Ext HD Zero'd using DSL Linux - Recovery?

cianclarke

Last night I was playing with Damn Small Linux, very impressed. Running it live, and I tried to install it to my USB key, which I was informed was SDA or SDA1. Of course I forgot that my USB hard drive was also plugged in, and also shows up under SDA - so it seems when it was trying to install to what I thought was a USB key (SDA) it actually went and zero'd my external hard drive instead.

What it did and did not do I don't know, all I can tell is that it's a 250gb hard drive and what it did was done in a matter of mere seconds, less than four maybe. I'm finding it hard to believe all the data on a 250gb hard drive was erased in seconds.

What I'm wondering is can I recover this data any way, is there any software worth using?
When I plug the USB hard drive into windows now it shows up as 0 bytes and tells me it's unformatted. It shows up in drive management, but if I try to explore it likewise tells me to format. Any ideas?

All my music, several thousand photos and all my videos are on this hard drive - and although everything except the video and some music is backed up at home, I'd rather recover it as I won't be home for another two weeks.

Thanks for any help.

Khannie

you should be able to recover the data alright...I'll leave it to others to suggest the best tools.

cianclarke

Anybody?

kdouglas

photorec is quite good: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

the_syco

GetDataBack is one tool I've used.

Also, Active@ Recovery I've found to be very good. Esp at getting my documents back.

3 or 4 seconds? Not even a quick format. I'd almost say that it just gave it a new file system (don't know if thats possible), so I'd say you shít is still there. I'd recommend Active@ Recovery myself.

Snowbat

If only the partition table has been wiped, you could try fixdisktable, gpart, and rescuept

If not in DSL, these programs are available in S.M.A.R.T. Linux - a 'bootable floppy' distro
http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/

cianclarke

Right none of these tools have worked, just driven me up the wall. Four hours a piece for getdataback and active@ recovery, and came up with nothing.
Photorecover found the files, started backinig them up, but with file names then a number all in the one folder, which is pretty useless to me - all I need is to get the thing working again.
SMART - I haven't got a floppy drive, the web page made no sense, and at present I'm in a hating linux mode.
THanks for the help none the less - by any chance does anybody have any other suggestions?

cianclarke

Got it working again using testdisk (in the same package as photorecover) - worked fine, it was just the partition table ****ed up.