Help! Windows deleted EVERYTHING!

touser3 · Post by **touser3** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 6:23 pm

Hi all, i just did a clean install of XP pro because it has been about a year sense my last clean install so i figured it was time. I disconnected all other hard drives except for the one i wanted windows installed on to ensure i didnt accidently skrew somethimg up on one of my data drives. After the install i plugged my drives back in, windows says one of my drives has a problem and needs to run check disk. I let it and it deletes several thousand "orphand files" and when i check the drive i am left with 1 folder that is empty on the drive!! Is there any way to recover any of my data, there is about 100gb gone that is irreplacable? The drive was fine just before the format and i know the drive isnt bad. Please help.

The Dude · Post by **The Dude** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 8:19 am

This may work, PC Inspector File recovery. The site says it's free, I have never used it myself. I would install the bad drive as a slave and run this program from your system drive.

touser3 · Post by **touser3** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:49 pm

Thanks for the reply The Dood. I have tried every piece of freeeware and trialware i could find in the last 24 hours and evereything either comes back with garbage or nothing, PC Inspector just crashes on startup. I even bought spinrite for $90 and it found nothing! All these programs are looking for damaged and corrupt files and i need something that just recovers files that where deleted but everything i have tried does nothing. Does anyone have any suggestions for "undelete" software?

The Dude · Post by **The Dude** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:09 pm

Getdataback If it works the demo version will show you the files, but won't let you recover them. That way you can see if it will work before you buy it. There are lots of others, but I have seen this one recommended on Speedguide. I don't think it matters whether it's deleted or corrupted, these programs will try to recover both. It's easier to recover deleted files because they are not really deleted until data is written over them. It sounds like you file system was mangled and the repair wiped out the files. If you have tried several programs with no luck I would say the odds of recovery are slim. One thing you could try is connecting the dead drive as master buy it self and do a fdisk /mbr on it. This is supposed to repair the master boot record and restore the file system. Google it and read up on it before you try it, I don't think it will make things any worse.