recovering accidental format

[CGuy]

In the process of installing Win ME.

I have a 2 hard drive system with a 3 Gig C drive
and a 17 Gig D drive.

I was installing Win ME on the C drive with my data on
the D drive.

I think I (Win ME)accidentially formatted my 17 Gig
D drive when I was installing win me(FULL Version).
When I tried to access the D drive from Win ME I get
an error message saying BAD or Corrupted space.
When I do a DIR command from DOS it says No files
available and 1.88 MB free space.

Just yesterday I had done the same thing installing
Win 95B over again. I had moved all my files to my 17
Gig D drive and Fdisked and formatted my 3 Gig C
drive, before installing Win 95.

I am using the FULL version of Win ME and I guess it
went and formatted the D drive as well as the C drive,
and I guess I wasn't paying close enought attention.

I have not used the D drive since it happened and I
have disconnected the 80 pin cable and power from the
D drive disk.

Is it better to take my hard drive to a data recovery
place or just use Dos Norton unformat or use Dos
unformat command. Is DOS FORMAT what Windows ME uses
to format a disk? Is there a new recovery program that
works better ?

So if its Drive D, then get to D:\>UNFORMAT ?

Does Win ME use Fdisk ? If FDISK accidentially erased
it is it gone for good?

Thank you

 

[Barefoot]

Hmm...very interesting...

First, if you did not specifically format your D drive, then WinME did not 'format' it. That's not to say that installing ME didn't do something. It's known for 'eating' files in some installations, apparently at random. If I were you, I would try this: unplug your C: drive, find a Win95 or Win98 startup floppy, and boot the system with your D: drive plugged in and run ScanDisk. If it does not show any errors, then I think it's probably going to be a WinME problem. In this case, sorry, WinME isn't for you. Shouldn't be anyway Win2K forever!

In the event that ScanDisk will not run, you need to run FDisk and see if the partition a) still exists, and b) is recognized as a Primary Dos partition. If it says it is a Non-Dos partition with a Win98 startup floppy, then this is because WinME has affected the boot sector of the drive and you must delete the partition, re-partition, and reformat. A data recovery center may be able to retrieve your data before this step, but since I have never worked there nor seen the work they do, I can make no guarantees However, if it says that it is a Non-Dos partition with a Win95 floppy, that is because WinME updated the file allocation system to FAT32, unrecognizable by Win95 drive tools. You'll need to find a Win98 startup floppy (ought to be available online).

In the event that ScanDisk detects errors with the FAT tables, then let it fix them, but you may find that the files are corrupted. That is, they are the same size and the same name as before, but the bits and bytes of data will be scrambled. Found that out when I lost my collection of MP3s two months ago Other errors ought not affect drive performance or data integrity, unless there are bad sectors. Bad sectors are a bad thing (duh). You may be able to recover data from the rest of the hard drive, but the bad sectors may be in such areas that you can't access the rest of the disk, in which case those data recovery centers will come in handy again.

Anywho, I hope some of that helps. If you have any other troubles that aren't addressed in here, LMK and I'll do some more brainwork for ya.

 

[CGuy]

Whats the difference between a win 98 start up disk and a win 95 B start up disk?

Are your suggestions reversable?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Just on a whim, try typing "fdisk /mbr"

 

[Barefoot]

The differences are:

Win95 (including 95B&C) uses MS-DOS 5.0 for its non-GUI operations, including the startup disk. It also utilizes a 16-bit file system (FAT16).
Win98 (FE & SE) uses MS-DOS 6.22 for its non-GUI operations, including the startup disk. It utilizes a 32-bit file system (FAT32).

While the Win98 startup diagnostic utilities can read and recognize drives and partitions that use the Win95 format (FAT16 & DOS5), it is not the same vice versa. WinME uses the same DOS and FAT versions that Win98 does, so a Win98 startup disk (tried and true ) will be able to work with a WinME-structured hard drive.

The importance is simply that the Win98 startup disk will be able to see more and do more than a Win95 startup disk. Since I've never used a WinME startup disk (and since it's apparently what is causing this problem), I wouldn't recommend using one of those.

HTH

 

[CGuy]

I ran the following tests using Win 95B startup disk.
I have a Win ME start up disk also.

Disconnected drive C with Win ME on it and
connected drive D which changed its letter to C.

Scandisk
Dir structure - no problems reported
File allocation table - no problems reported
File system - no problems reported


Fdisk OPTION 4
Partition 1
Status A
Type Pri Dos
Vol Label WD 17 = Western Digital 17 gig hard drive
Mbytes 3095
System Fat 32
Usage 19%

Total Disk space 16442 Mbytes


C:\Dir

Directory of C:\

File not found

1.88 MB free