Is it possible to recover a repartitioned partition?

[mycarsavw]

A few days ago I got a call from my youngest sister asking for the CoA code for their home machine. This obviously meant trouble.

We talked, and it turns out she downloaded a patch for Splinter Cell from a "site with funny letters" - Mistake #1 - which, she says, wiped the Windows folder of their XP SP2 machine and popped up a lot of "funny messages"

Not content with partial destruction she attempted to recover the computer using the recovery CDs - Mistake #2 - despite not having a clue what she was doing.

Somehow during the course of the recovery she went from pressing R to deciding in which partition to install XP. Naturally she chose the current partition resulting in a complete wipe of the drive - Mistake #3.

My question is, is there any way at all to unpartition the new partition and find the old partition sitting there waiting to be recovered?

I have a feeling I know the answer already but I just want to check with those who know a bit more than me before reformatting and starting again.

I've already had the drive out and in another machine and I've also used an Ubuntu Live CD to read it but it just shows the drive as having the basics of a fresh reinstall on there with no sign of the old data at all.

Thanks in advance for what I know will be bad news

[aidanjt]

No way what so ever, the partition table and the format's associated inodes/filetables and journal is nuked, your only hope would be with a data recovery expert, who would do low level data extraction, which takes time and thus a lot of cash.

[Fabula]

Recovering the partition and continuing as if nothing had happened is extremely unlikely.

But As long as the data hasn't been overwritten, you can probably recover a lot of the files. Getdataback for ntfs has recovered files for me from partitions that have been deleted, remade, deleted, remade etc. So you should be able to get things back. Plug the drive into another machine, and recover from it. Don't write back onto the drive until you've recovered all you can!

[mycarsavw]

No way what so ever, the partition table and the format's associated inodes/filetables and journal is nuked, your only hope would be with a data recovery expert, who would do low level data extraction, which takes time and thus a lot of cash.

Dang, but the following gives me hope;

Recovering the partition and continuing as if nothing had happened is extremely unlikely.

But As long as the data hasn't been overwritten, you can probably recover a lot of the files. Getdataback for ntfs has recovered files for me from partitions that have been deleted, remade, deleted, remade etc. So you should be able to get things back. Plug the drive into another machine, and recover from it. Don't write back onto the drive until you've recovered all you can!

I'll give Getdataback a whirl, thanks very much, no doubt I'll be back.

[Dav0s]

find out if she did a quick format or not. if it was a quick format, you may have a considerable chance to gain some data back.

[aidanjt]

The only difference between a 'quick' format and a 'full' format, is the latter does a detailed chkdsk after laying out the filesystem, the data is gone, period, there's no reference to the files anymore. I know people like to hold out hope when they do silly things to their filesystems, but it's in vain.

[mycarsavw]

find out if she did a quick format or not. if it was a quick format, you may have a considerable chance to gain some data back.

She did whatever creating a new partition does. Not sure sorry.

The only difference between a 'quick' format and a 'full' format, is the latter does a detailed chkdsk after laying out the filesystem, the data is gone, period, there's no reference to the files anymore. I know people like to hold out hope when they do silly things to their filesystems, but it's in vain.

I know it's in vain, my initial post said it was in vain too, but there's a tiny bit of hope just here >>> . <<<

[GoNz0]

one you let them know its will take a few days of your time to attempt to recover very little in usable information they may decide to admit defeat, most people do when faced with a cock up as big as this.

just give them the usual best advice,

"ring me 1st next time"

just walk away bud, there really going to waste your time over this.

[mycarsavw]

one you let them know its will take a few days of your time to attempt to recover very little in usable information they may decide to admit defeat, most people do when faced with a cock up as big as this.

just give them the usual best advice,

"ring me 1st next time"

just walk away bud, there really going to waste your time over this.

"They" are family, I can't walk away

I'll give it one more go this week then I'm done.

[kalniel]

The partitioning itself isn't the problem, it's the format that may have been part of it - but only may.

If you've borked partitions but haven't actually written much data I think it's possible to get partly back to where you were by creating your original partition structure. How you used to split partitions was effectively pushing your data to the start of the partition, erasing the partition information and creating two new ones, making sure the first one started in the same place and was big enough to contain all your data. As long as you don't format the first partition your data should still be intact.

Windows install doesn't need to format either, so there's a chance the format option wasn't picked...

[GoNz0]

ahh well, good luck m8, i hope the info is worth your time.

[mycarsavw]

Recovering the partition and continuing as if nothing had happened is extremely unlikely.

But As long as the data hasn't been overwritten, you can probably recover a lot of the files. Getdataback for ntfs has recovered files for me from partitions that have been deleted, remade, deleted, remade etc. So you should be able to get things back. Plug the drive into another machine, and recover from it. Don't write back onto the drive until you've recovered all you can!

You Sir, are a star.

If you're ever in Kent, I owe you a beer.

From the initial scan I am able to recover the bulk of their photos, a few mp3 files and all of their documents.

Just got to wait for them to return from their hols to see if there's anything else they want.

[b0ned0me]

I've had a similar experience with a trashed hard drive - easyrecovery pro got back files which had somehow survived two or three formats and reinstalls - it took forever to scan the drive, but it recovered an amazing amount of stuff. So even a real disaster can sometimes be salvaged....