Exactly what backup software did you use?  NTbackup?

 

If so I know of no way to repair the dat file, one reason I never use it

 

 

"message saying that the folder where the backup was kept was inaccessible"

 

Maybe a permissions issue??

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

I'd had problems with the laptop staying stable before and I had to back up a lot of files (over 12,000) which would take a while, so instead of running a backup where you compress everything into one big file I ran a basic one where you copy the files like for like (for all intensive purposes, drag and drop) in the hope that if there was a problem all that would happen was that the last file to be written would be corrupted but everythign else before it would be OK as it had been written and completed. However when I tried to restore I recieved a windows message saying that the master folder contianing all of the backed up files was "inaccessible" and the properties screen showed it as being of 0 size and contaiing 0 files.

 

There shouldn't be any kind of permissions issue as none of the files were encrypted and they were copied to/from unencrypted folders with 100% open access.

 

The best recovery software I have ever used

 

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm  NTFS or FAT, you need to select the right one for your needs

 

Do not install this software on the same drive as the data.

 

You never said where you backed up to, the less you access that drive the better before trying to recover.

Whew! That was a close one.  Yes Active@ is excellent also.

 

If you have time give this a read, this website went down for 2 weeks because of data corruption, they did not recover all of it either, might make you feel better about your incident.

 

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f11/welcome-back-head-fi-org-im-sorry-about-extended-outage-268734/

I backed up to an external backup device, and no changes have been made since the corruption occured.

 

I've since used Active@ recorvery enterprise, it worked first time, I was most impressed.

 

cheers for the recomendation.

hi

 

did you get the files?? if not tell me which windows u wer using.. If XP, and the folder u copied was a private folder, you can remove the restrictions on that folder and access files.

That's the weird thing, it wasn't a private folder at all. This was a routine backup of non-sensitive data. I left everything completely open, no encryption no permissions no nothing so that anybody could restore it without needing to know anything technical. My security was based on the fact that the backup medium was kept in a secure location.

 

The other weird thin is that while Windows could not see the contents of the corrupted folder, and it reported it as being protected in some way most of the non-windows software that I use saw it just fine (didn't find this out until after I'd paniced about loosing the data). It's almost as if it was stored in some kind of FAT that XP couldn't read but which software with a Unix base could. It's seriously strange, especially as the backup was made in XP and used XP's own internal protocals for file reading and writing because it allowed for files to be saved individually rather than en-mass (the machine wouldn't stay stable for long enough to do it all in a singe procedure, else I'd just have used Acronis or something similar).

Either way, the restore software that I mentioned above saw it first time and recovered it 100%, and I mean absolutely totally perfect.