Recovering files from a deleted partition

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:15 pm

I wasn't paying enough attention when I wiped out a partition on my 2nd HDD yesterday and deleted the wrong one (the one with over 1TB of data on it) like an ass.

Anybody here used any of the partition/file recovery programs in the past? If so, which one, and how well did it work?

I'm trying one called EASEUS Data Recovery and it seems easy enough, although it's going to take 7 hours to scan that HDD and then who knows how long to recover anything.

darthroush · Post by **darthroush** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:20 pm

I know someone who used Data Rescue 3 on his HDD. Took days to recover 100GB, but it recovered most of the files.

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:25 pm

Days for 100 GB??? Holy shit, and here I'm whining because of 7 hours!

darthroush · Post by **darthroush** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 5:07 pm

Yup, lol.
Here are his two posts about it:

Approx 2886 hours to go....hmm that's uhm...that's 120 days??? That's what Data Rescue 3 says on how long it will take to restore the 95.7GB of video data inaccessible on my hard drive....24 hours passed so far and 847.9MB recovered.

18.7GB restored..time
remaining is between 165 hrs and 1182 hrs, lol.

5 days after the second post, he said it finished; 7 days from the first post. Best of luck...

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 5:09 pm

Fuck I hope it doesn't take that long. If it's still working tomorrow, I think I'll be formatting the drive and redownloading everything, haha.

darthroush · Post by **darthroush** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 5:17 pm

7 days was only for 100GB. D/L would be wayyyy faster!

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 5:21 pm

70 days would be a little too long to recover all of my 1TB of files, lol. Hopefully this won't take that long.

jT · Post by jT » Sun Jan 30, 2011 7:46 pm

did you format the drive or actually delete the partition?

if it's actually the partition you should be trying EASEUS Partition Recovery

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 7:48 pm

I deleted the partition. Thank God I didn't click reformat before I noticed what I did.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to recover the partition or just get the files, I figured if i can get all (or at least most) of the files I'd be good enough since I'm changing the file system of most of them anyways.

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:35 pm

Well the 7 hour evaluation period has ended and I'm on to the 3 hour transfer period. That will move about half of my stuff over. All of my ebooks, music and movies. From there I'll move as much of that as I can onto my external and laptop drives and move over the TV folder.

Sooo... at this point it's looking like this won't be done until tomorrow at the earliest. Still considerably better than a week though, haha.

jT · Post by jT » Mon Jan 31, 2011 3:34 am

if you deleted the partition then the partition recovery program should just essentially reset the partition to being valid, so all your data would of been restored ... much quicker and easier than file recovery

Jenni · Post by **Jenni** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:30 am

i could send you get data back (but it is for windows xp)
just tell me what data system (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) for the right version and pm me your mail address.
it is a hmmmm complete version w/o limitations.

it takes that long because it checks the whole hard disc cluster for cluster one by one - and that takes many many time.
but better that than loosing all data!

darthroush · Post by **darthroush** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:08 am

jT wrote:if you deleted the partition then the partition recovery program should just essentially reset the partition to being valid, so all your data would of been restored ... much quicker and easier than file recovery

That's nice indeed.

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:12 am

jT wrote:if you deleted the partition then the partition recovery program should just essentially reset the partition to being valid, so all your data would of been restored ... much quicker and easier than file recovery

It would seem that way, but the programs I tested originally didn’t seem to find any sort of partition at all so I went with file recovery. About half of the files were recovered yesterday and they’re all in their original file folders and everything so it should make my job really easy tonight. Today while I’m at work I’m recovering almost all of the rest of them except for Sons of Anarchy, which won’t take more than an hour or two (max) to recover. The only issue is that I have to keep transferring stuff to my 100 GB internal and putting it on the laptop because I don’t have enough room on my primary HDD in the desktop, haha.

Jenni, thanks the copy I’m using (EASEUS) is the same “complete” version I imagine you’d send, so my filing needs are taken care of. I appreciate the offer though!

Jenni · Post by **Jenni** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:17 am

De rien, avec plaisir!

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:59 pm

...and a die die die my darlin to you too, my friend!

Jenni · Post by **Jenni** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:53 pm

btw - today i connected my external hd were i parked 120GB movies temporary - and somehow the AC plug was loose and windows thought it is a nice idea to kill the MBR. Now the movies are disappeared.
I hope the recovery programm will also work for me.

(Father in law recently had a dead external HD - and not even expensive professional rescue could save the data. Useless to say that he had no backups for his important data...)

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:53 pm

Ouch... good luck!

Jenni · Post by **Jenni** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:28 pm

meeh - my program was for xp.
but i found one for windows 7.
scanning the hd now.
7 hours left (for THIS step)...

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:31 pm

I probably should have paid more attention before formatting the drive... but it looks like my music collection is royally fucked. 40+ gigs and mostly lost. I just realized that well over half of the songs are down to 30 seconds or less, so I'll probably end up dumping them and starting over.

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:15 am

After more research it seems like recovering these files was a waste of my time.

The music files were all screwed up and most were no more than 30 seconds long, so I deleted them.

The TV episodes I previously had (400 GB worth) won't play anymore, so I'll have to redownload them.

The movies I previously had (350ish GB) won't play anymore, so I'll have to redownload them.

I have to double check that my players are up to date and such before I make a final assessment, but it seems like a waste of time right now.

The good part of all this is that I may have a mostly complete music backup on my laptop drive still, so I won't have to redo my entire library. I probably still will, but I don't "have" to.

Plus, I at least have file names of all of my movies, and a folder list of TV shows so I know what to redownload. So while it'll probably take me over 7 months to get all of these files again, I'll at least be able to get them. (7 months because Comcast has a 250 GB limit on their "umlimited" internet plan)

LowNSlow · Post by **LowNSlow** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:29 am

That sucks man

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:32 am

Agreed, but at least I have a list of what files I need to get.

I'm also talking to Josh about possibly sending a drive to him so he can download all of my files for me. It'll take a couple weeks, but it's a lot easier than 7 months since he's on a true unlimited plan.

Danteneon · Post by **Danteneon** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:43 am

Uggg. I can't imagine how crappy it is to lose that much data. I had a drive that was starting to die, but I got an external drive to back them up before it died completely. Sorry to hear about your loss

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:46 am

Thanks John. I just figured out that it'd take me 6-8 days to redownload at my normal speeds if I didn't have a download cap. talk about shitty

BlackRoseRacing · Post by **BlackRoseRacing** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:54 am

Danteneon wrote:Uggg. I can't imagine how crappy it is to lose that much data. I had a drive that was starting to die, but I got an external drive to back them up before it died completely. Sorry to hear about your loss

since my last harddrive failure I carry a backup drive now, but I'm always worried that the backup is going to fail too...

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:57 am

I’ve had a plan for a while now to get a 2TB external as my backup drive, but nobody got me one even though it was listed as priority #1 on my Christmas list haha. So once the car is paid off (soon… sooo soon!) I’ll have spare cash and the first thing I’m buying is an external so I can run backups.

Jenni · Post by **Jenni** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:59 pm

TheRandom1 wrote:After more research it seems like recovering these files was a waste of my time.
brary. I probably still will, but I don't "have" to.

Plus, I at least have file names of all of my movies, and a folder list of TV shows so I know what to redownload. So while it'll probably take me over 7 months to get all of these files again, I'll at least be able to get them. (7 months because Comcast has a 250 GB limit on their "umlimited" internet plan)

It took me <12h for my 120GB and i have ALL of my data back.
(HD was in USB-case. But that makes no difference.)

could it be that you took the wrong programm?

I can definitely advise getdataback.
Like i said - i have a version w/o limitations!!!

Just let me know if you wanna try it again.

Oh - take care to select the right data system, fat or ntfs!!!

TheRandom1 · Post by **TheRandom1** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:03 pm

The drive has already been reformatted so I doubt it'd work. I'm not too worried about it really, I will just download new stuff and be done with it.

Thanks tho!

Jenni · Post by **Jenni** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:27 pm

i even found some data from the second last formatting.
like you should know formatting does not delete the date - it only deletes the index.
HD crash destroys often the master boot record and you can imagine it is like you would have a big filing cabinet - and somehow all the stickers from the drawers get lost: don't you think that all the files are still inside? you are just not possible to find them cause you don't know wish drawer you have to pull.
And formatting means: Janitor changed the locks and you cannot open it anymore with your keys. But your files are still inside until they are replaced by new files...

And a recovery programm just ignors the missing index and that, takes all the files one by one and checks them.
And so you get your index and data back.