Recovering a HDD with a removed partition.

[Doramius]

Data just isn't that important to me, so I'd just Fdisk the drive. Hwever, It's not me so I'm checking out advice for someone else who doesn't wish to accept what I feel is inevitable.

Here's the situation. A slave drive has had the partition information accidentally removed or soemthing of the sort, so when it shows as a slave and it is trying to be accessed, it asks if you wish to format the drive. The problem is there's "valuable" information on the HDD that is not wished to be lost. How can we read the data off the HDD without formatting the drive resulting in lost information?

What I think was done is that the partition was accidentally removed off the wrong drive when he was trying to reinstall the OS on the main drive. (IE: selected the wrong drive to remove the partition.) Apparently, the disk has not been overwritten or wiped clean, but because it shows the partition was removed, it wants to erase & format the whole dang HDD.

Should he accept the inevitable or is there a way we can performa a Lazarus?

[TJohns]

Grab BartPE and Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows ... make yourself a self-booting recovery disk full of utilities & try some of the included (freeware) disk diagnostics & recovery tools

Trev

[Heywould3]

or "R studio" fat or ntfs.. they are the best file recovery tools i have ever used. small foot print and boot disk options.. just keep in mind that anything you load on the drive will over write something on the drive.. so if possible load it on a OS loaded drive and have it scan the other drive.. it will find anything and everything that has not been writen over it is even able to repair removed partitions and fix MBR to re enable use of the drive

[Doramius]

THe R studio looks like a good choice. It looks like you have to purchase it to use, but If he really wants his data, I guess he's got no chioce.



I found it in google, but some links would have helped. :P


EDIT: This software reads like stereo instructions. from the sound of the demo or trial versions, it's not gonna do what needs to happen unless we buy the software. I'm not exactly sure which one to get, because it looks a bit confusing.

[Heywould3]

yes it is a pay software.. i can help with the tech info on which one to go with if it comes to that.. but its down to the HD formating.. and if you dont know what that is then this software will be too much to help you lol... neway.. i have both versions and i have used them both. the free versions will only recover something like 100k files or less. i know that doesnt help but it will also tell what file can be recovered. if help is needed to get the program or what ever let me know. i may be able to help.

[Doramius]

It's an 80GB HDD. He says the format is NTFS, but it's a slave drive to FAT32 WinXP program. He says there's about 73GB of information and he'd really would like to avoid losing the information. There's back-ups of home movies, like wedding, Christmas, birthdays, etc. Some of the files are gonna be large. I can see a 3GB ISO, which seems to be a birthday. And a 6.5GB file which seems to be a wedding Video. But there are other files he'd like to keep too. I did the scan and it showed some items that were FAT files.

Also, do I need a larger HDD to store recovered files to? I have a 250GB HDD that I can use as a master drive and store his information onto, I just don't know if I need to go that route or not. Like I said, the instructions read pretty vauge. I used the 'help' section to understand what certain things meant, but it looks like I have to purchase a program to recover.

Is there no way to restore a partition information, just so the information can be read?

[Heywould3]

i havent used it in a while but there are a few things that you need to keep in mind. one.. you can not recover anything over 100k with the trial version. also after the initial scan it might show that there are over 80gigs of files that can be recovered.. thats due to it seeing files on the free space that might have been large.. IE if you have 6gigs free and on the free space there use to be a file that was 10 gigs it will show over 80 gigs of data.. you jsut wont be able to recover all of it. the other thing is if you are tryign to recover files off ntfs to fat32 you will run in to the file size limit issue.

you will want to recover the files to an ntfs drive for ease. the ntfs version wil work on the fat drive and vise versa

if you cant get the program or if you dont want to pay for it.. there are others that are free. but you will need 73gigs free on your 250 if you want to recover all the files for him

i know that it is possible to recover the MBR i just dont remember how its done.. im sure you know this but keep in mind anything you load on the messed up drive has a potential to overwrite data.. best i can offer is a google on MBR repair

[InXess]

This type of behavior may be due to damaged partition table (shifted, shrunk etc). get the partition table doctor. It has recovered few bad partitions of mine due to the damaged IDE cable (!).
It's cheap (50 bucks) and I blindly trust it after what it has done for me. Check also some other partition utilities like Partition Magic, PartitionIt or similar. I also have Partioin Magic but I trust Partition Table Doctor more so I used this one. It is a free download to check it out.

http://www.shareup.com/Partition_Table_Doctor-download-18630.html

Do not attempt recovery before this one. Do not overwrite the disk also.

[Doramius]

I'm pretty good about being carefull about not overwriting. The 250GB drive only has the OS installed on it, so it's completely open to store the information. I just gotta swap things around. He has a main drive with 20GB which holds his OS and this 80GB as a slave. He reinstalled the OS on the main drive, but got confused when trying to remove the partition. The first partition he removed was on the 80GB drive. He didn't place it back or it would have formatted the whole disk clean. I did the scan with the software noted above and found all the files and they are completely intact. There's a program for $50, but I don't know if it's the right program. He's willing to pay the $50 if it right, but not really willing to pay much more than that if he can avoid it. He's giving me another $20 bucks on top of it to do this for him. And after this whole ordeal, neither of us will probably use the software again. Kind of pricey for a one shot deal, ya know.

[InXess]

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/partitioneditors.shtml

This is a list of free partition utilities (TestDisk can undelete). There's probably several other free softwares for partition repair and recovery, check cnet.com.

You can get the Partition Table Doctor download (free) and scan your drive to get the report, or trial versions of other softwares... (Google...?)

[Heywould3]

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

there is another one i found.. its listed in another post opn this page regardiong 300 freeware tools. hope it helps

[Doramius]

I'm trying a couple of these and I'm having the same problem. I can find all the files on a scan. I make a boot disk. I start the PC with the boot disk and I'll get an error like:

let's say using a CD

BOOT FROM CD :
1. FD 1.44MB SYSTEM TYPE-(00)


What the heck does that mean? it just hangs. also many say they are a DOS program. Does it matter if I have XP without DOS on the HDD I'm hoping to recover the files too? The main 250GB drive is SATA, the 80GB is IDE ATA-100. I've changed the jumper and the position on the cable in all sorts of different configurations and it's not changing the problem. I need to Either place the partition back or recover all data. All these programs say they can do it, but how? I find it easier to network a major corporation.

This guy is probably just gonna have to suffer. Sorry if I sound like a dick about it, but come on $200 for a full version program I'm only gonna use once to help someone?

[Doramius]

I'm trying a couple of these and I'm having the same problem. I can find all the files on a scan. I make a boot disk. I start the PC with the boot disk and I'll get an error like:

let's say using a CD

BOOT FROM CD :
1. FD 1.44MB SYSTEM TYPE-(00)


What the heck does that mean? it just hangs. also many say they are a DOS program. Does it matter if I have XP without DOS on the HDD I'm hoping to recover the files too? The main 250GB drive is SATA, the 80GB is IDE ATA-100. I've changed the jumper and the position on the cable in all sorts of different configurations and it's not changing the problem. I need to Either place the partition back or recover all data. All these programs say they can do it, but how? I find it easier to network a major corporation.

This guy is probably just gonna have to suffer. Sorry if I sound like a dick about it, but come on $200 for a full version program I'm only gonna use once to help someone?

EDIT: Just wanted to say sorry for the upset message I had posted here. I got a bit frustrated. However, I will say THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH InXess.
TestDisk worked and it was EXTREMELY EASY. I used it to make a bootable primary partition and it was free. Which means, I'm getting $20 for some pocket change this holiday weekend. WOOT!!!! THanks again all.

[InXess]

Hey, you're welcome. Seems like recovery went well... Congrats!