My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Peeps
Help
as above, my drive has unallocated itself and i have lost my entire music collection :censored::censored::censored::censored::censored:
any advice as how to recover it? PLEASE
i have googled and i have found some advice to try testdisk and i am running it just now to see if i can recover it. no sure how effective this will be.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Assuming you can't restore from the backup...
First thing is to stop and do nothing for at least 24 hours - as much data is lost through ill thought out and rushed recovery methods as any other cause.
Then get yourself a second drive at least as big as the first and make a clone of the lost disk onto the second. Then put the first disk away. Now start your recovery on the cloned disk. If it all goes wrong, you can re-image the original and then start again, using different techniques or different tools.
The chances are the data is still there, and recoverable, provided you haven't written anything to it and it isn't physically damaged (internally)
You said it has 'unallocated itself' - what do you mean?
And what was the partition scheme/type and filesystem?
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Give me a shout if you need a caddy or anything to pop the drive in.
Oh and I guess you'll be wanting to borrow that Aqua CD again to copy? ;)
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Thanks for the help Peter.
I managed to recover most of the music lost. It's not all named properly but I still have it.
Don't know what happened, it just disappeared from my Windows Explorer last night. Nothing was written or read from it. When I went in and looked at it through the windows software it was found as unallocated space.
After it was all recovered, I formatted it and it's working OK again.
Not going to put all my music back on it.
As for the Aqua cd Rob, I will need that and the telly tubbies one as well.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Glad you got it back, I'd not trust that HDD though, backup time? Not that I've got much in the way of backups apart from photos.
I don't have Teletubbies but if you want Mr Blobby or Zig&Zag I can do those, seriously...not joking.... :eek:
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Hmm, some corruption of the Master File Table perhaps (although there are two copies of that on an NTFS volume) or maybe the disk signature. Guess we'll never know.
Still, really pleased you got it back (I have experienced that dreadful sinking feeling when you think all may be lost) and more or less intact!
Now, about that back-up strategy.... :)
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
The master file tab is what caused the issue. It found the 2 of them and one said the drive size was 462gb and the other was 1347gb or something. ( it's a 500gb drive).
I recovered the smaller tab and got all my files back...... Or though I thought. Some of the files are not playing long enough. ( a lot of the files are dj mixes)
Turns out I have copies of all the files on a bunch of DVDs so not worries.
Now for my backup plan.....
My important files like family pics and videos are backed up on my Dropbox and Drive accounts. Ok that way.
My HDDs are all old. 6 years plus.
Might invest in a a few new drives....
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Thank you for reporting back! Always useful to find the cause where possible. Might be worth having a look at the SMART data on those drives - and yes, possibly coming up for retirement!
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
deejayburnout
The master file tab is what caused the issue. It found the 2 of them and one said the drive size was 462gb and the other was 1347gb or something. ( it's a 500gb drive).
I recovered the smaller tab and got all my files back...... Or though I thought. Some of the files are not playing long enough. ( a lot of the files are dj mixes)
Turns out I have copies of all the files on a bunch of DVDs so not worries.
Now for my backup plan.....
My important files like family pics and videos are backed up on my Dropbox and Drive accounts. Ok that way.
My HDDs are all old. 6 years plus.
Might invest in a a few new drives....
If you've got that much data, and I would imagine it's not changing, you could give Crashplan a shot. Otherwise I'd seriously think about just burning a stack of DVDs. Hard drives aren't to be trusted! Actually, on that note, I might do my storage comparison again.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
wowsers this beckons the question what is the life of a HDD?
the older comps I've had the HDD lasted several years 6-7 before I passed them on.
The only one I had that went bang went not on me but on my dad. Bought in 2000 used daily until 2004 then as his home pc until circa3 years ago (1 year before win7 came out IIRC) and it suddenly went kaboom. Never had another HDD die, ever.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
If you look here: http://static.googleusercontent.com/...k_failures.pdf you'll see on p. 4 a graph of annual failure rates.
According to Google, between years 2-5 of operations there's approximately an 8% chance of failure each year. So on the basis of Google's data, they should last on average over 5 years, yes, but there's a strong possibility that they'll die before that point.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jim
Otherwise I'd seriously think about just burning a stack of DVDs. Hard drives aren't to be trusted!
I'd trust a hard drive far more than I'd trust a DVD. in fact, if i really want to retain data, i always put my trust in hard drives, though i may use more than one of them.
OP, you need to investigate RAID if you really really want the data.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
bytejunkie
I'd trust a hard drive far more than I'd trust a DVD. in fact, if i really want to retain data, i always put my trust in hard drives, though i may use more than one of them.
OP, you need to investigate RAID if you really really want the data.
Remembering of course that RAID is not a substitute for a backup strategy.
Re: My HDD has just unallocated itself and i have lost all data. Can it be recovered?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peterb
Thank you for reporting back! Always useful to find the cause where possible. Might be worth having a look at the SMART data on those drives - and yes, possibly coming up for retirement!
i checked the SMART data and the hours on the drives were not to bad.
the hours per drive are 16232, 20880, 19032, 37102. And the one that failed was 19032 hours old, or 2.1 years old. Not as old as i expected.
The oldest drive i have is used for downloads and is the one i expect to fail first. My music drive has been reformatted and seems to be operating ok.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jim
If you've got that much data, and I would imagine it's not changing, you could give Crashplan a shot. Otherwise I'd seriously think about just burning a stack of DVDs. Hard drives aren't to be trusted! Actually, on that note, I might do my storage comparison again.
Agree with the burning of DVDs. i have some but not loads of backups. might need to do it more often
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peterb
Remembering of course that RAID is not a substitute for a backup strategy.
Also agree with this. i think i have learn my lesson. :)
