My stupid mistake

Lee Davies · 12 Jun 2006 at 20:22

The other day I accidentally deleted the partition on my backup hard drive (Seagate 160GB IDE).

To make matters worse, I then formatted it.

To make things even worser, I then installed Windows XP on the drive.

As a result, I've lost everything.

I'm not really bothered about most of it, but what I'm more upset about is my photographs

After searching here, I've ran a few programs like R-Studio and GetDataBack and had a few results. I've gotten one or two photos back - but not the ones I could've done with (mostly my holiday ones I need).

Odd thing is, R-Studio makes stupdily large files. For example, a 400x100 image (an old signature image) comes up as over 200MB.

Anyway, I was wondering if you folks have any idea on how to retrieve more data... or is it totally frelled?

james_earl · 12 Jun 2006 at 20:29

because you installed windows over it it is possible a lot of the data is overwritten which is why these programs are not retrieving your photos. Sorry dude i would suggest it may be gone

pinkegobox · 12 Jun 2006 at 20:33

wiping a hdd and an sd card. dude, i would suggest you are a very unlucky person. unfortunately i have only this advice.

be careful.

this might seem like a troll, but wiping both an sd card and a hdd suggests it's probably worth giving you the advice.

Rich · 12 Jun 2006 at 22:08

Ontrack Recovery Pro imo

Dutch Guy · 13 Jun 2006 at 08:38

Deleting partitions and formatting would not have beena problem as you found out but overwriting the data with the Windows install is too much.

I don't think there is a software program that can get the data back, only thing left is a professional data recovery company that might be able to get some of the overwritten data back but it will be very expensive and maybe not even possible

I know you prolly don't want to hear this now but deffo consider regular backups, I do a weekly backup of my digital photos/documents etc. that are not on a CD/DVD, just do not trust harddrives (or yourself)

hp7909 · 13 Jun 2006 at 08:55

Lee Davies said:
The other day I accidentally deleted the partition on my backup hard drive (Seagate 160GB IDE).

To make matters worse, I then formatted it.{snip}

Right there you could have STILL recoverd the data as was (unless you did a Full/Slow Format)

What I normally do is backup* the problematic partition/drive onto another partition/drive. Then once back in Windows start recovering the files from the backup. Recommend Acronis True Image for backups :cool:

*EDIT: Using a bootable CD which you can make with True Image