AAAHHHGGHH!! Deleted wrong partition, everything gone, HELP!

Zascar

I can't believe what I've just done. I was reinstalling my computer, I had a dual boot of Win 7 and XP - both on their own partitions on one hard drive. INside my pc I have two other hard drives, one is "D: MyDocs" which has ALL my personal files, music, photos, movies etc. When installing windows again I wanted to delete the two partitions of XP and 7 and just install plain xp again. But for some reason the only two that showed were the C of the OS (7?) and D - my documents.

So I installed XP again, and now D is showing up but when I click on it, it asks do I want to format it again. So, I assume that when it deleted the partition, is just disconnected the link to all the data, and I HOPE that there are some programs that can get it back for me.

I would really appreciate if someone could recommend a program that can restore this for me - as if not I've lost years worth of really precious data.

Any and all advise appreciated
Thanks

Blazer

look for a program called CIA unerase....fantastic at getting deleted files back..
Whatever you do...do not install anything onto that drive..

ArtyM

Check this link, seems to be a similar situation - seems it was solved with test disk.
Good luck
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/the-disk-in-drive-d-is-not-formatted/177639.html

Also http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html could hep recover partition, though I would recommend making a copy of the partition to an ext drive (if it allows) before performing any repair actions on it, just to cover yourself

Zascar

Thanks guys

Ok wow I just found this program: http://findandmount.com

Ran it, took a few minutes and allowed me to mount the drive to a new letter - all my files are there perfectly! Highly recommended!!!

Thing is, if I try to change or delete any file, it says the drive is "Write Protected" and that I need to remove the write protection before I can edit the file.

Anyone know how I can do this?

marco_polo

It seem it findandmount will only mount partitions in 'read only' mode, so it will allow you to copy data off the partition, not restore it properly.

A tool that will supports full partition recovery would be a better option. Either way before doing anything else I would copy everything all data onto another disk first (using findandmount since you have it working already).

Then use something like MiniTool as linked ArtyM or EASEUS to restore the partition so that windows will be able see it again.

ArtyM

Can you copy them out to another location i.e. your C drive or external drive.? I am not sure if you are going to be able to change/edit the files while on the mounted drive (I could be wrong though) as surely this is only a temporary drive.
Once you copy them out you may be able to edit them straight away - you might have to right click>properties>untick read ony atrib> apply.
Sometimes when you copy files from a cd they have readonly until you change it, but you cannot change it on the cd itself.
Try it anyway and post back with progress
Good luck

Edit: Posted this before I saw marco_polo's better reply.

Zascar

Thanks Guys. Ok I used Easus and it found all the data ok. Thing is that it want to recover it to a new drive. I was hoping it could just ‘fix the broken connections’ and restore the drive as it was. Right now it wants to copy all the data to a new drive. I could have done that with Find & Mount – although the data copy rate was horribly slow.

I don’t have any other external drives big enough but i think I’m just going to buy a new one anyway, the 750gb I’m restoring is nearly full anyway.
Anyone know where I can get a 1-2tb drive at a decent price in Dublin, or who offers really quick delivery?
Thanks

bonzodog2

Maplin have a 2TB Seagate external drive for eur109.99 now.

Zascar

Thanks, looking for an Internal preferably - mapline don't have an Irish site, any way to check the Irish prices in their store for Internal sata drives?

Zascar

Guys I ran the Easeus data recovery wisard, which took about 4 hours, this is the screen it presented me with after letting me select which files I want to recover:

I assume this wants me to select a new drive to which it will copy the files to. I'm currently trying to borrow an exteranal drive, however, someone else told me that another took should just be able to repair the drive without me having to copy all the data over and back. What I'm told is that when I deleted the partition, all it does is delete the Master Boot Record - and that some tool should be able to read the drive and rebuild the MBR.

Anyone know if this is the case and how its done?
Thanks again for all your help

BostonB

750GB's of really precious data and no backup.

Whatever else you buy. Buy one external to hold this, that you backup once a month to, then put it away somewhere secure.

marco_polo

Did you run the data recovery rather than the partition recovery, because that should be able to rebuild the partition table?

http://www.partition-tool.com/partition-recovery-wizard/recover-lost-partition.htm

Either way while there not much chance of anything going wrong during this operation (and in truth the data would probaly still be recoverable anyway), because the data is important and is the sole surviving copy I would definately use the data recovery wizzard to get a full copy onto a new backup drive drive before doing this.