My pc is back from the store. They formatted my 120 gb harddrive which is not too bad as I had a back-up on DVD, what is worse they also touched my other 80 Gb disk (almost full) where I kept all my textures and our own new models. The store said they didn't touch it at all, except putting there some files from the 120 gb disk. There is nothing there anymore, except some programfiles. All together there is about 14 gb on that disk, but the properties of the disk say it is still full, 71.6 gb.I ran a few utilities and it says there are 63 hidden sectors. I ran scandisk and no errors found. Could it be my old data is still there? Any ideas how to recover it? Any help greatly appreciated.

lord, have I been here before. Had a problem with 1 hd, backed up everything to the other, and they formatted both. Last time I took anything there..;)
Well, we'll need to know the OS, and hopefully, what format you used on the drive (FAT, FAT32, NTFS, etc) Usually a sector (well, back in the day) was a pretty small thing, but it's changed with new hard drive sizes. I think they're still measure in K rather than M, tho.
There are ways of getting back formatted data, tho the price would knock you out (hundreds per gigabyte) from some of the recovery places like Ontrack.
Check the size of these 'program files', one could be a swap file (though those usually aren't anywhere near that big. And somebody touched your other hard drive, trust me. They either did something that affected it indirectly, or just won't fess up. Good luck.

Thanks. I checked the files, no huge files there. Biggest file was Windows/system 32 (around 600 mb). I am running Windows XP home edition. The ATI drives were formatted NTFS. They sat in my old Celleron PC and I had them moved to my new Athlon 64. What I thought was really weird, they formatted the 120 gb disk and re-installed Windows, but on my 80 GB texture/model disk sat my old windows with all the service releases etc. and mentioned system folder. Some of the old files were left (in a new folder), and many of the files of the 120 disk had moved there. I cleaned some of them and left around 15 GB, but still properties saying the disk is almost full. I don't think they formatted the disk, cause a few of the old files are still there.

If the older files are still there on the C:drive then they did not Fdisk and Format...With XP you have to FDisk and then Format and I usually always like to use the Longer format then the Quick format...

But I want to recover the data rather than format it? I used system restore on the 80 GB disk and was able to recover at least my email database, but nothing else (22 gb of poser, 11 gb of textures, and 2 years of our latest work, models, textures. Luck I had my 21 GB of Bryce on DVD).

Wait.. Are you trying to get the Data from the C: or D: drive...? If you are trying to get it from the C:drive then they didnt Format or Fdisk they just installed XP over the existing data... If you are trying to get the Data from the D: drive and you cant seem to get to it then they might have started the Process of installing XP on your D: drive and stopped it when they realized they screwed up...Try puttin the harddrive in another Machine as a Backup drive and then use Windows Explorer to find your Files...

It's a bit complicated. My 120 gb was the OS disk (letter F), master. My 80 gb was a work-disk (letter C), slave. They formattad the 120 gb one (master) and put it in my new pc with the letter C. My 80 gb (slave) got the letter F. It's just exchange of drive letters. The windows on that disk is my old windows and was backed up from the 120 gb one. Some of the 3D files are also left alone on the 80 disk, that is how I know they didn't format it. As it is my old windows backed up there, I also know they installed windows on the right disk, the 120 one.

I have no idea how you could get your data back but I'm sure there should be someone here or in the tech forum maybe, who knows how to restore data. As far as stores helpdesks and whatever servicepoints for computers you can find. They just LOVE simply formatting a drive because it is so nice and easy. When I went to my helpdesk 'cause my laptop refused to connect to the schools wireless network too, they're like "ok we'll fix it for ya, if you're back in 10 minutes it's probably working" and the guy turns around and says to the other tech guy "hey, could you format this thing and throw a new image on it?" I'm like "WTF!! What do you think you're doing!!?? What tells you, you can format my entire hard-disk without asking? This is my school laptop (which they knew 'cause the helpdesk is in my school) I've got school assignments on there!!" and he goes like "hey, it's easier" :| Can you believe it?? but yea I had to go to class so I didn't have time to argue with him. so I just ended up telling him "If you remove anything off this disk I'll remove your face." So he turns round and he's like "hey uhm, >>insert name of the other guy<< nervous cough can you give me that laptop for a sec? I'm gunna check the network cofiguration and the certificates 1st, maybe he doesn't have the updated certificates" lol 50 minutes later I got back and it worked and my data was in tact, but if I hadn't heard the guy I'd have losts weeks of work!

Beginning of Windows installation shouldn't mean anything unless they told it to format the disk and whacked FAT. You can try to fix it with "fdisk /mbr", which will fix just the master boot record, but if Explorer says the disk is full, I'm thinking it's something else. Hidden sectors are there on every disk. I think you probably should also check whether the files are accidentally set to Hidden, if you already don't have Show All Files checked. What is on D and E? D is probably CD/DVD, right? What's E? Is the whole partition hidden?

C is the master 120 gb, D is the DVD burner, E is my CD burner and F is the 80 disk. No partitions. I unchecked the box hide certain files (Show All Files ). Can't see anything. Also the system restore is empty, 0 bytes. There is only 2 gega in the recycle bin (didn't clean it yet), which are mostly files the store backed up there from the other drive, like the old windows.

Oh, damn. Didn't thought of this: Does your new XP account have admin rights? If not, enter the admin account and I think you will be seeing all of old files. If your new account does have admin rights, and your old account also had them, then it's one of the Windows problems, especially if you had a password. You can try: - switching the accounts when Windows are running - at the Welcome screen, press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice fast to get to the login dialog box - restarting the comp, pressing F8 while it's booting, choosing Safe Mode and seeing what you will find there - creating a new admin account - and then something picked from a "hacking" site. A guy could see his old folder but couldn't access it. You'll possibly have to do this from Safe Mode. Change "folder" to "disk" where appropriate. ________________________ first you must know if you harddisk partition is NTFS or fat32 if NTFS right click on the old folder then chose properties you will find a tap named "Security" you will find the names of the users how have the access to this folders u will find strange no. and letters this are the code of the old windows users remove all users and then add new user that will open another window press "find..." will give you the list of users on you machine chose your name and then give him full control by checking the box called "FULL control" then press advanced at the bottom of the window a new window will open and there will be 2 check box at the bottom of the window check on "replace permissions ........." no 2 by the way your logged on user must be in the administrators group to do so _____________________________ HTH.

PS. You might not have set a password, but did the guys at the shop gave the account the same name as you did to the old one? Try that, too.

No .iso files or any other form of disk image compression files? (If there are, they're likely to be quite large. Some forms of this archiving also produce sequential files so that a HD can be backed up using CDs.) If there are, a util such as Undisker might be able to get the old stuff back up. Dunno why they should do that though.

Creations DONT DO ANYTHING on that DRIVE E-Mail me at analogx@rogers.com I'll help you recover the data!!! Common Guys!!! You should know by now who's the tech geek around here ;)

Analog X : We are all tech-geeks, if you hadn't noticed! If the data still exist, it's findable... Creations : Please make this the very last time you take your computer elsewhere and pay some jerks to "fix" it. You have all the tools you need, right here in the forums. Get back to us on your progress... Erlik has hit the nail on the head here...

Thanks so far for your replies.

I have tried some of Erlik's tips (didn't think of that!). So far no luck.
The slave disk I try to recover (former C slave, now F slave), I had it as a shared disk with my daughter (also member here :-) on a homenetwork, on a different account (no pasword) than that the store installed. So I renamed the store-account (owner) to my old accountname. I also set again the properties to shared disk (took ages, so I know the stuff is there, I also got a warning you are running out of diskspace for that particular drive!!).
I can't see any list of users allowed to share (I am on windows XP home edition). So the situation is as before this desaster, except for the drive letter (now F instead of C). Also tried safe mode, also tried to make a new account, also tried switching accounts. Stil working on it.
Thank you all in the mean time!!!

• Elsina

Message edited on: 05/25/2005 01:45

I ran an evaluation version of a file recovery program, just scanned the drive and it doesn't look good. I searched only on certain file-formats (jpg, 3ds, tiff) and it found 30.000 of them, most overwritten in a folder called [DIR00026], [DIR0000110] etc. The program: "Lost Files" are files that no longer have Microsoft Windows file reference information remaining. The utility searches the entire hard drive and identifies these files by their structure (i.e. unique header, content, and footer information). Because the Microsoft Windows file reference information is no longer present the original name of the file is no longer available".

Do not try to recover anything to that disk. The program might be seeing the files you had already deleted. OTOH, Restore 2000, as a colleague tells me, is quite good and has saved him several times. http://www.topshareware.com/Restorer-2000-download-1068.htm

Erlik I am trying to recover it to another drive. Will check out your link. And waiting for Analog-X :-))

I managed to save around one GB of the disk, most mails, images and documents. I have restored much more of the disk but most files are in bad condition, (partly)overwritten. The file recovery program states the date when the files were modified exactly at the time the pc was at the computerstore. So lesson for all, do not back-up one harddrive onto another harddrive, cause some amateurs working in computerstores love to crack them both. I will start building my libraries from scratch and hope to be back soon in rendering! Thank you Erlik, Rafi and all of you for all your help. You are the best!