Hard Drives Been Erased - Don't Know How! 1

[templeLobe]

Hi

My PC is 2.62 Ghz, 512 RAM, winXP home sp2.


I run a business from home and recently lost not one, but two HD's with 70GB of important Data.

I wondered if there was a way to get it back.

I had both HD's inside the PC tower, one as 'master' and the other as 'slave' and copied one hard drive
on to another using Norton Ghost 9.0, effectively cloning my drive; occaisionally I used to check it had worked by
unplugging the other drive and booting the slave and it worked fine (After a while though I stopped checking, trusting the
fact it said 'drive copied successfully' when Norton Ghost had finished.)

I must have done something in Recovery Console to delete the data on my hard drive?? the fact that Two HD's have
been deleted though is something I don't understand, which makes me think it might be something else.

So let me try and explain what happened...

First, a few weeks ago a file disappeared from my desktop. I did a windows search and it wasn't anywhere my HD. I've no idea
how this could have happened.

I thought there maybe a virus so I did a scan with AVG then bitdefender and trendmicro - nothing, no viruses.

I tried to restore my pc back to the night before - and this is where the trouble started.

It said the restore point was successful, yet my folder was still missing...?

When I looked in my other folders on my desktop, even though the subfolders were there they were completely empty. All pdf's
Word Doc'c XL etc, gone. Folders on My Documents were fine though, so it was only folders on my desktop that were empty.

I tried other resore points - nothing. pc started freezing and ended up with just my desktop - no start menu, nothing. I
reboot and end up with an error message saying an application failed to start because a browseui.dll was missing.

Following advice I go to DOS Command Console and replace this browseui.dll and reboot and what do you know it worked
(to a fashion). Some programs weren't running and when I tried another system restore it wouldn't even go to the screen, umm.

System froze again soon after... and this time on reboot I couldn't get into the OS.

I did get the OS back up and running so I had a brainwave and thought I might be able to get the lost files from my slave if
it will boot - but it didn't; not only that, the master wouldn't boot either when I plugged it back in and that was the last
I saw of either HD.


Following a link which explained how to repair my problem I did the following...


In Recovery Console:



chkdsk
result: 'the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems'

then..

fixboot
result: 'boot sector is corupt
fixboot is writting new boot sector
the new boot sector was successfully written'

(so far so good, right?) - Err No

When I try to boot I get to the second screen which tells me:
'NTLDR is missing
press any key to restart'

this was the

then tried fixmbr (recovery console) and no change when I try to boot OS.

I followed instructions from a link on here and I was getting problems with the commands so I couldn't complete the repair.

E.g.

ATTRIB -H C:BOOT.INI
with the other enties, each resulting in:
'This system cannot find the file or directory specified'

This might give you some clues:
In Recovery Console again...where it says:

Microsoft Windows(R) Recovery Console

The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality.
Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

1: C:WINDOWS

Which Windows Installation would you like to log onto
(To cancel, press ENTER)?

On my screen it just says:

C:\> instaed of, 1: C:WINDOWS



so I try,

bootcfg /list

(response) 'there are currently no boot entries to display'

bootcfg /rebuild

'failed to successfully scan disks for windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system,
which would prevent bootcfg from successfully scanning use chkdsk....'

I've also tried booting with a Linux CD but it wouldn't load.

So I bought a new 160Gb HD put it in as master and attempted to get the data off either of the other drives,
setting one to slave.

To my horror both were apparently empty!

I went into disk management and it's reading 10mb Fat12?? and the other disk is reading nothing?? Disc shows as active and
healthy.


Tried Disk Investigator program and theres files on it but it can't read them.
that's only reading 10mb as well, FAT12.

Tried the slave (clone) and it reads a full 80gig drive, but it reads as empty! with no file system at all.??

One more disk check:


Checking file system on F:
The type of the file system is FAT.


One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
Volume Serial Number is 9785-F627
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

2130018304 bytes total disk space.
98304 bytes in 1 hidden files.
483491840 bytes in 2 files.
1646428160 bytes available on disk.

32768 bytes in each allocation unit.
65003 total allocation units on disk.
50245 allocation units available on disk.


Can anyone tell me if I can retieve the 70Gb of data I originally lost? or should I say goodbye to it !! - I've kina given up on it but don't understand how 2 HD's
got deleted.

XP runs on NTFS and the files left on HD are FAT12? so is this why the drive appears empty - because it's the wrong file
system?

Let me know your thoughts (I know it was a long post..zzzzzzz)

and any help is appreciated, thanks

 

[wahnula]

If you can get the system to boot into Windows, I just a read a review in the November issue of CPU magazine that raved about Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery:

http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

It is a $99 investment but should find your files, it has a free download so you can see what can be recovered before purchase. Best of luck!



Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[micker377]

Have you tried these "bad" drives in a different computer? It's possible that the mother board is defective (IDE ports).

 

[exagere]

Did you do a fresh installation of the OS on the new HD with the slave drive?
If you can access the drive, you can also try a program called GetDataback for NTFS at

http://www.runtime.org

What kind of permission do you have on the slave drive? verify that; you might be surprised.
with full permission, there is a chance you might be able to retrieve your files.

 

[wahnula]

I would hesitate to write data (like reloading an OS) to a drive which may contain valuable data that could be overwritten in the process. First step is to stop writing to the drives.

This is a common problem and there are many software solutions, check out

http://www.runtime.org

for good info and their valuable program GetDataBack.

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[firewolfrl]

GetDataBack is your best bet
if you load windows over your data your data is going to go bye! bye!
wahnula is right in the the last post

 

[owen198313]

So sorry to hear that. If the data which you lost is important for you. You can try to use the data recovery software from Salvationdata(a undisputed industry leader with a most experienced team of hard drive data recovery engineers)

Salvationdata is a professional Data recovery and HDD repair company from China. You can try to visit their website:

http://www.salvationdata.com

They have many tech-supports on data recovery and HDD repair. Maybe they can help you deal with your problems.

GOOD LUCK1