[RESOLVED] Destroyed Partition

[Arispan]

Hello everyone,

As you can see in my signature I'm dual booting with XP and 7. Today I tried to make a third partition using the Ubuntu Live Cd (that has GParted) but EVERYTHING went wrong (I accidentaly pressed "Cancel" during the resize of my Windows 7's partition) and now I can't boot into Windows 7. Then I tried to use my Windows 7 CD to fix the partition but it didn't do anything so then I typed "chkdsk D:" in a command promt but it said that the file system was "RAW" and it didn't do anything. Re-installing Windows 7 or deleting that partition isn't an option for me since all of my programming projects and data are in that partition and I really don't want to lose them.

P.S. Did my message look stressed ? Because I really am.

[FireXtol]

And it's a 1 TB HDD? Ouch.

RAW usually means it lacks proper formating. You might want to try software which scans the RAW disk for traces of files, like GetDataBack.

[Siddharth Rout]

Ok...relax

Where is the backup data? C: or D:?

BTW, I have a triple boot...

[Arispan]

FireXtol:As I can see, GetDataBack can only recover from NTFS and FAT. Anyway I tried it and it said that my partition isn't NTFS or FAT.

koolsid: Ermm...I don't have backup data because both partitions are about 500GB and almost 250GB of each is full of data.

[Siddharth Rout]

1) If you can boot in XP then skip to point 3

2) If not, then do you have access to any pc which is working? If yes then attach this HD as a slave and then use this tool

3) http://www.recoverdatatools.com/buy-...-recovery.html to 'view' the data... since it is a demo version... you can only view it... Yes, I did read in your previous post that GetDataBack doesn't recognize it as NTFS or FAT but there is no harm in trying the demo version. If you can view it... we will take it from there...

4) If you are still not able to retrieve the data, my suggestion would be to take it to a repair shop so that they can retrieve it 'professionally'

[Arispan]

I will try that program tomorrow because now it's 1:48 AM.

[baja_yu]

Read this item http://grover.open2space.com/node/17

And take a look at this one http://www.partition-recovery.com/

You might also find a lot of useful info by Googling "partition recovery"

Good luck!

P.S: How's the weather in Greece? I'll be coming in 3 weeks

[Arispan]

koolsid: The program you suggested is now running and WILL be running for a looooooooooong time.

baja_yu: dd_rescue only runs on linux so I used "Active@ Partition Recovery for Windows" and as I can see, it will too be running for a loooooooooooooooooong time.

P.S.: The weather's fine. Just a little hotter than you might expect. (By the time you come it'll be ok)

P.S.2: If I get out of this partition-mess, I swear that I will make a backup of my most important files.

EDIT: "Active@ Partition Recovery for Windows" finished proccessing earlier than I expected but it didn't find all of my files ( "Documents and Settings" and some other folders were empty !!!!! ) so I ran it again

[Siddharth Rout]

koolsid: The program you suggested is now running and WILL be running for a looooooooooong time.

How is it going?

[Arispan]

Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly
EDIT: WOW! I had to refresh this page for at least one hour!

[Siddharth Rout]

Let us know when it gets completed...

[Arispan]

It's complete but the list that should contain the files is empty and below it says "0.000MB size in 0 Directories 0 Files" !!!!!!!
EDIT: Active@ Partition Recovery finds some files but not all of them.

[Siddharth Rout]

Active@ Partition Recovery finds some files but not all of them.

I hope the rest are not lost forever

It's time for a professional recovery I guess...

[Arispan]

And the worst thing is that Active@ Partition Recovery says that my "Documents and Settings" folder (where I have my "Visual Basic 6" folder) is empty !!! Other than that, there aren't any real "professionals" here that will fix your pc. They'll format your partition and say that the problem is "fixed".

I'll try other recovery-software and hope that at least one of them recovers my partition. Until then I must start from the begginning.

[Siddharth Rout]

Sorry, was not much help to you

[Arispan]

No, don't say that! If it wasn't you, I wouldn't have been inspired to search for "partition recovery", "recover partion" and so on. These searches gave a ton of good results and if it wasn't you I wouldn't have done them. Also I see that you really wanted to help and I appreciate that.

Thank you (and the others) for helping me.

[Pradeep1210]

Try TestDisk. It's a good one and quite fast. It scanned my 500GB in just 15 minutes and recovered almost whole of it.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

You might also want to have a look at one of the others here:
http://lifehacker.com/5237503/five-b...recovery-tools

[Arispan]

Condomx:

my friend solve it using a proffesional disk recovery tool

Can you please tell me the name of that tool ?

Pradeep1210: I've tried some of the programs you suggested but they didn't work (some said that my "Documents and Settings" folder was empty and some others said that my partition was empty )

[CVMichael]

Hi Arispan,

I just installed Win 7 also, but instead of dual boot I installed VMware Server 2.0.2 (the latest version), (it's free by the way), and I have Win XP as a Virtual Machine.

I have dual monitors, on main screen I have Win 7, and the other Win XP, and right now as i'm typing I can move my mouse from one screen to the other. So it's basically like having 2 separate computers running at the same time but only one hardware. Even when I take a "Print Screen" it takes a picture on both Windows 7 and XP at the same time (see here)

If you have enough RAM you can have as many Virtual Machines open as you want, switching from one to another at any time.

And the best part of all, is that you can copy the Virtual Machine file (therefore making a backup of it), (or take a "snapshot" from VMware server), then if you mess up something in the VM you can always revert back to the original.

What I really don't like about dual boot is that you actually have to shut off one OS to get into the other.

Sorry I did not answer your question, I just wanted to give you another perspective.

[dee-u]

Can you try recovermyfiles? It gave me the best result when I tried a bunch of such recovery softwares before.

[Arispan]

CVMichael: I have tried Virtual Machines before but they were tooooooo slow(even if I gave them a lot of ram).

dee-u: At last! This program found all of my files and now I will buy it and recover them . Also, I found out that my files where in the "Users" folder (other programs didn't display that folder) and not in "documents and settings" (that folder doesn't exist in win 7, so, it was a mistake by the other programs).


Thanks dee-u !!!

[CVMichael]

CVMichael: I have tried Virtual Machines before but they were tooooooo slow(even if I gave them a lot of ram).

I am very surprised because you have a much better computer than mine. Of course it will be a little slower (both the real and virtual), but that is logical since they share the same CPU and RAM. I installed some pretty intensive applications on both real and virtual and it worked fine, the speed decrease is not noticeable.

Also, there is a big difference between "MS Virtual PC" and VMware. I tried both and I know the difference.

The biggest difference is the RAM usage, in Virtual PC if you allocate 1GB for virtual, then from the time it starts it will use 1GB, but for VMware if you allocate 1GB, then it will use only as much as it's needed (whatever Windows and the applications in the Virtual Machine uses).

Also another big difference is that a Virtual PC will use only ONE core of the CPU, but in VMware it actually gives you a drop down menu where you can choose to use 1 to however many cores the CPU has (in my case I have a 2 Core CPU).

In VMware, if you install the "VMWare Tools" on the Virtual Machine, it will improve dramatically the graphics on the virtual machine.

[Arispan]

I tried to install a virtual machine (Windows 7) a long time ago using VMware but the installation was at least 10 times slower than the actual installation of windows 7. Also, everything I did with it was really slow so I deleted it.

[baja_yu]

I'm not sure how virtualization software was when you tested, but I use VirtualBox now on my desktop and mac, and everything runs smoothly. My desktop is AMD Athlon 6000+ but only 2GB of RAM, so under Windows 7 host I can only install XP as gues and give it 512 RAM. But on the iMac I have VMs for XP, Vista and 7 64bit. Running as fast as ever.

[dee-u]

CVMichael: I have tried Virtual Machines before but they were tooooooo slow(even if I gave them a lot of ram).

dee-u: At last! This program found all of my files and now I will buy it and recover them . Also, I found out that my files where in the "Users" folder (other programs didn't display that folder) and not in "documents and settings" (that folder doesn't exist in win 7, so, it was a mistake by the other programs).


Thanks dee-u !!!

No problem, I was just sharing my own experience. =)