Thinkpads Forum

I should have known better..and I think my data is well & truly gone but if anyone can help...!

I was doing my regular R&R backup to my Lacie ext Hd when I noticed that memory space had mysteriously disappeared. I found that R&R was not-overwriting previous backup files...so after unsuccessfully trying to delete individual files I went to 'Create Recovery Media'....(I know what you're thinking! First mistake, right?).

Find my HD and unchecked 'Do not destroy exisitng data' (BIG mistake!). I thought it only refered to existing BACKUPS!

Result: it renamed my extHD and wiped everything! DOH!

Is there any way back?

Help me, OBI-ONE-KENOBEE..

You can get a free recovery utility from www.download,com . If the data has been overwritten, though, I'm pretty sure it's gone. I don't know if it is practical to recover the data even for a billion $.... I'm just setting an arbitrary price point rather than "cost is no object". I guess it depends on the finer details of hard drive operation. I'm assuming you mean you've got a ext2 partition you're calling your exthd, even though it's not actually a seperate hard drive.....Shame shame. :)

I read your post again and I suppose you might be talking about an external hd? If the data has not been overwritten, which would have taken a few hours really, you can get some free utilities to recover nfts too, I think. If not, pm me and I will give you the serial key to "recoverer2k" or something by bitmart (or somethnig). They ripped me off, so I have no misgivings about letting someone else use what I paid for but couldn't. The program is extremely slow and occupies a computer the whole time. Expect to take about a week for a 40 gb hard drive. I needed something that would run on wn98 at the time, and none of the free utilities would.

Also depends if the data on your external hard drive had been defragmented...

It is VERY difficult (and in practice almost impossible--unless you have the budget and time of DoD) to recover fragmented data files...

One more reason to keep your HDD regularly defragmented...


(Yeah, I also formatted my external HDD with RnR 18 mths ago and posted a warning on this forum, guess you missed this...)


BTW, I have a good program if you want to recover fragmented picture files visually... try the "Advanced" version of PhotoRescue:
(it's very good--i've recovered fragemented photos this way...)

www.datarescue.com/photorescue/download_pc.htm

Thx for the feedback, guys. I didn't realise it was better to look for the file system rather than individual files.

Here's the story so far: I'm using the GetDataBack NTFS s/w and it's 'found' the original files on the extHD! I'll try to recover the files to a network drive & then i'll know what's-what.

Apart from this 'minor' problem - I'm glad I discovered this forum!
Have been a TP fan for years!