Re: One of the 'Oh damn' moments

[John Benfield <john.benfield@xxxxxxxxx>]

Just thought I'd let people know how I got on with recovering my data
from a formated disk.

I tried TestDisk but without much success as it appears to only
understand a smallish number of file types. So I was able to my mp3's
but all of the file names where mucked up (as only about 50% of them
are fully tagged, renaming the didn't work too well), I wasn't able to
recover my raw photos (jpg okay) and no video files.

I ended up trying "Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery" and
"GetDataBack for NTFS" which are both commercial products. Both
did
the job of correctly listing all of the files with the directory
structures (TestDisk only lists files). I ended up purchasing Windows
Data Recovery and whilst its not so quick (as I am recovering from a
1tb USB drive) it does appear to have been completely successful.

JB

2009/10/15 David Guest <david.guest@xxxxxxx>:
> John,
>
>
>
> I did something similar recently (although the disk had corrupt
sectors
> as well). One of the best tools I found was TestDisk
>
> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
>
> got back most if not all of the data.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of John Benfield
> Sent: 15 October 2009 08:54
> To: UKHA
> Subject: [ukha_d] One of the 'Oh damn' moments
>
>
>
>
>
> Looking for some help here as I had one of the 'oh damn' moments last
> night. I paraphrase what I actually said for the more sensitive of you
> out there.
>
> Last night I rebuild my WHS server, knowing full well that the disk
> would be formatted and all data would be lost - you know where this is
> going don't you ....
>
> Anyway, I copied all of my important data off to a external 1tb USB
> drive. Unfortunately when I then rebuilt my WHS I left the drive
> plugged into the USB slot, and even though the drive was not listed in
> the partition list as one that would get format - guess what happened.
> Me not at all happy (okay I should have pulled the drive before start
> the rebuild).
>
> I now have an both internal and external disks with a very basic WHS
> file system layout and no bloody files. I am hoping that only the
> basic header information on the file systems has been overwritten and
> the real data is still on the disk.
>
> Does anyone have any recommendations of software that might be able to
> trawl through the disks and see what It can recover. I done a quick
> Google on the subjet and there appear to be many options, so looking
> for some more person recommendations.
>
> JB
>


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