not another dead HD thread......

[AnDyMaN]

hey, first off, i'd like to mention that I have used the search but haven't found what i was looking for.

heres what i have: (2) 300gb sata drives (both maxtor). 1 of them has OS on one partition and data on the other partition. the other drive is just all data storage.

okay, now i decided to reformat, so i put in the xp disc and i restart. I deleted the partition thru the xp disc, formatted, then proceeded to install the OS. The disc was kinda scratched up so setup would fail everytime. I wait a week or so, until i borrow my friends cd. when i was installing my buddy's cd, i noticed that all my partitions were missing ( only c and d was there, as if it never had separated my partitions in the first place). i started freaking out, so i decided not overwrite any data and put in an old 8.4 gb hard drive and install windows on it, and see if i can recover anything. I can't recover jack from my partitioned drive.

im using getdataback as i type this, but its weird. it finds all the files, but over half of them do not work. they have sizes, but have no content. at this point, i have no idea what i should do.

does anybody know what happened? I was careful with everything, as i quadruple check every time i reformat and stuff that i have the right drive/partition. anybody know what i can do? i was thinking about maybe i should partition the drive that doesn't have a partition, and try recovering after that...?? or is that a bad idea... or actually partition and format, then try to recover. does anybody think this will work? if anybody has any input or know how or whatever, please let me know. This scenario was different then the ones i have read about, so I decided to create a thread (its always a diff. situation it seems)

 

[taqueso]

If you restore the partition table exactly how it was, you may be alright, depending on what happened. If the format/install wrote data all over the entire disk you could be screwed.

Fixing the partition table pretty much hinges on having written down the partition info or being able to remember well enough to redo it so it comes out right. I imagine you partitioned with disk manager in windows, but to do this kind of fix, you probably want to use something a little more "nuts and bolts", like fdisk from a linux livecd or maybe gparted. You have to get the sizes right, though. And I worry that it might be hard to get the exact same values as windows would if you tell it to make a "xxx gb" partition.

If you have another empty drive (since you are using a small drive now I would guess no) you should make an bit-exact copy of the drive as it is now, and try various restore attempts on the copy. If you fuck it up, you can copy and try again.

edit: what partitions are showing on the old drive now? do not write anything to it or run chkdsk if you havent already. I don't know what getdataback does, but don't use it before you back up your drive if it tries to restore in place.

 

[BillParrish]

I am confused a bit here and short of it is I have no clue what happened and it should not have happened but couple of questions. Lets just talk about the disk with 2 partitions because I cannot for the life of me figure out how (or if) the data disk got involved with this at all.

When you say,

so i put in the xp disc and i restart. I deleted the partition thru the xp disc, formatted, then proceeded to install the OS.

You mean you deleted the primary partition on the c: drive that contained the old OS but did not touch the other partition on the same drive. Right ?

You then should have gone back and recreated a new primary partition to replace the one you deleted and made it the same size (it probally would have told you how big it could be because it knew about the existing data one you did not touch). I dont see any mention of this critical step.

Then you should have formated the new partitaion you just created to hold the OS.

and proceed with the install.

anyway you in big trouble as you already know. doubt you will get much back, I think you messed up after an install failure and accidently picked the wrong partiation. But it does not matter much now.

 

[taqueso]

You then should have gone back and recreated a new primary partition to replace the one you deleted and made it the same size (it probally would have told you how big it could be because it knew about the existing data one you did not touch). I dont see any mention of this critical step.

Good catch spotting this. If the did miss this step, I fear he formatted and installed on partition 2.

 

[AnDyMaN]

okay, its been about a week now and im not 100% sure what exactly i did, now that i think about it.

but looking back, i don't think i deleted the partition. i think i just formated the c:, cuz i don't see a reason why i would have deleted the partition. so i think i just formated it (i used the windows xp cd utility). so yeah, IIRC, thats all i did. then the rest of the story goes..... windows cd had error, couldnt proceed installing, so i waited a week. then ran the setup on that cd and saw that there were no partitions, and etc. etc... so....

how should i go about creating the partitions. just a thought... i suppose...

BTW, i just looked, and now my data drive is somehow magically recovered.... before, that whole drive was blank. NOW..... it has the files that were on it before..... as if nothing happened.... and all the files seem to be working... but TOO bad this drive didn't have the important stuff on it.....

 

[AnDyMaN]

edit: what partitions are showing on the old drive now? do not write anything to it or run chkdsk if you havent already. I don't know what getdataback does, but don't use it before you back up your drive if it tries to restore in place.

on the one that had 2 partitions, it now only shows 1 127 gb ntfs. and it is empty. do you think scandisk is worth a shot?

 

[taqueso]

on the one that had 2 partitions, it now only shows 1 127 gb ntfs. and it is empty. do you think scandisk is worth a shot?

Where is the partition located on the disk? And I wouldn't run scandisk unless it is on a backup copy of the disk.

 

[AnDyMaN]

what do you mean where is the partition located on the disk...? all i know is that there is a 127gb partition on the drive that used to have 20 gb and 280 gb partitions... i have no idea where the 127 came from.

 

[AnDyMaN]

i finally got it to work.

at first, i would run getdataback and it would only be able to recover the files with no information in them. this would happen after countless reboots.

then the power went out cuz we didn't pay the bill. well, i went to pay the bill and all that and got the power back on. after that, i booted up the computer. i ran getdataback again.

i was trying to be as hopeful as possible. low and behold, all the data was in the original folders that it was supposed to be in and all the files had the information that was originally there.

i don't know what happened, but after about a month of trying to get it to work, this is how it got solved.. just wanted to update in case anybody else runs into a problem like this. maybe they can do a hard reboot by like turning off the circuit switches in the garage.