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Thread: Data Recovery

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    Senior Member gavpk's Avatar
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    Default Data Recovery

    Hi,
    I have a problem that i hope someone here can help with,
    i have a 2.5 inch sata HDD that had 3 partitions on it , windows
    and two data partitions, i copied the data i needed, removed
    the partitions then installed windows from scratch,
    i have now relised that there was data that i missed, so does
    anyone know if there is any software that could restore those 2
    data partitions, considering the whole drive has been formatted?

    cheers



Look Here ->
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    Senior Member z80's Avatar
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    there is no prospect for recovery.

    This is because once you overwrite the partition with a windows install it replaces partition boundaries etc.

    it's definitely all gone to god.

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    Senior Member gavpk's Avatar
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    i was afraid of that.....Damn

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    Default Data Recovery

    Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media formats such as hard disk drives, storage tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID, and other electronics. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system.
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    Last edited by ssrattus; 03-10-08 at 06:01 PM.

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    Senior Member BCNZ's Avatar
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    I wouldn't write that drive off just yet...

    I have successfully recovered data thought to be lost on drives that have been multiple formatted and had Windows re-installed on them.

    Get yourself a copy of "GetDataBack" and run it on the drive. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
    I use this program almost exclusively - and what it won't recover really IS lost.

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    I'll second the vote on getdataback. very good program.

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    Yep Ill give a vote for get data back, it has worked miracles for us at work.

    Give a program called MiniPE a go, it has get data back as part of its package and make sure you back the data up to another hdd, not the same hdd you are trying to recover from as it makes a big mess.

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    GetDataBack
    Don't know how long this will last so get it quick

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    I am NOT the Messiah!
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    When you repartitioned and reloaded windows it perhaps simply loaded the OS files back over the area they were in the first place.

    Thus barring extra material like service patches or other software you may have loaded the data from the old system should still be there. What you have lost is the file names and the index to their location.

    I would try Ontrack easy recovery professional and use the raw recovery option. That will scan the disk for files and these that can be recovered will be listed and you can then copy them off to a separate drive. Unfortunately the file names will be lost so the result will be grouped as file types and numbered i.e. file01.mp3, file02.mp3, file01.doc, file02.doc and so forth.

    I just had to do a recovery where the guy did exactly what you did and was able to recover 99% of his my document directory including email and lot of other stuff.

    If you can’t find a copy of the program I will up it to rapid share or something if you like.

    The golden rule is writing nothing to the drive you are attempting to recover. Write any recovered items to a separate drive.

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    Junior Member mel421's Avatar
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    I have had a lot of success with getbdataback and r-studio for situations like this. You will be able to recover from almost all sectors that dont have the operating system written over the top.
    I totally agree with SystemRat's comment - you must recover to another physical drive.

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    I agree with SystemRat.
    Ontrack easy recovery professional is the way forward.
    I have used it very effectively to recover data from an hard drive.
    DO NOT write anything to the drive until after you have done the recovery process, otherwise you risk over-writing the data which you wish to recover.

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    Senior Member gavpk's Avatar
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    Thanks everyone,
    i ended up using Active partition recovery and it worked a treat, i was
    able to recover the data i needed, as i know the history of this HDD from
    new i could see that it would let me recover most partitions (some were in bad shape) amazing stuff though!

    Yeah, getdataback was my next choice.

    @ systemrat, yes i made a raw dump of the partition to an other physical drive, then extracted the data from the dump.

    much appreciated everyone, thanks

    cheers

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    It’s amazing what you can get back from a drive. I had one a few months ago where the machine had been stolen. It had had the serial number and asset tag removed and the drive had been wiped and reloaded then when the gig was up and it was (had to be) returned it was wiped again and clean loaded prior to its return to try and cover up.

    Using some forensic software I was able to bit copy the drive and search the image. Lots and lots of stuff on it to prove its original identity and owners.

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    Senior Member gavpk's Avatar
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    so is there a way to wipe a drive so nothing can ever be recovered?
    i might try and zero fill a spare HDD and run some recovery software on it
    just for the fun of it

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    Yes there are a number of secure wipe programs which writes 1’s and 0’s to the entire disk surface a few times. For practical purposes that would stop a recovery via normal means.

    A quick Google found this which seems to be free. Try the DOD wipe.



    Some places don’t even trust that and manually smash the disk and then burn it to be sure.

    It’s a problem as a place I know of wanted to donate a lot of old computer gear but each system had a HD which needed to be securely wiped. Various programs where tried booted from floppy or USB but each needed over 40 minutes to do its thing. In the end the drives where removed and the systems became landfill.

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    Senior Member BCNZ's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SystemRat View Post

    Some places don’t even trust that and manually smash the disk and then burn it to be sure.
    Even that doesn't always work. Electron microscopy can examine a toasted and deformed platter and using specialist techniques, the magnetic flux can be inspected and data recovered.


    In the end the drives were removed and the systems became landfill.
    That's a good start. If you can't destroy the drive, put it somewhere that's really really hard to get to. Dropping it in the ocean has a similar effect.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gavpk View Post
    so is there a way to wipe a drive so nothing can ever be recovered?
    i might try and zero fill a spare HDD and run some recovery software on it
    just for the fun of it
    Secure clean by white canyon

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    Quote Originally Posted by Studio1 View Post
    Even that doesn't always work. Electron microscopy can examine a toasted and deformed platter and using specialist techniques, the magnetic flux can be inspected and data recovered.



    That's a good start. If you can't destroy the drive, put it somewhere that's really really hard to get to. Dropping it in the ocean has a similar effect.
    The systems became land fill but the drives are all sitting in crates locked away because no one has time to deal with them. Most are small IDE’s so not much value.

    I can remember reading a report from IBM or the NSA from memory re recovering data off a trashed drive. Other than the cost of entry for the equipment it would have to be something really big to make it worth the enormous effort.

    I was told of a government system that had an array of drives that the data was striped across the drives in such a way as to mean only one bit of a byte of data was written to each drive thus making it very hard for anyone to retrieve. Now days I guess it would simply be encrypted etc.

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    I have an external 2.5 drive for my laptop. I pluged it in today and got an error "data can not be written to the disc" this happend after a system crash from too many things runing and a frozen pc.... forceful crash.

    Im not sure i unplgged the drive before the crash or not but any how now it wont show on the my computer list. Im using xp and it wont even show, on vista it finds the disc drive but wont open it.

    Im sure ive messed up the indexing on it and it could be totalled and all data might be losted.

    Cant even get to see the drive to use getdataback in which i have used many times before myself. I need some software that by passes the crap and model, etc of the dirve and looks for the files to retrieve please.

    Anyone have any ideas on the software name to search for?

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    I think that this should have been started in a new thread rather than resurrect an old one, however ...

    Have you tried to access the drive on another PC?

    This will indicate whether it is a drive problem or whether your system simply will not read it for some reason. (You did say you had a system crash).

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