Data Recovery Program
<div class="IPBDescription">Urgent Help Needed</div>I need a Data Recovery program for a disk that has not only had the partition deleted but was reformated. When my PC refused to boot after putting my old IDE hard drive in my other PC, I told windows to try and fix it. That it did- by ###### reformatting the whole thing! I have tried a few free programs, but I don't know any good ones to use. Even if it's not free, i want to know about it.
It HAS to work for reformated NTFS drives. This only happened last night, so I don't think the data is completely gone- has to be overwritten a few dozen times for that doesn't it?
Please, if ANYONE can help me, lemme know. I need that data back urgently.
It HAS to work for reformated NTFS drives. This only happened last night, so I don't think the data is completely gone- has to be overwritten a few dozen times for that doesn't it?
Please, if ANYONE can help me, lemme know. I need that data back urgently.
Comments
Ok, so it's not the fastest thing in the world, but it's pretty much the most accurate thing out there...
Depending on the size of the drive, it can take between an hour, and about 5 days to finish.
Just remember, you're NOT guaranteed to get intelligible data out afterwards, with ANY recovery program...
When you "delete" a file, it remains on the drive. However, when you write new information on the drive, the blocks with that data are marked, so they will be overwritten. Windows allways occupies a similar placement in the hard drive - usually near the front. Reformatting will typically not delete your data totally if you do nothing with the computer afterwards because windows is written into a similar location. As long as you don't do somthing stupid (like install a few programs and then defrag) your data should be reasonably safe until you start putting new files on the computer.
Smaller files have a much better chance of being retrived since there is less total data that could possibly deleted by a new file moving in.
If the data's been overwritten, the only way to get it back is a forensics lab with a magnetometer or a data recovery specialist. The "I have to overwrite it X times before it's gone" myth comes from cypherkiddies who read about data recovery labs using quantum physics and high level statistics and other math-related things to recover bits of data from a wiped drive, it costs lots of money and time. Last I checked DOD standards for a clean wipe of a drive was a shred (format, overwrite with random bits) x 8 and then physical damage to the drive platters.
though I have NOT installed any programs on there so far so I should be okay. Hell I didn't even let windows UPDATE.
would Norton be sufficient here?
This is why we make backups of anything important. Never trust Microsoft to fix anything.
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Ehh, exactly which OS would you recommend that preserves data perfectly after formatting? And sorry, but Windows did not format his drive - he did.
The first thing to do here is stop making it worse by asking in this forum and making random changes! You are going to get a lot of chaff. If your data is critical, take it to a local PC repair shop that has professional data recovery services. If it's not worth paying a little to have an honest tech recover it for you, the data wasn't worth saving anyways.
I hadn't intended it to format to be honest. Was supposed to be running a repair operation. Either I hit enter on the wrong option or it went screwy.
I would have backups, except my DVD RW isn't working right and I didn't have the money for a new one yet. It works as a reader, but not a writer. Thought it was a driver issue, but everything I tried made no difference.
KFDM...
<!--QuoteBegin-KungFuDiscoMonkey+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(KungFuDiscoMonkey)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Never trust Microsoft to fix anything.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Never trust ANYONE who makes OSes to fix anything properly. I don't care how much money or time anyone pours into their stuff, an operating system will NOT recover your data with an automated program.
MonsE...
<!--QuoteBegin-MonsieurEvil+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MonsieurEvil)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->And sorry, but Windows did not format his drive - he did. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oh, the amount of times I've told people this when I worked as a computer engineer. People just don't want to accept that THEY made the error, and that the computer must have done it without their permission. etc... They just will not accept that a computer is inherantly stupid. The phrase goes "Garbage in, Garbage out", which I have NEVER had an end user realise. Sad fact to be perfectly honest <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
*edit*
oops, my bad
*/edit*
Once again- I was UNABLE to backup because
1) my DVD-RW was wworking ONLY as a ROM. Why I do not know, but I could burn neither CD or DVD.
2) I only had one hard drive at the time. That is the reason i was going to set the other one up as a fileserver once the new one was running.
3) I am not sure why it reformatted. I've never been offered the option to reformat thru the repair installation of windows before, though I never really looked for it. Even if I did make the mistake, moot point. I want to fix it. Now. I know it's possible, I just don't know how.
and, patch, it's garbage in, garbage out.
--Scythe--
Sytche, what is R-Studio and how much does it cost?
Well, in that case the only inexpensive data recovery software I can recommend is <a href="http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm" target="_blank">http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm</a> - SpinRite. It's the only good thing ever to come out of Steve Gibson's company, but people swear by it.
But you can compress even some of the largest map files to less than 1mb and store them in your gmail account.