Please Help - or I'm going to be in a world of ****!

FBi7

FBi7

FBi7

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Hi OcUKers,

A little help if you may. Apolpgies in advance for the length of this post.

Ever keen to learn new IT type things, I began dabbling with Linux to see what all the fuss was about. My Linux Distro of choice was Mint 12 x64. At first I tried it on a VM, but found the VM software to be too slow. So, I installed it onto a blank hard drive instead.....well, at least I thought it was blank. It turns out I've installed Linux onto the Mrs' storage drive on our desktop :eek: The drive I meant to put it onto is still empty :(

My Mrs' storage drive is very important to her. Uni work, photos and videos, etc, stored on it. I have a back-up, but it's about 3 months old. Since then, she's done a lot of Uni work and added lots of photos.

I only noticed my retarted mistake this afternoon, and it's fair to say the world fell out my **** at that point.

Here's a screenie of what Windows disc management sees:
aargh.jpg


Disc 0 is the drive concerned. Unfortunately, there's now something wrong with the Linux install, as it just freezes, either loading, or not long after I get to the desktop.

If I right click on the grey sqare that says disc 0, I get an option to 'convert to dynamic disc' but have no idea if this is good or bad.

Is there anyway/anything I can do to retrieve her stuff?



TL;DR, I accidentally installed Linux onto the Mrs' storage drive, and I wouldn't mind being allowed to be intimate with her in the future!




Any suggestions much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

FB..
 
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Windows doesn't recognise the drive mate - the drive being there shows up in disk management with no drive letter, but isn't recognised in 'My computer'.

E; the menu is where I've right-clicked in the 66.53gb partition of disc 0 - nearly all ghosted out :(
 
Guide:

step away from the computer

Don't say a word to the other half

Deny all knowledge when she asks where all her work has gone

use the opportunity to tell her she should have backed up her work.

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Sorry mate, i feel for you, but it's not looking good.
 
ivrytwr3 said:
Guide:

step away from the computer

Don't say a word to the other half

Deny all knowledge when she asks where all her work has gone

use the opportunity to tell her she should have backed up her work.

-------------

Sorry mate, i feel for you, but it's not looking good.
Click to expand...



That really is the best advice.
 
When you say, "Unfortunately, there's now something wrong with the Linux install...", did Linux work and then just stop working?

When it worked, her files still there? Or has it completely wiped everything off the drive when you installed it?
 
Nymins said:
Could check to see if System Restore is enabled on the drive.
Click to expand...

More then likely will not do anything since an OS was installed on it the disk would have been reformatted upon install. Unless the disk was already partitioned and the OS was installed on one of the partitions( that were not important) in which case all the info should still be on the disk in that partition. Always worth a shot though but is a stab in the dark as I don't think system restore will uninstall an OS.

I know this is redundant but BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP, if there is any kind of heavy usage on a drive, that important info is being added full back up beginning monthly/weekly and incremental back ups at the end of the week/month.

Dynamic Disk Storage

Dynamic storage is supported in Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, Vista Win 7. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamic disk. A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without the need to restart Windows.Additionally, after you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the dynamic volumes cannot be changed back to partitions. You must first delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then convert the dynamic disk back to a basic disk. If you want to keep your data, you must first back up the data or move it to another volume.


For future references I would set up full back up and incremental back up system on the wife's HDD. You can have it save to another HDD and you can also have it to write over the previous back ups so you are not always increasing the amount of disk space used by much
ivrytwr3 said it best or just tell her the truth you did a boo boo and face the consequences
 
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Considering you've installed an OS over it after a format I wouldn't expect everything to be intact, but you may get some data back using one of the recovery programs. There was a thread recently about getting data back after a format with suggestions on the best prog.
 
ivrytwr3 said:
Guide:

step away from the computer

Don't say a word to the other half

Deny all knowledge when she asks where all her work has gone

use the opportunity to tell her she should have backed up her work.

-------------

Sorry mate, i feel for you, but it's not looking good.
Click to expand...

This may be your only option well aside from fessing up
 
kipslacher said:
some as in little data recovery, he could prob recover more data by using his older back up. Unless he gets his hand on a recovery program used by the authorities :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Wrong, he'd be best combining the two as any IT professional will tell you. Even if he gets one fully recovered file from the data recover software that's still far better than sending every file back 3 months.
 
Halfmad said:
Wrong, he'd be best combining the two as any IT professional will tell you. Even if he gets one fully recovered file from the data recover software that's still far better than sending every file back 3 months.
Click to expand...

You would be suprised what is recoverable these days. I would get a few different program trials and then scan with these, once you find one that can get the files pay for it. Bear in mind that different programs will recover different things so keep trying if the first application you try doesn't work - in my experience anyway!
 
You need to use a block-scan recovery tool. There are a few that I've used in the past like GetDataBack for NTFS which do a pretty good job.

A Linux distro like Mint is pretty small. Maybe a few hundred megs. So there's a good chance that it hasn't actually touched (i.e. overwritten) the blocks that are occupied by your files.

All a format and Linux install would have done is purged and overwritten the partition table and file system tables. At no point would a "set all blocks to zero" operation be performed as it's too slow.

A tool like GetDataBack will scan all blocks looking for tell-tale NTFS data structure fragments and then pieces them together.
 
Thank you all for your suggestions.

The getdataback that gord and NathanE suggested appears to have done the trick! I can't believe how lucky I am. Really, thanks for the suggestions, I'd be really up the creak without them!

I just don't know if I've got everything back. I'll kinda 'fess up tonght. "Darling, your storage drive suffered a catastrophic failure today. But I've been working hard all day and managed to recover your data. Can you just check it's all there?"

That way, she'll think it wasn't my stupidity (I've been hinting at stuff starting to go wrong for a while now to try and justify a IB/SB upgrade with SSD!) and she might buy me a bottle of whisky as a thank you or something!


@mrbell1984, I had disconnected all but one of the drives from the motherboard prior to installing Linux. Touble is, I just left the wrong drive connected - so the thought was there.


Thanks again,

A most happy and relieved Mr FBi7 :)
 
@FBi7 Glad to hear it. Runtime.org has some great software. I've used RAID Reconstructor in the past. Well worth the money.
 
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