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data recovery possible?
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:47 pm
by s.dot
I needed to reformat my hard drive the other day, so I erased everything with partition magic.. using secure erase. So i'm pretty sure that's all gone.
However, I saved the stuff i needed to my external hard drive. Then I readded it once I reformatted. Then I deleted it off of the external hard drive.
I forgot about a project i've been working on for two months, and deleted that instead of putting it back on my pc =/
Is it possible to recover this data? =/
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:52 pm
by Chris Corbyn
That sucks when that happens
Yes and no. It's a bit of an expert field. What's the filesystem type? I know with reiser there are tools that can do it but you risk screwing your entire filesystem if even the smallest of changes occurs while you work with it.
If all you've done is a quick delete DO NOT do anything else on that drive yet. The more changes you make on the filesystem, the less likely you are to recover data successfully.
Let us know the FS and I'll have a search for some tips if nothing else. I do remember reading some useful guides for data recovery on reiserfs though

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:53 pm
by Weirdan
probably yes, if you didn't write anything to your external hd after the deletion.
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:54 pm
by s.dot
I haven't.
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:56 pm
by Weirdan
So, what kind of FS do you have on your external hd?
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:02 pm
by s.dot
FAT32
I searched downloads.com for data recovery. Downloaded a prog... trying it out now.
If -for some reason- it can't be recovered... I will cry. =[ I hate learning things the hard way!
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:04 pm
by Weirdan
Fat32 should be relatively simple to work with (and there are TONS of utils for it).
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:06 pm
by s.dot
This prog says 3 hours left on the data recovery scan. It's coming up with lots of stuff so this might prove to be a good thing.
Guess I'll let ya guys know in three hours.
Thanks for the help.
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:14 pm
by Ambush Commander
Hope you find it. Hmm... were you using Subversion?
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:40 pm
by s.dot
Well, it's not on the external drive =/ I remember I did copy a movie over to the hd yesterday, so it probably wrote over it. =/
I did, however, copy it to my main hd before deleting it. So I'll try data recovery on that too.
[edit] This would have to happen today..... can i blame terrorists?

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:44 pm
by feyd
scottayy wrote:[edit] This would have to happen today..... can i blame terrorists?

As long as you blame yourself first.

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:02 pm
by s.dot
Hmm, after finding the files, they throw in the $79 to save/recover them. =/ I won't have that for a couple weeks. Anyone know of good free utitilies for this?
Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:42 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I doubt you will find a good free util. I went through this a few weeks back when my SD card crashed. There are a ton of free products out there that will tell you if your stuff can be recovered. But a lot of them are hooks like what you are experiencing. They tell you they can, but they do not give you the data without paying for it.
Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:48 pm
by s.dot
Trying one out called FreeUndelete 2.0 by OfficeRecovery. We'll see how this does. 3 hour scans suck, though.

I guess it's taking longer cuz the hard drive is external.
Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:55 pm
by s.dot
My file looks like this....
Code: Select all
1Q?2tÅÿs~ѺÖuˆüžcœ~ΧôÏ÷†{ʯ½ž+ž¸2ìCÑæ›k>7}s¯ö™»½E 5w†tÁ

Does that mean it's been overwritten?