I think Rescue & Recovery just wiped my ext HD - ouch!

[ozqadir]

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..

[Mackmirillo]

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. :)

[Mackmirillo]

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.

[w0qj]

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

[ozqadir]

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!