Partition deleted, can anyone help?

Question

I was going in to re-format my XPS 700 computer. I put everything on the secondary drive on the system. I normally never have a problem doing this and windows recognizes the drive fine after a re-format so I can just take everything from that drive and put it back on the hard drive. I went in to re-format and this 'save' drive was listed as the first drive so unknown to me I accidentally deleted the partition. I froze in shock for a minute and looked at the second drive on the list, that was the one I wanted to re-format. I stopped the re-format installation and cancelled to restart the computer. Windows came up fine I went in to my login and saw that the drive with all of my life data was gone, not on the list at all. I went in to un-install the driver and did so then restarted again, it discovered the drive but I could not open it. I went in to the device manager and set a partition for all of the space, I tried to open it and it wanted me to re-format the drive. I canceled that too. Is there any way to re-set the partition that it had at one point? This is around 300gigs of data I would loose if I can not recover it. I hope there is something that I can do. As long as I did not format the drive the data should still be there right? but without a correct partition I can't open the drive? Thanks

ZBoater · Answer

Try this.  I did and it worked great.   http://www.partition-recovery.com/

Aludian · Answer

do I have to buy that software? also, can you explain what you did?

ZBoater · Answer

Aludian wrote:
do I have to buy that software? also, can you explain what you did?

Yes, you have to buy. However, considering what it does, it is worth every last penny.

I overwrote the MBR on my hard drive, which essentially wiped out my partition. I thought I had lost EVERYTHING (400GB worth, including all my backup files). In my case, this was my D drive, so I was able to run the Windows version of Active Recovery. It scanned my drive and voila! all my files were there!!! The software is not exactly user-friendly. I had recreated the partition, and in order for it to restore the partition, you have to delete the newly created one (they cant overlap). This is done through the software. The software then scans your entire hard drive and finds any deleted partitions. It will likely find more than one, and in different states (like good, bad, etc.). If you are lucky, the good one is the one you want, and you can tell the software to restore it. It recreates the partition table from the data it found during the scan, and all your files are accessible again.

If this happens on your system drive, there is a DOS version of this software you can run off a floppy or a boot CD. Instructions on how to do this are on the site.

You can download a trial version to see if it will even find your deleted partition, but the trial version is limited on its restore options. I am not sure whether there are any freeware partition recovery tools, and I am not sure I would trust my data to freeware anyway.... :smileyvery-happy:

By the way, after that incident I also bought Acronis True Image, which lets me image my drives and save the backup images anywhere (other drivers, other computers on the network, USB drives, etc.). Another $50 very well spent.

Aludian · Answer

ok, I just deleted the invalid partition. Should I do a quick scan or a super scan? I tried to go in and click "restore partitioning info" but it opens up my system drive and is looking for a file. Is there a list of partitions like you are saying? Do I need to scan my system drive or the drive that has the data I am trying to recover?

Message Edited by Aludian on 03-20-2007 06:34 AM

ZBoater · Answer

Aludian wrote:
ok, I just deleted the invalid partition. Should I do a quick scan or a super scan? I tried to go in and click "restore partitioning info" but it opens up my system drive and is looking for a file. Is there a list of partitions like you are saying? Do I need to scan my system drive or the drive that has the data I am trying to recover?

Message Edited by Aludian on 03-20-2007 06:34 AM

First, you need to read the instructions. :smileyvery-happy: This is not a user-friendly piece of software.

You need to do a Superscan on the drive you want to recover. This will scan your hard drive for a long while (mine took hours for 750GB) and at the end you will see the results on the left column. You can save these results so you don't have to redo the scan in case you have to shut down the program and come back at a later time.

The results should look like your old (deleted) drive, with your old folders and files. Once you see the results, you can right click on the top icon of the results tree (I think it was a right click, or a menu option) and choose to restore the partition.

Storage, Drives & Media

Partition deleted, can anyone help?

Was this post helpful?