[louann5840]

I am trying deparately to recover a Hard drive. I have tried Iso Majic, and Majic disk. I even made a VHD file and tried Virtual Box, but VB doesn't open the drive. I THINK I made an empty file. The "D" Drive that I am trying to recover has/had nothing but data on it, and I am using the same OS that I used last time it worked (xp pro). Also I tried another HD with the same cables hooked up and it worked fine, so it is not the cables.

More INFO:

Pandora says my drive "is not ready"

In Disk managment:

Layout: Partition
Type: Basic
File System: Blank
Status: Healthy(active)

In explorer if I try to open the drive it says

"The disk is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"

In Properties-for drive D

Type: Local Disk
File System; RAW

Used space: 0 bytes
Free space: 0 bytes

Capacity shows the whole drive as used-(the picture)

ANY help would be greatly appreciated

Lou

[Elvandil]

The programs you tried have nothing to do with drives. I hope you didn't do more damage.

In any case, it appears that the system does not see any file system on the drive. So you need to restore or create a partition table so that the drive's characteristics can be found by the OS.

How did the drive get this way? What led up to this situation? Did you remove partitions or anything?

What do you mean that the picture shows the whole drive as "used". You said it had 0 bytes and no file system (RAW).

[louann5840]

I did partition it. In Disk Management it says the layout is Partition. The only option I have when I right-click the drive is to delete the partition. In file properties is says the partition style is MBR

In properties for Drive D-when you go to my computer and right click on Drive D-it says the partition style is RAW, BUT, in Disk Management it shows the partition style as Basic.


In Disk Management when you right-click on the drive it brings up a different properties option. When you click on properties it shows "used space" as blue, and the graph shows the disk as all blue. Pink is for "not used" space. It doesn't make sense, I know. On that same (general) tababove the graph, it says "used space" 0 bytes.

How this came about...I got a bigger HD, and when I (finally) got them both hooked up, the d drive just would not work.

Now, I looked around at the forums here and downloaded "Get Data Back" and it did recognize some files on the disk, but you can't recover unless you get the paid version. It's not excessive, but I don't want to pay for anything unless I'm 100% positive that it will work. That could go on and on.

What else can I try??

Thanks for any help,
Lou

[Elvandil]

If you just got a new drive, be sure to remove its partitions and make new ones or you may lose access to that one, too.

Free recovery applications:

Diskinternals Recovery Boot CD
Pandora Recovery (Free for personal use)
Smart Data Recovery
Recover Files
Recuva
Restoration
Free Undelete (NTFS only)
Softperfect File Recovery
ADRC Data Recovery Tools
Undelete Plus
Data Recovery
PCI File Recovery
DriveRescue
Ultimate Data Recovery
Disk Investigator

Commercial:

O&O Disk Recovery
Paragon Mount Everything (Mounts any file system, CD/DVD burning, File Manager, Partitioner)
GetDataBack (For FAT or NTFS)
Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro
File Scavenger
Recover My Files
RecoverPlus Pro
Zero Assumption Recovery
Active@ File Recovery
Final Recovery
Recover4All Professional
Easeus Data Recovery Wizard
NTFS Recovery

[louann5840]

From what I told you do you think this is a FAT or NTFS? I am getting mixed messages from my computer about whether it's partitioned or not. Could I have used it for several years if it wasn't partitioned? I'm supposed to know that before I use the recovery software. When I used GetDataBack I said it was FAT, and that worked..it found thousands of files. So, does that mean it's FAT? (I couldnt recover without paying)

My new drive has NTFS.

Thanks,
Lou

[Elvandil]

All you can do it to try one of the recovered files and see if it works. If it is not corrupted, and the program lets you recover it, then I guess you are all set. If the program does not, try a free one. Though they tend to work the same way, some do a better job than others.

When doing recovery, all options are open, so that even on a drive that is formatted NTFS, using the FAT option is a good idea. After all, all you want is your files back, so use all your resources and try all the options.

[Gulo Luseus]

I dont have enough information to give a definitive, but... on th eoriginal drive, it sounds as if you had more than one partition. If this is the case, then I think yo uare looing in the wrong drive. If you had 2 partitions, say C and D, then install a new drive, windows will make the first (Or only) partition on the new drive D, and bump up the drive letter of the previous D, so it would become E. Let me know if this is the case, it sounds like less of a problem than hopefully it may be

[louann5840]

Yay, taking all this advice into consideration, I have recovered at least 1/2 maybe much more of my pics. And I got the most important ones which were of my beloved cat of 23 years who recently passed away. Thank God!!

I have to sort through the pics, because they are not in thier folders, I'm not exactly sure what I've got. But, I got what I wanted, so I'm done.

Thank you both for all your help. It really is important!! I appreciate it so much.

Thanks,
Lou

PS I used GetDataBack

[Elvandil]

Glad to hear it. But if you only got half, you might want to try another tool, at least one of the free ones. What is on the drive will be gone forever after it is used again.

You can mark your own threads "solved" using the button above.

[TheOutcaste]

You may want to give Test Disk a try. It sounds like the partition table got corrupted, and Test Disk is pretty good at fixing that kind of thing. If it works, all your pics will be back, and in their folders.

It's a command line interface, so not as user friendly as many would like.
Basically:
Install
Run
1st screen, press enter on create
2nd screen, Select drive with arrow keys, press enter
3rd screen, press Enter on Intel
4th screen, press enter on Analyse
5th screen, see what is there. It may or may not show a valid partition. You can post a screen shot of this screen so someone here can have a look.
Press enter on quick search
6th screen, press N
Hopefully, there will be a FAT/FAT32 partition shown. Post a screen shot of this screen as well.
Press P and see if it will list your files and folders. Folders are indicated by a d in the very first column. If this shows your files, writing the partition table back to the disk should fix it. You have to choose write, and confirm it before anything gets written, so it's nearly impossible to do by accident.
press q repeatedly to exit.

Test Disk is pretty safe to use, but it never hurts to get as much as you can recovered before doing anything that writes to the disk, just in case.

HTH

Jerry