Recovering data after north ghost disk to disk?

[dave343]

If I did a disk to disk copy with norton ghost can I recover data from past formats on the new drive?

 

[mobiux]

Yikes,
You may have some luck by reading the parts of the disk that weren't overwritten by the ghost restore.

But I am pretty sure that the ghosting does a sector copy, so that would overwrite pretty much everything.

A pay data recovery service may have luck with it though.

 

[dave343]

I bought a new 80gb sata drive and I did a ghost disk to disk copy from my old 120gb, so I think what I really wanted to know was if because I did a disk to disk copy would I be able to recover past formats from the 120gb on the new 80gb. sry if Its confusing lol.

 

[Snugglebear]

You might find some traces of old data on the drive, but by and large the data would be quite corrupted. If you did a zero fill at any point you'll get zilch.

 

[Zlash]

But I am pretty sure that the ghosting does a sector copy, so that would overwrite pretty much everything.

Ghost doesn't do sector by sector unless you tell it, otherwise you would have very large image files.

 

[dave343]

So even though I did the disk to disk copy with ghost, old formats do not get copied over? I guess im asking really if the new 80gig would be 100% exact same as the old 120.

 

[Ice Czar]

Originally posted by dave343
would I be able to recover past formats from the 120gb on the new 80gb. sry if Its confusing lol.

no there would be no residual bit information
that is, the bits would have been written to only once, and they would all be the same strength magnetic polarity, either positive or negative, a forensic recovery would just recover exactly what was cloned over and nothing more, any area that didnt have a partition\master file table entry Ghost would have skipped and written nothing