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recover files after an Accidental Format

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by jimmy

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I have a laptop that the motherboard went dead on. The OS would not boot, but when I booted from a floppy the files were readable. If haste, that is always a bad way to proceed, I grabbed my WinXP CD and decided to install to another folder and then dump info over the network. OOPS.
When I started the XP setup, there was 1300mb of unallocated space on the drive, so I created a new partition and installed to it. When it asked about formatting I chose quick NTFS, then proceeded. After the install finished I booted the machine to find that it had formatted both partitions. I am needing to recover the data on the original partition. I have tried using a desktop drive adapter and 'Lost & Found' software, but it would not properly recognize the drive. Any suggestions, PLEASE??? This was my wife's laptop, and she needs her email and Doc's or I am in the Dog House in a bad way. :-)

5 replies

by pierrejamme

I am afraid you must start practicing, Woof woof.
Ontrack may be able to do something for you, but it wil be expensive.
Sorry,

by donmars

Well you certainly have an "egg on your face" situation there. I believe there is hope. The first thing immediately to do is do nothing further. Don't try to use any repair tools, like "boot record repair" or "bad sector repair" tools, whatever is out there. Don't run ScanDisk. These tools are writing to your drive, and in the process are likely to overwrite the very files you intend to recover. You do not want to make a bad thing worse. Since this data is valuable take no chances... Never install or copy anything to the drive you are about to recover. Instead attach the drive to a working Windows computer as a second or slave drive and run the recovery software from the "good" computer.
There are a number of file recovery software packages that claim to be able to save your a*s. this one at
http://www.softwareshelf.com/products/display_homeuser.asp?p=11

looks good. they claim "...Recover Accidentally Deleted Files and Pictures Quickly and Easily ? Even from Quick Formatted or Virus Damaged Drives!"

Here is another you can look into... cut and paste in address bar.

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

do a search and you will come up with many others.

Good luck.

by usrbabsitr

First of all, it is good that u used a quick ntfs format, data was still there, just overwritten with the OS files... But. Anything that had been "overwritten" in certain locations on the drive is considered toast. Ontrack, mentioned in a previous answer can help you at a cost. Depends on how much the data is worth to you. You will be able to recover some data, just depends on whether it's the data that you wanted... Good luck.

by mark

There are several utilities out there to recover the data. EMail me if you want some to try. You can search the Internet too. That's how I got most of the ones I have. Some work better than others.

by mrafrohead

As long as you only formatted your hard drive, you are fine... Don't worry. Just DONT write to the drive as suggested above! Don't do anything with it.

Put it in a good machine as a slave drive. You can then go to Ontrack, download Easy Recovery Pro. They have a trial to see if you can get your files back.

From there, run the program and see what you get. You should be EVERYTHING back. If that works for you, you can then buy it if needed...

Don't worry though, you're not in the dog house...

I've recovered formatted drives, drives with jacked up partition tables and more... It's not that bad. :)

Mrafrohead

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