Lost important files, HELP!!

Raccoon1400 · 2009-01-16 03:00:03

Here's the story:
My friend brought his computer to my house and we did some repairs. We had to reinstall windows, so we backed up his files onto my external drive, and deleted them when we were done. His computer has a master and slave drive. We switched the master hard drive with a different one, and took the old master and put it in a different machine. He takes the tower home, and while setting it up, trips over it and now the slave drive ticks and fails to work. For some reason, after this he reinstalled windows on the master drive, erasing backups that I had coppied to it of some of the files. The old master drive also had these files at one point. This hard drive was formated from ntfs to ext3 and had ubuntu installed on it. Most of the files have been recovered from the external hard drive using this http://www.majorgeeks.com/Restoration_d4474.html resoration program. There are still some important files that are missing, and do not appear in the restoration program.

Here's all the drives that had this data:
My external ntfs: had most files recovered from it, but these ones don't appear
new master: windows reinstalled on it, and lots of files coppied onto it
old master: formatted to ext3, ubuntu installed
slave: physically damaged, broken, clicks and doesn't work

Is it possible to recover the data from any of these drives, I'm willing to do what it takes to help my friend.

fukawi2 · 2009-01-16 03:28:26

If you've run recovery over the drives already and they've recovered some files, I'd be guessing anything no recovered isn't likely to be recovered.

Since all the working drives have since had significant amounts of data written over the data you want to recover, I'd be guessing it's well and truly gone.

Short of sending the damaged drive to recovery specialists who can physically rebuild / repair the broken parts within the drive, I'd say those files are gone forever

Even sending it to the professionals is no gurantee -- if the platter itself has been scratched/damaged, then there's nothing anyone can do.

Ranguvar · 2009-01-16 03:33:25

TestDisc and PhotoRec (misleading name) are available on SystemRescueCd. Another utility I know works well for NTFS is Runtime Software's GetDataBack (ignore the shareware name, it's actually decent, but does cost money).

And the far-and-away best tool I have used for recovering drives that are _really_ messed up is SpinRite (also commercial). I also know of two open source tools that can be run in Linux that are alternatives to SpinRite (and are included on the ever-awesome SystemRescueCd): ddrescue and dd_rescue. Yes, they are two different tools. I haven't ever used them, but you can try.

Good luck to you and your friend! I've been in your situation before, and I don't think I've ever wanted to tear my hair out more because of a computer. I really hope you meet at least some success. Worst case scenario, I know there are companies that can work magic on hard drives that have been through far worse (fire damage, smashing with a hammer, etc.), if there is a lot of valuable data on the drives you have that option - for a stiff price, of course.

Last edited by Ranguvar (2009-01-16 03:35:44)

Raccoon1400 · 2009-01-16 11:56:27

fukawi2 wrote:

If you've run recovery over the drives already and they've recovered some files, I'd be guessing anything no recovered isn't likely to be recovered.
Since all the working drives have since had significant amounts of data written over the data you want to recover, I'd be guessing it's well and truly gone.
Short of sending the damaged drive to recovery specialists who can physically rebuild / repair the broken parts within the drive, I'd say those files are gone forever
Even sending it to the professionals is no gurantee -- if the platter itself has been scratched/damaged, then there's nothing anyone can do.

The hard drive that is now ext3 should not have had the data written over yet. It used to have XP on it, so it should just be the XP files written over, hopefully. Can I still recover data from when the partitoin was ntfs now that it is ext3?
The recovery tool has only gone over my external drive.

I'll try system rescue CD.

Last edited by Raccoon1400 (2009-01-16 12:09:51)

fukawi2 · 2009-01-17 07:58:23

Raccoon1400 wrote:

The hard drive that is now ext3 should not have had the data written over yet. It used to have XP on it, so it should just be the XP files written over, hopefully. Can I still recover data from when the partitoin was ntfs now that it is ext3?

I didn't realize that -- it's possible. System Rescue CD will be a good place to check and see, although being labelled as ext3 might confuse it unless you can find a way to force it to scan it as NTFS...

Raccoon1400 · 2009-01-17 15:41:29

fukawi2 wrote:

Raccoon1400 wrote:
The hard drive that is now ext3 should not have had the data written over yet. It used to have XP on it, so it should just be the XP files written over, hopefully. Can I still recover data from when the partitoin was ntfs now that it is ext3?
I didn't realize that -- it's possible. System Rescue CD will be a good place to check and see, although being labelled as ext3 might confuse it unless you can find a way to force it to scan it as NTFS...

I could always format it back to ntfs and then scan?

Raccoon1400 · 2009-01-18 03:09:59

Using photorec on the external drive, 11 3/4 hours and counting.

fukawi2 · 2009-01-18 04:46:10

Raccoon1400 wrote:

I could always format it back to ntfs and then scan?

A *quick* format might do it, but a "full" (aka normal) format will wipe everything. It's hard to tell. If you take a dd of the drive, and then try recovery on the image, at least you're not risking the actual data on the drive, just the image (which can be easily re-created from the drive again)

dd if=/dev/sdXY of=/hdd-recovery.dd bs=10240

Replace sdXY with the partition (eg, sdb1 or whatever)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-16 03:00:03

Lost important files, HELP!!

#2 2009-01-16 03:28:26

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

#3 2009-01-16 03:33:25

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

#4 2009-01-16 11:56:27

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

#5 2009-01-17 07:58:23

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

#6 2009-01-17 15:41:29

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

#7 2009-01-18 03:09:59

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

#8 2009-01-18 04:46:10

Re: Lost important files, HELP!!

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