BIG PROBLEM - Lost ALL info on HDD - NEED to recovery it

G

Guest

I'm writing to see if there is anything I can do to recover all info from the
Main HDD on my sons computer. I don't know how, but he managed to apparently
format his 120 gig main HDD (OS an all). The HDD had been partitioned into
three drives. (C:\ = 10 gig, D:\ = 10 gig, and E:\ = 95 gig). Apparently all
info on all partitions was lost.

Is there a way of possibly recovering all the info, and/or restoring the HDD
to the way it was before losing the info?

Son's system is an AthlonXP 1.8 running an OEM version of WindowsXP Pro with
all SP's.
 
W

Will Denny

Hi

If the entire HD has been re-formatted you will be very lucky to recover any
data. A Data Recovery program would have to be used, which could take a
long time to perform and be very expensive.
 
G

Guest

This information is from a KB article, it may help you.

HOW TO: Recover an Accidentally Deleted NTFS or FAT32 Dynamic Volume

SUMMARY
If a Windows 2000 NTFS or FAT32 dynamic volume is accidentally deleted by
using the Disk Management snap-in, you may be able to recover the volume and
the data contained on it. You can do this only if a new volume has not been
created and formatted in its place. When Disk Management removes a volume
from a dynamic disk, it erases the volume's file-system boot sector (sector-0
of the volume), and then removes the volume entry from the Disk Management
private region database, leaving the rest of the drive intact (including the
data). Because both NTFS and FAT32 volumes maintain backup boot sectors, you
can recover the volume by restoring the boot sector.

NOTES
•FAT16 volumes do not contain a backup boot sector and cannot be recovered
if they are deleted.
•In this article, the steps to recover the deleted volume do not apply to a
dynamic RAID-5 volume or to a dynamic mirrored volume.


To recover the deleted volume, use one of the following procedures.

To Recover a Deleted NTFS Volume
1.Re-create the exact same volume but choose not to format it. This may be
difficult if you do not remember the exact size you had created originally,
especially because the Disk Management snap-in tends to round partition
sizes.
2.Using Dskprobe.exe, recover the backup boot sector for the NTFS volume
from the end of the volume. Because it is a dynamic volume you may need to
use Dmdiag.exe to help find the backup boot sector, or search for it by using
Dskprobe.exe (on the Tools menu, click Search Sectors).
3.After rewriting the NTFS boot sector, quit Dskprobe.
4.In Disk Management, click Rescan Disks on the Action menu. This should
mount the volume for immediate use.

To Recover a Deleted FAT32 Volume
1.Re-create the exact same volume, but choose not to format it. This may be
difficult if you do not remember the exact size you had created originally,
especially because the Disk Management snap-in tends to round partition
sizes.
2.Using Dskprobe.exe, recover the backup boot sector for the FAT32 volume
from sector-6 of the logical volume and write it to sector-0 of the logical
volume. The "Resolution" section in the following article in the Microsoft
Knowledge Base describes this procedure in detail:
247575 Chkdsk Does Not Use Backup Boot Sector to Fix Corrupted FAT32 Boot
Sector
3.After rewriting the FAT32 boot sector, quit Dskprobe.
4.In Disk Management, click Rescan Disks on the Action menu. This should
mount the volume for immediate use.
 

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