Recover Data on Hard Disk (Version 5.1.2600 Servic

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I am accustoming myself to a new machine running XP Pro. It has two 75 GB drives in a Raid 1 mirror array and a 500 GB drive. The latter was supplied as a single NTFS partition.

Today I entered the XP “Disk Management” software to finish preparing some SCSI drives from my old machine for sale. The one I was working with had been partitioned with Partition Magic 8. It had both partitions and logical drives on it. I no longer recall just what I was trying to do back in 1998 when I set it up that way.

I carefully worked in the box marked “Drive 2” and ‘removed partitions’ by right clicking and selecting the partition box next to it. It was still divided into parts because of the existence of logical drives on it. I right clicked these and followed the instructions. When I was done, Drive 2 no longer had any partitions and contained 17.2 GB that was unallocated.

Unfortunately, the same was true for “Drive 1” the 500 GB backup drive for the new machine. Yes, it had a fair amount of data on it which I can no longer access via My Computer. Last night, the last thing I did was to run a defrag on both Drive 0 (the Raid array) and Drive 1, so there should be no fragmented files on Drive 1. I ran the defrag even though XP said it was not needed.

This process went so quickly that it must be the case that the data remains on Drive 1 and that I managed to delete the partition information and file allocation table.

I did a forum search for data recovery; I found some suggestions. I am uncomfortable installing and using something like “Recuva.” I do not want to take more steps that could get me deeper into trouble before asking for help.

What is the best way back out of this mess?

I looked in System Restore (I now see that I should have created a Restore Point just before I started this process.) When I looked there were no ‘automatically created restore points’ even though the machine had been in service for a month. I guess I need to look at setting for that, too.

Thanks,

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I see that this post has had 20 views without a comment. Did I put it in the wrong place? I can see it being under “Hardware” or since it is a hard disk that is compromised, or under “Other Software Applications” since I need a tool that will work to get my backup files returned.

My research tells me that I will need another hard disk onto which I will move any recovered files; I’ve ordered that. I am looking at Runtime Software’s “GetDataBack for NTFS.” I’m trying to ask all the right questions, so I don’t dig a deeper hole. When I am done I’ll share what I have learned.

In the interim, I’d appreciate any suggestions anyone can offer.

Thanks,

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There are NOT that many RAID users here and I am one that does NOT use it, so if we are NOT user we do not have anything for you.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Sorry, I didn’t reply because I was not sure what is exactly your problem. You stated that your NEW computer has 3 physical drives (two connected to RAID controller and one connected to what?), and then, that you tried to erase SCSI hard drives from your OLD computer. Now you have a problem accessing a partition on one of your hard drives.

Did you try to erase any partitions on that drive? How did you connect SCSI drive to erase partitions? Did you break mirrors before playing with partitions? Why you didn’t try to achieve the result from outside Windows – using Partition Magic bootable diskettes or CD, for example?

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Thank you everyone for the pointers.

I was worried I’d written too much already.

My new machine has:

2 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM OEM
1 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 7,200 RPM OEM

The Raptors are a Raid 1 pair; the Caviar is there for ‘storage.’

I have a PhotoSmart Scanner C5100A (SCSI) that I will continue to use, so I moved my Adaptec AHA-2940U2W SCSI card to the new machine. It also lets me continue to use my HP CD-Writer Plus 9200. With the SCSI card mounted, it was ‘easy’ to install the SCSI hard drives from my old machine and move info on them to the 500 GB drive on the new machine.

It was while I was cleaning these up so that I could responsibly get rid of them (removing passwords, financial information, etc. and reformatting) that I found that I’d created a complicated set of partitions on one SCSI drive. I was collapsing those partitions when I somehow managed to delete the partition information on the 500 GB drive! I’m pretty confident that I was always working in the box associated with the SCSI drive. I used the XP manager because ‘it was there’ and it looked ‘legitimate.’

My support exchanges with the builder of the new machine tell me that I have a lot to learn about SATA disk managment under XP.

I’ve not tried to do anything with the the 500 GB drive since I wiped out the partition information. From what I’ve read, the files should all be there, in good order, pretty much unfragmented since I’d just defragged the drive. The adventures that lie ahead are learning just what is involved in reestablishing the file tree structure on a new disk and also learning how to distinguish between two ‘identical’ 500 GB drives, since I bought another Caviar SE16.

Now that the ‘horse is out of the barn’ I’ve pulled the power plug on the 500 GB that came with the machine. That should keep me from messing it up at all.

Thanks again,

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You ought to check out Hard disk drive management software, partitioning manager and partition recovery utility. Several loungers use it although I don’t know if they’ve used it for recovery. There’s several other links at Live Search: disk partition revocery.

Joe

--Joe

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Having just gone through a massive attempt at data recovery for a friend’s hard drive, which included a completely corrupt partition, I have been successful at finally finding a FREEWARE program that will indeed recover files from corrupted drives. It is a slow but sure process that I run when the urge gets to me but thus far I have recovered over 1400 picture files (JPG’s) that were his biggest concern along with some Excel Spreadsheets and Database files.

You can follow the thread starting at post 698,285 and also get a copy of the program recommended by Argus at PC INSPECTOR FILE RECOVERY

I don’t know if it will work in your case but it would certainly be worth a serious try.

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It is time to share what I learned. I found a very simple solution. This is a cross post of sorts. I’d opened a thread under hard drives and ‘closed it’ with the same message today.

Remember, I was trying to repair an NTFS storage disk on which I’d deleted the partition information. It had just been defragged. It had not been written to. I could boot on the computer containing it; my C: drive was not compromised.

Yesterday I ‘bit the bullet’ and used TestDisk, a very nice freeware utility that did the trick. There is a useful description on the “TechSupportForum” at:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-s…r-computer.html%5B/url%5D

The program restored the missing partition information, as advertised!

I recommend it to anyone inattentive enough to have wiped out the partition information on one of their disks. It was fast. What I understand is that it reconstructed and rewrote the Master File Table.

Thanks again for people’s patience,

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