Disc recovery utility needed

**Beaver** · 09-19-2008, 04:32 PM

Anyone know of a good one? Free would be nice but....

I thought I had 2 drives so I made sure all my photos were on the D: then reinstalled windoze on C:. Well I'll be fucked if D: didn't disappear. I opened the case and fuck there is only one drive. So apparently D: was a partition and all my photos went for a shit.

Help? 10 years of photos of my kids, life... took a big steaming dump.

**eldereldo** · 09-19-2008, 04:55 PM

You may just have to reset the second partition up for Windows, unless you did an auto install and let windows use the whole drive, not preserving partitions

To open Computer Management, click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management. Select Disk Management

Should show if you have more than one partition, if not, oops, if so, you may just need to assign a drive letter to it to access.

**AsheanMT** · 09-19-2008, 05:17 PM

Epic fail. +++Vibes

**RShea** · 09-20-2008, 03:02 AM

If Windows Storage management is only showing 1 big partition now (like mentioned above) , then for best recovery options- Quit using the computer.... Do not install any thing else or you could risk overwriting the old partition and data that was on it. If you have access to another computer use it for the task - either pull the hard drive and stick it in a USB enclosure or inside the other system if there is room.

First thing to do is run something like Ontrack Recovery software (trial version only- this is an expensive paid package but it will report the likelihood of success), Getdataback (probably the NTFS version but not sure) is also a paid package but much cheaper than Ontrack.

Free downloads I'd start with PC Inspector File Recovery- but for those that are not super experienced it is harder to use than Getdataback. There are some Boot CD's also ot there that may help- you download (again on another system) and burn to a CDR- http://www.easeus.com/winpe-for-data-recovery.htm explains a pretty technical one that takes some time- Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is another.

Or there are some Linux versions that can read Windows partitions- Knoppix is one- and others are discussed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LiveDistros

If this is all too technical then you maybe better off getting a tech to inspect and attempt to recover the photos, or spend some money with a data recovery service like Ontrack (good but pricey)

**haydukelives** · 09-20-2008, 09:08 AM

i had a similar problem and tried every free program at download.com. pcinspector did discover the lost files, but i couldnt get further. NTFS UNDELETE was superb, and free. i got everything back....60 gb of photos

**amana21** · 12-22-2008, 04:30 AM

You can also try stellar phoenix windows data recovery, this software is very useful when you lost your whole partition. Just try the demo version first from here: http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm and scan your hard disk. If now you are able to view your data then you need the full version to save your files.