed up very slowly (basically, to make space).
- I did not drop the drive, I did not zap it with static (AFAIK - I was constantly grounded with a anti-static wristband, and frequently discharged myself just in case before handling any items). It is still beyond me how everything just vanished (the drive, as I previously mentioned never had any history of bad clusters etc.). So I am inclined to believe that most of the data is probably intact.

So the question now is... What tool should I try to recover the content of the drive (or try at least)?

Thanks for following.

HAve you tried connecting it up by IDE? If you can remember the (exact) partition sizes ive had some success just reinstating them and getting all the files back in the (very dim and distant) past

Yes, I forgot to mention it, but it was the first thing I thought of as well :)

No dice though :undecided

If Windows is showing that it's blank, then the partition map must have been scrubbed somehow, you could try booting a knoppix CD and see if the Linux kernel can detect it, if not, the only way you'll get that data back is with the help of data recovery experts, which is very expensive. :/

Testdisk is an excellent tool for discovering lost partitions: http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

Most of the time you can get what you want by just hitting "next" :).

Alternatively, if you Google for mrecover2, this tool can also find out where different partitions were and help you put the partition table back the way it was - I've found it fairly reliable in the past.

Thanks. I might give it a go later. I've had some success with GetDataBack (recover individual files), so at least I am now quite sure that -most- of the data is intact. I'll probably get a new HD next week and copy everything I can there before I attempt to "repair" the partition. That way, if anything goes wrong, I can be sure that no good data gets overwritten.

Try Stellar Data Recovery Software...
http://www.stellarinfo.com

this will surely solve your problem

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barkotron

Testdisk is an excellent tool for discovering lost partitions: http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

Most of the time you can get what you want by just hitting "next" :).

Alternatively, if you Google for mrecover2, this tool can also find out where different partitions were and help you put the partition table back the way it was - I've found it fairly reliable in the past.

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Barkotron, many thanks for the link.

After the problem posted in the thread http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=90893, I did a search and found this thread.

That program (TestDisk) is an excellent free piece of software and has allowed me to copy the folders over.

Thank you again.

Hiren's boot CD has lots of useful tools for recovering data.

Make sure you recover your data to another drive!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fabula

Hiren's boot CD has lots of useful tools for recovering data.

Make sure you recover your data to another drive!

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I did copy it to another drive but thanks for the tip.

Excellent tool - thanks for the heads up on it :)

Excellent, I'm pleased to have helped. Eight months ago! I must be psychic. Bow down, puny mortals!

;)

I'm hoping as this thread is 3 years old, he's found a solution by now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dashers

I'm hoping as this thread is 3 years old, he's found a solution by now.

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13 years! Think the thread has run its course! Previous Lazarus post deleted :)