Can i recover a deleted partition...PLEASE HELP

[rreed55]

I know, you guys are all probably laughing at my stupidity as you are reading this, but i was in the process of reformatting a hard drive for one of my friend's computers when i forgot to unhook the external hard drive that i backed up all of their data on, and mistook it for a local drive on the computer and deleted it as well. I did not format either of them cetching my self right after i deleted the partition. So i would like to know if there is some what that i can recover this data from either from the external HD, or the local disk. I have seen some utilities advertized, but i was wondering if i can do it with out spending a lot of $$? Hopefully i'll have learned my lesson, and would not need to use it again. I would appreciate any advice before i resume.....quit laughing!!!!

 

[Zap Brannigan]

I don't laugh at the mis fortune of others. Don't call yourself stupid, eveyone makes mistakes, it's how we learn. Once you delete a disk, whatever was on it is pretty much gone.

I would'nt bother wasting your money on a utiltiy, sounds like you won't make that mistake again, hope you did'nt lose anything too important!

 

[bigpow]

Some are offering disk recovery applications, like spinrite

I guess it depends on how important is the data, since most of these apps (if not all) are not freewares

 

[Zap Brannigan]

Cool, never heard of that one before!

Does Tech Tv still exist? I remember it got really bad before swtiching back to basic cable. I used to watch Tech TV before they were bought and moved to LA.

 

[erikistired]

i hate bad advice. if you don't know don't give someone advice like "your data is gone give up!" google 'deleted partition recover data' and you should find lots of options. i don't know if you can find a demo that will do it, but good luck.

 

[rreed55]

I have googled that exact search, and have found a bunch of demos but none of them that i have found will actually restore the information. They dangle you along and let you preview it, but not recover it

 

[erikistired]

mostly because they want a return on their investment. if it's data you HAVE to recover you might actually have to spend some money. call it a learning experience.

 

[Nocturnal]

You can try to use OnTrack's software. It's relatively good software. I've used to retrieve deleted/formatted stuff off a hard drive and it's found stuff. As long as the hard drive is readable I've been able to find stuff and retrieve it.

 

[Green Man]

I agree with Nocturnal. I regularly use OnTrack's data recovery software, and it works pretty well as long as the hard drive is physically OK. It can often even recover data from failing hard drives. It's not chap, though...how important is the data?

 

[eLiu]

There's an app online called "getdataback" or something like that. It will recover your partition; it can even rewrite the MBR so that it's effectively un-deleted.

I used this utility to great success when my maxtor was dying & my partitions were disappearing left and right.

 

[Brona]

I've also got into a simmilar situation. I've used Boot Disk that contained a Partition Recovery utility. That did the trick and returned the erased partition back to me. I suppose if you wish, you can also try that utility.
http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

 

[unclebud]

i agree with the gdb post
also voting for it or winternals, but really gdb in a situation like this

 

[TeeJay1952]

UNERASE.exe worked for me on an external hd that had a screwed up FAT table.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Ouch that stinks. I don't laugh about such stuff. My older bro once was playing with the FORMAT command in dos (back in the days of dos 6.22 and windows 3.1) and he had created a file with a space in it somehow, which was a nono back then. So he typed FORMAT *.* - heh there went the whole hard drive!

I formatted a drive once, then realized I needed something from it and at that time win95 had a cool dos-based program called "unformat." Unfortunately I don't think they have it anymore and I don't think it worked with partitions...

 

[porcorosso]

The most important thing you can take away from this is the knowledge that a rewriteable drive is NOT a real backup -- at least not for irreplaceable data. Data that must be protected must be backed up to non-rewriteable media which can be removed from the system (and therefore stored remotely and safely). Any time you have all copies of an important data set in a single location (particuarly if they are on a rewritable disk connected to a single system or a single network) you are in jeopardy of losing it all. Depending upon configurations and procedures used the risk may be low, but it's not low enough. (imo)

I know of no free solution to the recovery issue, but have had experience with On-Track and Spin-Rite from having to help other folks years ago. They were both great back then. I've preached external backup until I was blue in the face, and that's probably why no one I deal with has had to ask me to recover data for several years. Either they started backing their data up properly, or they don't want to put up with hearing a sermon from me. Either way, it works for me!

Good luck on getting your data back. If all that was done was deletion of the partition, then any competent data recovery software should do the trick for you. But I don't think you'll find a freebie. If I'm wrong about this, I hope someone will correct me. I'm always delighted to hear about useful, free software -- particularly if it's open source.

 

[Jojo1971]

use GETDATABACK for NTFS..

link here.

 

[lukeles]

I suggest you use data recovery software such as EASEUS DataRecoveryWizard to recover files.

Download demo version: http://www.easeus.com

You can use "AdvancedRecovery" to scan your partition. After the scan is complete, the lost file will be displayed in DataRecoveryWizard, you can select them and recover them.