Installed ME over Data - Can I recover?

[Roddman]

I installed ME to a data HD that I was using for video storage, not knowing that it would overwrite the existing data. I know better now, but in the process have lost two large video projects. Is there any way to recover the data? I had about 25gb on the 40gb drive, which now only has the 1gb ME OS on it. I can read the drive with new XP OS installed to other HD fine. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Rodd

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

Probably not through normal means as they have been overwritten.. Nothing there to recover anymore. If you had simply deleted them, you may have had a chance.

Best bet, contact a "Data recovery" company and see what they say. be prepared to pay throuigh the nose though with NO guarantee of success !!!

Murray

 

[Dreamland]

Was there any kind of O/S on that disk to begin with? Was there only one or were there multiple partitions? How many/what size are they now? Do you know if any of the partition information was changed for sure, or did ME just format the existing partition when it loaded itself? ME does not *need* to format a FAT32 partition before it installs itself - do you know if it actuall did this, i.e., screen messages or confirmations?

 

[Roddman]

Thanks for the reponses. I do not recall any messages during the ME install that warned me about loss of data. I looked at the disk this morning and it appears as though there is a 3 gb partition. I used the device manager under admin tools in windows xp and it showed 37gb of 37gb available. I assume that the partition is within the other 3gb is the partition? If this is not correct, how can I determine if there is a partition of this disk?

 

[Roddman]

Correction to last post. It appears that the 37gb is the partition of the drive in question.

Rodd

 

[Dreamland]

Roddman - the XP disk manager told me what I needed to know. You said you had 25GB of files on that disk originally, so the entire disk probably was one big partition (= drive letter). ME either ignored it or deleted it and created it's own 3GB partition at the beginning of the disk. This not only overwrote the old file location table and the backup copy, but also any data in the first GB of your disk. Recovery would be difficult but you may be able to salvage something.

You can try PC Inspector (free download) to see if it can dig anything up on either the existing 3GB partition or the 37GB of currently unallocated space.

http://12.129.206.113/~dr275usc/PCIFR3.exe

The pro recovery services start somewhere in the hundreds of USD. Always an option if the data is that critical.

 

[kshugart]

There is a good possibility to recover the files of your video project, however, if no more data is being written to the drive then chances are good. If you are using the drive presently in the computer, the more you ue it and write data to it the chances diminish.

PC Inspector has its uses, however, it doesn't work in a lot of cases.

You might need the services of professional data recovery.

Klon Shugart
Data Recovery Specialist
CCNA/MCP2K/CDRT
Microsoft Certified Partners

http://www.adv-data.com