Accidently deleted Volune... now what?

S

sdotbrucato

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
1,722
Okay so I was about to do a fresh install so I can install Vista x64 when I accidently deleted the wrong volume. This volume took up the entire 320GB drive.

I then decided that I will install it on the drive that I had originally planned and try and recover the deleted volume, using the 2000/XP tool I knew about DSKPROBE.EXE.

It appears that Vista does not have this utility. It also appears that the Vista installer formatted the volume, even though I never really said to make it a volume,

What I mean by this is I can see the Drive through My Computer. There is about ~14MB of things on it. I have $RECYLE.BIN, Boot, System Volume Information folders. and then bootmgr and BOOTSECT.BAK

Basically I need to know if I'm screwed or if there is something I can do to get this volume back?

Thanks for any and all help and hints.
 
I doubt you will be able to recover the volume so it is usable but you may be able to recover some files.
Is that what you need?
 
No. In reality I really kind of need this drive back. I just got alot of work done, and got alot of files brough over to my storage drive (The one I messed up) I make bi-weekly back-ups but well thats not really going to help me right now.

I know it's possible to bring back the volume if it wasn't formatted, but I'm looking for a way to get it back even if it has been formatted (But other than the format no writes to the drive)
 
You could send it off to a drive recovery place or look into some recovery software. If there have been no writes to the disk you should be able to recover your data.
 
Im trying to get this back soon.. like hopefully by monday.

What are some good recovery software titles I should look into?


Thanks for all replies so far.
 
I cant rerember the software i used, but it was one of the big titles. I managed to recover most of my data, if someone mentions the name il be able to confirm it.
 
14MB + of data has already been written to the drive.
That is probably enough to render it unrecoverable as a System drive unless you get hardcore.
 
Yes as a system drive but im under the impression that he wants to recover his actual work.
 
By the way it sounds, Im pretty much screwed as far as getting the entire volume back the way it was... so looks like im going to just have to press my luck and try to recover the newly created files.

Can some of you fine people name some good ones that actually work. Price is not an issue at the moment, I'll add it to the three open invoices I'm working on. (The need for the data)
 
i know of program that you could use but you'll never be ever to get it. it's a Studio program that can recover everything, and i mean if it's been written over alot. but i do feel your pain.
 
[LYL]Homer;1031926415 said:
I bought GetDataBack and RAID Reconstructor for a client's PC and we recovered just about everything when his RAID0 array went out of sync. And I frequently use Free DriveImage XML. Great software!
Click to expand...

QFT
 
I've always used a program called R-Studio.
It's recovered things on my work's computers' drives that had been rewritten with tons of crap.
I don't know how much it costs, since it is licensed to my work, but I'm sure its pretty expensive because it does exactly what it says it can do. I found stuff on drives and was able to recover it from previous years ago- on computers that were used on a daily basis.

Anyways, I can confim that R-Studio is the way to go if you can get a hold of it.
Nothing compares to it.
 
I downloaded and paid for GetDataBack. Didn't work very well. Pictures were all scrambled. Saved games all gone. 80 bucks down the drain. :mad:

And no I didn't write over it. I installed it on a new MOBO and it wouldn't recognize the RAID even after I set it up. Guess I should have backed my stuff up.

Lesson learned:(
 
Sorry to hear that.

Some ideas for making backups:
I use a backup .bat file that copies anything I want to another backup drive.
There is a ton of software that does the same so tbh I dont know why I dont just use some of it but hey, I suppose I like to have dirty hands :)
I use mini .bat files to backup items which change regularly too so I can perform quick backups and not have to wait for everything to be copied.

A fair alternative is to use DVD writing software to create an ISO on another drive of the data you wish to save.
You can then compress the ISO if you wish but I do not recommend using CDs/DVDs for any form of backup as errors occur too regularly and they arent very stable for long term storage.


You must not copy compressed data to a CD/DVD as any problems can easily result in complete loss of all data in a compressed file.
I found this out to my dismay when I wanted to recover some old emails from a few years ago.

The DVD backup disk had corrupted so I used recovery software to copy off the rar-ed up archive.
I then had to repair the archive but that failed and I thought all was lost.
It then dawned that the unrar process uses a temp folder so I went to the folder and waited for the unrar to nearly finish (and give a failure msg) and killed the process before it finished. Then I copied the unrar-ed file from the temp folder.

It then wouldnt open so I used an Outlook mailbox repair tool.
The archive was still corrupt after but I managed to get Outlook to perform its own repair which made the mailbox useful again but was missing many emails, some of which I needed.
Lesson learnt :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top