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About 3 weeks ago, I have accidentally used the "clean" command in diskpart in DOS.. And every thing in the hard drive was removed even the drive letters, it became unallocated space (465.8 GB).
I used a small part of that space (29.5 GB), to create a partition and install Win7 and kept the remaining part of the disk unformatted, to avoid any further precious data loss. I used "recover my files" to scan the hard drive, and fortunately it found most of my data, I also used "active file and partition recovery" which gave close results and saved the results of the scan for future use.
At the time I didn't have much space so I recovered what I can on another hard drive and kept most of the drive the same, unformatted in order to recover every thing later and kept using the (C) partition without touching the other partition which appears in "My computer" as (D) but inaccessible and unformatted (Raw).
Now I was able to clear some space, and I recovered a great deal of the data. I tried accessing the files but they didn't open. The documents appear to be corrupted, the rar files don't open so as the music mp3 files. Though there space appears accurate and even the music files show album information and stuff, they are useless..
I even rescanned the drive again using "recover my files" which gave similar good results but the files I recover are still inaccessible.. How do I get my files?? And what could have possibly happen different from my first recovery attempt??
Ramy
Posted 2012-12-03T02:33:18.167
Reputation: 79
I suggest reformatting your question to make it easier for everyone to follow and understand.
You have deleted your partition table, which is why the drive letters disappeared and your other partition is appearing in RAW format. What does it say when you try to open any of your recovered files? – Hammo – 2012-12-03T02:49:03.700
1For instance when I open an excel file it gives "The file you are trying to open is in different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now" and I get to choose from (yes/no/help). Ichoose yes, the sheet is completely empty, mp3 files don't open when I use jet audio it opens but it doesn't play. When I use wmp, it gives "windows media player encountered a problem while trying to open the file" and so on for the rest of the file types. I tried pdf files, movies, rar files. – Ramy – 2012-12-03T03:01:25.863
The drive became unallocated space I then created a small partition and installed win 7 on it.. – Ramy – 2012-12-03T03:05:13.080
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As you created that partition and installed Windows7 you rewrote data that was previously there. Unfortunately data isn't stored at hdd sequentialy, it's fragmented, so damaged wasn't only 30GB. That's the reason why files aren't readable, because parts are bad or missing. You may try another software (e.g. Recuva), results might be better, but you'll never get all your data back.
– week – 2012-12-03T03:17:19.317If there are important files you want to get back, I recommend using professional recovery service. They can use more sofisticated software. – week – 2012-12-03T03:21:46.620
@Ramy Please edit your question and add any additional information to it. And use paragraphs. – Paul – 2012-12-03T04:20:11.940
I've heard good things about GetDataBack and have personally successfully used Partition Find & Mount. Both have free versions you can try out first -- and that might be good enough depending on your exact needs.
– martineau – 2012-12-03T04:22:29.0071You really should not have touched the drive and installed *anything* on it until after you recovered as much data as possible - that's the most basic tenet of data recovery. Your biggest mistake was thinking you can install the OS and programs to a specific portion of the drive and keep all else unaffected, which just might have ruined all chances of data recovery. – Karan – 2012-12-03T08:20:38.287
@week I did in fact use "Recuva" but when I try to scan the unforamtted partition in gives this message: "Failed to scan the following drives D: Unable to read boot sector" The thing is how does the disk write on unforamtted space. I kept it unformatted for this purpose?? And the strange thing also is that the files have correct space. Active test results shows them as they are in Excellent and good condition?? – Ramy – 2012-12-03T14:22:48.853
@Paul It's done – Ramy – 2012-12-03T14:29:17.487
@martineau I'm trying "GetDataBack for NTFS (version: 2.31)" right now (fingers crossed). – Ramy – 2012-12-03T14:31:28.950
@Karan I thought because it's unformatted, it's inaccessible for writing by the computer.. I was probably mistaken.. Would disk defragment to the recovered data or the partition do any better?? – Ramy – 2012-12-03T14:36:53.043
2No! Do not defrag, that'll only make it worse. – Karan – 2012-12-03T15:07:19.360
Ok I won't, but don't you agree that unformatted space is inaccessible, there still something I can do?? – Ramy – 2012-12-03T15:29:22.590
I'm trying some recovery software right now, anyone with any other suggestions that could help me get my data I'll appreciate it.. – Ramy – 2012-12-03T16:42:03.713
@Ramy: The software utilities you're trying should allow you to at least recover part of whatever is still recoverable, but it likely nothing will be able to do it all because it's impossible since you wrote to the disk when creating the Win7 partition. It goes without saying that in the future you need to backup your important data to another drive/partition and/or use one of the many cloud services available nowadays. – martineau – 2012-12-03T17:18:43.993