Need Major Harddrive Help.

Ok... Where to start...

I was trying to do a clean vista install with my recovery disks. But unlike regular vista disks, the HP recovery disks dont let you choose a certaian harddrive/partition. So, it started reformatting the wrong one. It was still on 0%, so, i quickly took out disk and turned it off. Figuring it would be ok. since it didnt start yet. Well, no. I cant get into it. I dont need to boot into it, i have another HDD for that, so, im not worried about that part. But, i need to get all my stuff off of it! Although, it cant be accesed. It needs to be reformatted before use, windows says. And apparently its format is "RAW".

Plus, before this, it was all on one partition. Now, even the RAW partition is only 32GB. The rest is Unalocated.

Ive heard there are ways of getting into it, and being able to get my data out of it. Can anyone help me with this?

Thanks very much in advance.

 

You can try getting your files back by running the Ubuntu live cd.
I am not 100% sure of its name, but I have heard about it.

the data should be recoverable, their is specialty software to get it back, but it can be very expensive.

K-TRON

 

Ok, and what do I do with the live CD? Install Ubuntu? And that will be able to get the data? But windows wont?

What are some of these software's names?

 

Do not install anything onto the HDD, as that will overwrite files that you may want to recover Just boot from the live-cd it will boot up like a linux OS just straight from the CD!

 

ok, but then, what do I do in Linux?

 

If you have a portable sata hard drive enclosure I would stick the hard drive in it and see if you can access the files.

My best guess

 

If you run a Linux live CD, you don't install anything (unless you want to), but you'll have an operating system running that willl let you move copy etc any of the files on your disk. It'll look na bit different to Windows, but File Manager/Windows Explorer are very similar to use.

 

Ok, ill try.

But will it be able to access it? Windows cant without reformatting... Will Linux need to as well?

Ok, well, ill try it anyway.


@Erwallie: Its in my 2nd HDD bay, so, theres no difference AFAIK.

 

Have a look at DFSee ( www.dfsee.com). There is a reasonable chance that this can help you recover the partition table and then get the data back. The author will help registered users do this (gets you to run a script, send him the results and he sends back another script).

If the partition table cannot be recovered, it can do low level searches of the drive and recover files that way.

As someone has suggested, if you can mount the drive in another machine (either as a second drive or in an external case), this will make things a lot easier and faster.

David

 

It depends on just how far your reformat got. Linux sometimes works when Windows doesn't and it's very easy to run Linux live.

If it doesn't, all or most of your data should be safe, but you'll have to run some partition recovery software. Something like this: http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/ I've never had to use it so don't know how good it is.

 

I would suggest installing Windows then Easy Recovery Pro on your other HDD and then either put the one with the data you want to recover in a 2nd bay or external enclosure. I have had great success with recovering data with that program.