file recovery possible after Win 98 reinstall?

mrblack

I My sis in law mentioned she was having problems with her Win 98 pc and so I volunteered my services. So I got out the recovery disk and it gave me the handy option of reinstalling the OS. I assumed that this would only reinstall the OS but to my and her dismay the entire HD seems to have been formatted . The pc boots up fine now just without any data on it. When I pointed this unfortunate fact out I enquired as to the existence of backups of important stuff but of course there are none. The bad news is that some word docs she had been working on all Summer are gone too and so now I need a way to recover them files if thats possible. I have another win 98 pC here that i can give her to use until I fix this problem. Most of the file recovery programs on the web seem to recover only files that have been deleted or corrupted rather than formatted. Can anyone recommend a cheapish program or procedure to recover the files.

Esel

The only advice I can give you at the moment is to do nothing until you know exactly what you are doing. You will probably only get a limited number of shots at recovering the data. It should be there though.

Do not install any software, files, or anything else in case it might overwrite the data you need to recover.

Capt'n Midnight

Ouch - how long did the format take - if it did a long format of 15 minutes of so then the data has been wiped you then have two chances,
a ) if FDISK / STATUS reports a second partition or unused disk space
b ) contact the NSA and tell them the HDD belonged to Osama Bin Landen*

If it did a quick format or if there is a second partition then you may be able to search the hard sector by sector for data. - But the format and install will have overwritten the file table and most directories especially if you had defragged in the past, so unlikely you will ever see files - the best would be snippets of data. - and you have to know unique words that were in the documents.

BTW: if a DOS\Win9x drive was compressed beforehand - you won't even find snippets of data.

Moral of the Story - backup anything important. - Remind her that if anything else had happened to the PC would have lost it anyway.
There's approx 3% chance a HDD will die each year, though this only applies between two months and five years and if the drive comes from a good batch. I've had experiance of a bad batch and about 50% of them failed in year 3 - when you'd think they'd settled down.

quick google - http://www.snapfiles.com/features/filescavenger-803-406688.php
will only recover up to 64K files - but should detect keywords - so you'll know if data exists or not..

http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html - View and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors

Nick_oliveri

Optikus recommended a program to me called ontrack easy recovery. I got the pro version, the disk had been formatted, and everything worked out.

*edit* Win98 may have totally different results. I used xp.

mrblack

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Ouch - how long did the format take - if it did a long format of 15 minutes of so then the data has been wiped you then have two chances,
a ) if FDISK / STATUS reports a second partition or unused disk space
b ) contact the NSA and tell them the HDD belonged to Osama Bin Landen*

If it did a quick format or if there is a second partition then you may be able to search the hard sector by sector for data. - But the format and install will have overwritten the file table and most directories especially if you had defragged in the past, so unlikely you will ever see files - the best would be snippets of data. - and you have to know unique words that were in the documents.

BTW: if a DOS\Win9x drive was compressed beforehand - you won't even find snippets of data.

Moral of the Story - backup anything important. - Remind her that if anything else had happened to the PC would have lost it anyway.
There's approx 3% chance a HDD will die each year, though this only applies between two months and five years and if the drive comes from a good batch. I've had experiance of a bad batch and about 50% of them failed in year 3 - when you'd think they'd settled down.

quick google - http://www.snapfiles.com/features/filescavenger-803-406688.php
will only recover up to 64K files - but should detect keywords - so you'll know if data exists or not..

http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html - View and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors

I was looking at the screen as the recovery disk did its Win 98 OS restore but I thought all data was being saved coz the first message on screen was "saving data" and then it stated its format which must have lasted about 15 minutes and then the whole restore took about 2 hours. I don't think there is a partition coz the only drives I could see were the A C D & Q drives.

I will try and d/l this ontrack programm to see if it will work

thx

jessy

I’m afraid if it was a Recovery disk you used then everything is gone. It restores everything to the factory settings. It’s not a quick format so the disk was physically written too (Not just Returning blocks of memory to free space). Unfortunately I’m afraid everything is gone.

kaimera

google desktop will find files for you even after a format. check it out.

jessy

Kaimera wrote:

google desktop will find files for you even after a format. check it out.

No file recovery program can recover files after a format unless it’s a quick format, Recovery disks don’t do quick formats (because they restore to factory settings). So theres no chance of google finding the files (if it was a true format).

mrblack

oh crap another fine mess I have got myself into - these aren't the positive vibes I was hoping for. I tried last night to find the files with a free programme I downloaded called recovermyfiles but it couldn't find em so now I am thinking about buying a programme on the web to see if I can find the 3/4 word files she badly needs. That ontrack programme seems good so I am going to d/l the free trial and see it will do some magic.

As a last resort I will have the wife pray to St Jude for divine intervention.

mrblack

Nick_oliveri wrote:

Optikus recommended a program to me called ontrack easy recovery. I got the pro version, the disk had been formatted, and everything worked out.

*edit* Win98 may have totally different results. I used xp.

I went with Ontrack easyrecovery and it worked pretty well. I got back most of the word & excel files for her. They are not in the original directory order but it seems that most of them have been recovered and are usuable. My sis in law had saved hundreds of Word files instead of a few important ones which I had thought were all she needed (she meant a few directories, not files). The whole recovery took about 1 hour to d/l the program ,install it and scan the formatted drive and recover the files to a different drive. I am quite impressed this programme . Its a lifesaver! I am back on the Christmas card list now I guess .


thx

mrblack