Recovering Data after deleting volume?

[CaptNumbNutz]

Long story short...
I was planning on reformatting a 160GB drive on my pc using the Computer Management Console in Vista, except I deleted the volume on different 160GB drive hooked up to my PC...which happened to be my backup drive. I hate it when I live up to my name. :rolleyes:

I have NOT reformatted the drive I wish to recover. Right now the disc is showing up as an inactive drive with 149.5GB (the entire drive) as unallocated in the management console. This drive previously only had one partition on it.

Is it possible to recover the data? If so, how do I go about doing that? I'm not very familiar with data recovery software.

[Blue Fox]

The software that is available out there is fairly easy to use. Here is an example: http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

[CaptNumbNutz]

The software that is available out there is fairly easy to use. Here is an example: http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
So deleting the volume is recoverable? please confirm someone...
I'm not doing a simple "undelete" here... this drive doesn't even have a drive letter now...

[Blue Fox]

Easiest way to put things. Imagine your hard drive as a book. When you delete something, picture someone crossing out the reference to it in the index. The pages (data) are still there. Whatever you do, just don't write any data to the drive from this point on and you should be able to get pretty much everything back. No guarantees though.

[CaptNumbNutz]

Easiest way to put things. Imagine your hard drive as a book. When you delete something, picture someone crossing out the reference to it in the index. The pages (data) are still there. Whatever you do, just don't write any data to the drive from this point on and you should be able to get pretty much everything back. No guarantees though.
Ok, your analogy makes sense. Except I think my situation is more like I tore off the book binding/cover along with the index, and now all I have left are the pages.

I've been tinkering with some free data recovery software for past hour. All the ones I've worked with only scan active drives with drive letters. Right now, my drive doesn't even have a drive letter, and only shows up as a 149.05GB unallocated, inactive drive. In other words, this drive only appears in drive management right now, not in regular windows.

Do I go ahead and make the drive active, create a new volume, and quick format it (assuming a full format would nuke everything) so it has a drive letter and can be seen by the O/S? Or do I need to be looking at different software that can?

[Blue Fox]

No! Do not do anything with the drive like that. Creating volumes or formatting it writes data to the drive, which you don't want. GetDataBack for example doesn't require you to have a drive letter allocated to the drive if I remember correctly. It has been a while since I've messed with that software though.

[CaptNumbNutz]

No! Do not do anything with the drive like that. Creating volumes or formatting it writes data to the drive, which you don't want. GetDataBack for example doesn't require you to have a drive letter allocated to the drive if I remember correctly. It has been a while since I've messed with that software though.
You have helped tremendously. The GetDataBack software found all the data. Only problem is I can't copy the files over without registering. It can create an .img file though.

I have no idea what I would do with the .img file though once its made. It's 20GB of files. That won't fit on a DVD, and I don't have a blu-ray burner. I wonder if theres any way to extract the data from the .img file?

Ugh... that's $80 I don't have right now...until next paycheck. I'm trying out some other free software as we speak.

Thanks again.

[alg7_munif]

This software is great, I managed to recover all my partitions after the partition table has been corrupted. The software will scan the drive and you can use it to create back the partition lost along with the data inside:
http://www.partition-recovery.com/