Deleted Partition - Must recover all files

[Guest]

The situation: Was installing XP on older PC, in order to use it with big
screen TV. Had 500Gig external drive connected thru USB and accidentally
asked the machine to delete the system partition for the external drive
instead of the partition for the system drive. Fixed the problem for the
internal PC HD. Lost ALL connection to the external USB drive.
I had transferred close to 80Gig of files to external drive and now I have
no access to them.
Path Forward...so far: D'led "GetBackData" and assigned a drive letter to
the external drive. No formatting was done and GBD seems to see the files
(all 6000 of them but the scan is taking DAYS...every time my PC shuts down
or loses power, the program re-starts. I need to know the best way to
"re-connect" with all the files. If there is a quick fix or a better way
PLEASE help ASAP.

Thanks in advance,
D

 

[Patrick Keenan]

The situation: Was installing XP on older PC, in order to use it with big
screen TV. Had 500Gig external drive connected thru USB and accidentally
asked the machine to delete the system partition for the external drive
instead of the partition for the system drive. Fixed the problem for the
internal PC HD. Lost ALL connection to the external USB drive.
I had transferred close to 80Gig of files to external drive and now I have
no access to them.
Path Forward...so far: D'led "GetBackData" and assigned a drive letter to
the external drive. No formatting was done and GBD seems to see the files
(all 6000 of them but the scan is taking DAYS...every time my PC shuts
down
or loses power, the program re-starts. I need to know the best way to
"re-connect" with all the files. If there is a quick fix or a better way
PLEASE help ASAP.

Thanks in advance,
D

Well, it's good news that the files were recognised. But yes, data
recovery software can take a long time on slower systems. You need to run
it on the fastest system you can. You may also find that there are faster
tools, and you must absolutely be running this on systems where there's far
more than enough free and clear - no fragmentation - drive space. Of
course, never, never try writing the recovered files to the drive being
recovered from.

The better ways than that are also more expensive, but get you the help of
trained professionals with really good equipment. Your situation is
probably one of the least expensive since there's nothing physically or
electrically wrong with the drives. Usually, estimates are free. Find a
data recovery service in your area, and talk to them. This can work
extremely well.

Why are you allowing the system to shut down or lose power? Data recovery
should be done on a fast system with a UPS and nothing else running, set to
never hibernate or shut down, to protect the data being recovered.

HTH
-pk

 

[The Guru]

The situation: Was installing XP on older PC, in order to use it with big
screen TV. Had 500Gig external drive connected thru USB and accidentally
asked the machine to delete the system partition for the external drive
instead of the partition for the system drive. Fixed the problem for the
internal PC HD. Lost ALL connection to the external USB drive.
I had transferred close to 80Gig offilesto external drive and now I have
no access to them.
Path Forward...so far: D'led "GetBackData" and assigned a drive letter to
the external drive. No formatting was done and GBD seems to see thefiles
(all 6000 of them but the scan is taking DAYS...every time my PC shuts down
or loses power, the program re-starts. I need to know the best way to
"re-connect" with all thefiles. If there is a quick fix or a better way
PLEASE help ASAP.

Thanks in advance,
D

I haven't come across "GetBackData", but Partition Recovery (http://
www.diskinternals.co.uk/partition-recovery.html) is very good at
recovering files from deleted partitions, and it normally only takes a
couple of hours.

The reason it's slow is probably because it is an external drive,
accessed via USB. It would probably speed things up to put the drive
into the PC as a slave.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I haven't come across "GetBackData", but Partition Recovery (http://
www.diskinternals.co.uk/partition-recovery.html) is very good at
recovering files from deleted partitions, and it normally only takes a
couple of hours.

The reason it's slow is probably because it is an external drive,
accessed via USB. It would probably speed things up to put the drive
into the PC as a slave.

That would absolutely be the case if the port or drive is below USB2. The
speed (and hence, time) difference is in the range of 40x. If the system
only has USB 1 ports, install a USB 2 card; these are cheap and no drivers
are required.

-pk

 

[Guest]

Call me what you like but I have managed to locate all files intact but the
only way that any program will let me access them in any way is to give a
ridiculous amount of money for the privilige of getting my own information
back.

Here's the thing, ALL I did was essentially hit the delete button on a
partition.
Isn't there an easy way to Undelete and simply restore the partition without
moving any files or paying $75 US ??
Seriously, nothing was ever deleted, no bad sectors...just a 500Gig drive
with 40Gigs of files confirmed but no understanding of how to re-attach them
to a partition that will give me access to them...

PLEASE help...there has to be an easy solution to this