Hard drive data recovery

[XideWind3r]

I was trying to make one of my flash drives bootable to reinstall windows 7 on my PC. But I accidentally ran the diskpart utility on my 1TB samsung SATA HDD the commands I ran was
------------------------------------
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs
------------------------------------
the drive contained only 1 partition. Just data, no operating system was installed. there was about 850 GB of data in it. I tried different recovery softwares but with no results. most of those tools show a bunch of useless files after "scanning" the drive. any help would be appreciated... I'm freaking out!!! :'(

 

[XideWind3r]

NOTHING was written to the hard disk after this happened. some of the softwares I used gave me options to fix or rebuild the MBR but i didnt do it. Also, i did the same thing to another 60 GB HDD to see if i could fix it. and most of the tools I used before showed me ALL the files that was in the drive before i screwed it (The HDD I was testing on). but those same tools didnt work on my 1TB HDD! The softwares i used were
Recover My Files
File Scavenger
GetDataBack NTFS

 

[XideWind3r]

My 1TB HDD contained a 150 GB encrypted archive. That wouldn't change anything would it? I mean, that wouldn't be the reason why I can recover my files from my test drive (60GB SATA) but not from my 1TB HDD?

 

[Level_1]

Try [URL="http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step"]TestDisk [/URL]and see if it can recover your whole partition.

 

[VirtualLarry]

doesn't "clean" wipe the first chunk of sectors? Like more than just the MBR, but also the start of the filesystem?

 

[XideWind3r]

Testdisk is currently running and searching for lost partitions... I'll report back with the results. But other tools used just showed me about 11 partitions that I never created. And none of those partitions contained anything even remotely valuable to me.
One more thing: I had Call Of Duty Modern Warfare installed on that drive and the entire installation folder is recoverable!!! (with correct folder structure and everything) dafuq?

VirtualLarry according to Microsoft support site, "By default, only the MBR or GPT partitioning information and any hidden sector information on MBR disks is overwritten"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Test disk is the way to go for a start.

 

[XideWind3r]

Still nothing. TestDisk didn't even locate any partitions on my disk. TestDisk said Intel partition table type was detected so I selected it as the partition table type. It couldn't be anything else could it?

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

did you look at the testdisk examples? They have one for reformatted partitions. I would go through it a couple of different ways. I haven't used the program in a while, but when I lost data on an intel raid, I chose the intel option. I'm not sure how your disk was setup, but you might choose something other than intel and see what you get.

 

[rdb4133]

One of my buddies used EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard before and it worked for him: http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm it's free so it's worth a shot! Hope that helps!

 

[XideWind3r]

After this, I took some time to learn hex editing. I gave up on recovering most of the files but the 150GB truecrypt volume is really important to me. Considering it's not fragmented, if i can find the starting point and the ending point of the file, I can use WinHex to save that block as a file and mount it right? But I don't have a backup of the header or an old backup of that volume. Is there any way to determine the starting point of the file?

 

[revamp]

Following.

 

[strep3241]

When you used File Scavenger, did you do the quick scan or long scan?

 

[Burpo]

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step

 

[inachu]

One of my buddies used EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard before and it worked for him: http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm it's free so it's worth a shot! Hope that helps!

I like it. :thumbsup:

 

[Matt1970]

I was trying to make one of my flash drives bootable to reinstall windows 7 on my PC. But I accidentally ran the diskpart utility on my 1TB samsung SATA HDD the commands I ran was
------------------------------------
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs
------------------------------------
the drive contained only 1 partition. Just data, no operating system was installed. there was about 850 GB of data in it. I tried different recovery softwares but with no results. most of those tools show a bunch of useless files after "scanning" the drive. any help would be appreciated... I'm freaking out!!! :'(

How long did the format take?

 

[TheELF]

Also minitools partition recovery and active@partition recovery.
As much as I like opensource software these professional,but free, programs are much better at finding lost partitions.
And as matt pointed out, if formatting took any time at all and wasn't quick format you pretty much lost the files that got formatted.


Search on google for the header of the encryption program you used,or create a new encrypted file and have a look at that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

And as matt pointed out, if formatting took any time at all and wasn't quick format you pretty much lost the files that got formatted.

I noticed the format command didn't specify "quick". If you did a full format, I'm afraid that your files may be lost.

 

[John Connor]

One of my buddies used EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard before and it worked for him: http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm it's free so it's worth a shot! Hope that helps!

This is the program I used to recover a formatted partition on my computer. It did work for me. I wouldn't have two drives plugged in at the same time when you recover though.

Just for future reference if you want to make a USB stick bootable with Windows check out WinToFlash. http://wintoflash.com/home/en/

 

[master_shake_]

Why doesn't anyone have a backup?

 

[John Connor]

I have a 1 TB external drive just for clones. All of my drives that I have are less than 1 TB believe it or not so it works fine.

I use AOMEI Backuper.

 

[master_shake_]

I use whs 2011 with 32tbs of droves in a raid 6 for backups.

As I have learned from this thread you cannot be too careful.

 

[John Connor]

What if malware propagates through the RAID? Or is the RAID just a back up which would be insane! LOL