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nohelmets
07-05-2009, 10:20 PM
Hello everyone,

Got a really annoying problem I wanted to see if I could get some advice on. The other day I decided to install Windows 7 7264 x64 on my notebook. Usually, before I do a clean install, I zero the drive, which I did this time as well. So, before wiping, I backed up everything to my 1TB WD MyBook, which already had about 650GB of its own data on it as well.

Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and didn't notice that I started with the MyBook still connected, meaning it started wiping it as well. I noticed this almost immediately and killed the power.

After I got Windows 7 up and running, the drive wouldn't show. I checked Device Manager and saw that it was installed properly. I then checked Disk Management, and found that it was listed as 931.5 gigs of unallocated space. Apparently the partition got wiped out.

I used a program called GetDataBack and did a 10 hour deep scan with it. It was able to find the MFT and all of my files with current dates, but as I didn't have another large drive to copy everything to, I wanted to see if I could simply restore the partition and MFT, something GetDataBack apparently doesn't do.

I then used TestDisk, did a full scan (which took several more hours), but it wasn't able to find any partitions, so I couldn't repair the MFT. So, I created a new partition, which then allowed me to use the 'Repair MFT' tool, but TestDisk said the original and mirror were both bad. This all despite the fact that I've written nothing to the drive since I screwed it up.

Now I'm completely stuck and don't know what to do. I've pretty much given up on the idea of being able to rebuild the partition and have the drive as it was before. I've got a ton of data on there, but most of it I can live without; it's just lots of the documents and pictures from my travels I'd really like to recover.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd be very grateful!

axan
07-06-2009, 05:25 PM
try active partition recovery, it worked for me in the past when i accidentally nuked partition tables

faugusztin
07-06-2009, 05:39 PM
So, I created a new partition, which then allowed me to use the 'Repair MFT' tool, but TestDisk said the original and mirror were both bad.

Why ? Never, ever play on the original drive if you don't know what you are doing. Some utils would probably be able to restore the original filesystem - but now that you made a new FS on it, it is probably lost forever.

Syntax Error
07-06-2009, 05:58 PM
Probably the most easiest solution to do is to get yourself another high-capacity external drive and use data recovery tools like GetDataBack to extract to this secondary drive.

Then, dump the data back onto your old drive and return the one you just got for this operation, or better yet, keep it and use it as a backup because if your data is as important to you as I think it is (pictures and such are pretty important, IMO), then do that. :)

nohelmets
07-07-2009, 11:06 AM
Well, I did a second scan with GetDataBack (excessive) and was able to recover most of the important files. The rest are replaceable.

Thanks for the info!