Western Digital Ruined Me!!

stuey

I was using Western Digitals own hard drive disgnostic software to diagnose a hard drie problem. I wanted to clean the drive, so I set it up to do a zero write to the drive.

It then proceded to do a zero write to the wrong drive. Wipping 190gig of videos and 50 gigs of isos.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

has this happened to anyone? anyone know some good recovery software?

Endurance Man

It usaully allows you to choose which drive you want to format, you must of chosen the wrong drive. When im formatting a drive i unplug any others just to be safe .
The only way i think you could get that data back is to send it to a data recovery company, they arent cheap. I could be wrong.

wandererz

I could attempt a recovery. Only trouble is the sheer amount of time required - 190GB takes a loong time to recover!

stuey

i didn't select the wrong drive. I quadruple checked before doing it.

Im attempting to do a recovery at the mo, but because it was a raw zero write, i think the odds are slim

Anybody any other ideas?

WizZard

stuey wrote:

i think the odds are slim

You said it! :eek:

Endurance Man

You wont be able to recover the data yourself im affraid . There is a company in england that does this, ill try get the info, saw it in a pc format mag few weeks ago.

Vadrefjorde

Active@Undelete is quite an efficient program that usually does the job!! Takes about 3 to 4 hours to perform a deep scan on a 200Gig hard drive though. But it's guaranteed to get it back.

melekalikimaka

exact thing happened to me a few wekks back 120 gig gone... i still wake in cold sweats

stuey

even from a raw zero write?

WizZard

Vadrefjorde wrote:

Active@Undelete is quite an efficient program that usually does the job!! Takes about 3 to 4 hours to perform a deep scan on a 200Gig hard drive though. But it's guaranteed to get it back.

From a complete zero write? I doubt it.

I dabbled in drive recovery myself a few years ago. Recovering data after these type of operations is generally a no-go for a non-specialized lab/person. It's not trivial.

I know the company that Endurance Man is talking about, I think. I've contacted them about a physically-screwed (heads crashed) hard drive before and the prices were huge!! (I got my data (music & movies ) back after using a variation on the freezer trick, but that's not gonna help you...

KdjaCL

Tbh sounds like you did it yourself have used Data Lifeguard numerous times and never once did it even look at the wrong drive without 3 warnings.

If you formatted there are tonnes of tools out Easy Recovery Pro being the best (€129 it would bloody want to be) But zero writing ehh i have to ask why did you feel the need to zero write a drive? When Lifegaurd would have formatted it for clean use as a default option?


kdjac

stevenmu

I'd have thought that to recover data after a zero overwrite, you'd need to actually take apart the drive and hook it up to special equiptment, I wouldn't have thought the built in heads would be sensitive enough to read the residue left behind.

Dempsey

I think with a zero write you have lost all that data. Only CSI:Miami could recover the data.

Kali

You're lucky theres not actually any important data on the drive.. I wouldn't even bother with a recovery at all if its just mp3s and downloadable content.. it'll be a lot easier to make a few phone calls to mates to get it all back