[SOLVED] Recover Data to formatted drive

[Zratch]

Hi,

I have a customer who brought in a PC that would not boot after he tried to change the partition size with Parted Magic (it is a Windows XP PC) and now the PC will not boot. User had 2 partition, OS and Data, and Data was formatted.

It will sart booting, Windows XP logo for about 15min then BSOD 0x7E.

I know there is something wrong with the disc and it is probably defect, since there is a BSOD, I cannot boot from windows XP disc, I cannot boot from Hiren boot cd, can boot from other just fine, god knows why, and user has critical data he wish to get back.

I am currently running TestDisk to try to get the partition to unformat, could not access the disk when booting as a slave in Windows, can see partition OS when booting in linux, but none of the files he need are there.

Anyone has any advice on how I could get the info in this drive back ? I wanted to try recurva and some other tools, but you know, cannot run the disk as a slave in windows, so no recurva possible.

If anyone has any solution would be much appreciated.

Regards

Zratch

 

[SilverLeaf]

I wanted to try recurva and some other tools, but you know, cannot run the disk as a slave in windows, so no recurva possible.

Parted Magic contains PhotoRec photo and file recovery software. Might be worth a look, but not sure if it would do any good in this particular situation. Sounds like TestDisk is probably more of the tool you need.

If the data is critical, however, I would suggest that working on an image/clone of the drive might be a safer way to proceed.

 

[CLC]

Easeus Data Recovery is really good, I've used it on several drives that other recovery programs wouldn't touch.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizardpro/

 

[TechguyUK]

I know there is something wrong with the disc and it is probably defect, since there is a BSOD, I cannot boot from windows XP disc, I cannot boot from Hiren boot cd, can boot from other just fine, god knows why, and user has critical data he wish to get back.

Before you go any further, image the drive if you haven't done so already. I've seen situations like this go from bad to worse as the drive gets messed about. Most recovery tools will be able to work on the image and it gives you more options if the ones you try don't works.

 

[Zratch]

to be honest I have not done an image already. I will try to do that tomorrow, but since i cannot boot in HBCD and I don't really know about bootable disk image software, I will do some research tonight and tomorrow and update if I manage to recover the data.

Thank you very much.

If anyone has any other idea, feel free to share

 

[katz]

Try booting from a Knoppix CD. I've had good results w/ Knoppix when other boot cd's wouldn't work. At least you may be able to copy over the data before the drive is totally hosed.

 

[FremontPC]

Create an Ubuntu Live CD or the like. You'll be able to access the data just fine as long as the disk itself isn't hosed. As others suggest, clone it or back it up first.

Very handy tool to have. Here's a link to older versions, I'd say try 9.10 :

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

Knoppix is a good suggestion too.

 

[RedFoxComp]

to be honest I have not done an image already. I will try to do that tomorrow, but since i cannot boot in HBCD and I don't really know about bootable disk image software, I will do some research tonight and tomorrow and update if I manage to recover the data.

Thank you very much.

If anyone has any other idea, feel free to share

Most importantly, do raw image. A compressed image of the existing file system isn't going to do much good for data recovery if you have to fall back on it.

 

[AlbertJones]

After creating the image connect the hard disk as slave to other system and now scan the drive with Kernel for Windows Data Recovery tool. I have recovered around 90 GB of data with the help of this tool when i accidentally formatted my D: instead of formatting my pen drive. I connected uninstalled the hard disk of my system and connected to my friend systems where i already have installed this software and then I scan the after 12 Hrs of deep scanning i recovered all my data.

 

[Zratch]

Hi,

For those of you still following, I got the image, as a .dd file after hiren finally booted up, the 150gb is stored on my file server. I am currently scanning it, the image, still in Hiren,. I was able to mount the image using a feature in Hiren, I guess you already know about it, but I'm not sure if it will find anything.

The software I am using now is called Restoration, never used it before, looked like it is looking in each sector, but I am not sure it will find formatted files. I tried recuva, but since the image is not formatted back to ntfs (it is still unallocated) it could not find anything. Should I format it to NTFS then run the test again ?

Regards,

Zratch

 

[CLC]

No do not format it again. If you are having trouble doing this you should use a program that is user friendly, you may actually have to BUY something

I suggested before to try easeus data recovery wizard pro, you can make images with it and recover complete partitions and or files. It just works, the hook is that it's not free. I'm sure there are other programs out there that work well too. I say lose hirens, its full of infections and cracked software anyway.

 

[Zratch]

alright, my issue has been resolved, thanks to a image in raw format that was restored to a blank hard disk, and thanks to diskdigger. I was able to find 7934 files that my client needed.

Thank you very much all for the help !!