How to my files back

Hi, I inadvertantly did a quick format (got distracted) in the middle of a secondary back up and am trying to get my files back.

The drive (on a Windows XP Pro system)
Iomega 320GB USB External (probably just one partition)

Software
TestDisk (TD) - because so many seem to recommend it

Problem
I am not a black box person (scared to death of the things). The TD pages show about recovering partitions and deleted files. I have not deleted my files, so they should all be there (hopefully). The partition was not deleted either. This may be me totally misunderstanding what the TD pages are saying.

Files (about 400,000 of them - many are small perl scripts and test files)
18.9GB worth of them. Most have had the secondary back up, so I have them. It was just the recent ones. The files types are:
Text files
.pl, .lib, .lbf, .txt, .html, .cfg, .cgi, .doc, .js, .db and some without an extension

Image/Graphic files
.psd, .bmp, .png, .jpg, .gif
.fh7, .eps

What to do?
If somone is really experienced in using TestDisk, could you help me on what to do in TestDisk please?

Like, can I explore the disk and grab files by folder - instead of ploughing thru 18gb+ worth of individual files? I'm guessing on this.

I've never done this before as my engineer always did it. I'm retired now so can't afford his fees and have to attempt it myself.

Thanks in advance - Ted

 

Testdisk is a very good program but since your situation is only a quick format I would suggest trying Partition Wizard first as it is easier to use.

You can try it and see what it finds. It makes no changes to the disk until you Apply the changes. Here is a guide which is basically all that should be necessary for a quick format situation: http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/partition-recovery.html You want Full Disk and Quick Scan as indicated in pictures one and two.

At the fourth screen you can double-click on the found partition (probably only one) and it should give you an Explorer type tree view of the files on the drive. If it looks correct and you see all your files then hit the Finish button which takes you back to the main PW window. There in that window hit Apply to rewrite the partition table. (If PW finds more than one partition ask for advice. You want to look at the starting and ending LBA numbers to make sure they don't overlap before selecting more than one partition)

Remove the external and then reconnect it. See if XP now sees the drive and you have access to your files.

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If PW doesn't find what you are looking for we can try testdisk.

 

Thanks Sach2, I've downloaded PW and will give that a try.

Any idea how long it takes?

If it is several hours, I could try running it overnite and see what it looks like in the morning (before Rugby World Cup Final).

 

The quick scan looks for the beginning of any partition and then skips to the end of it rather than go sector by sector. So if you have a 300gb partition it will find that immediately and then jump to the 300gb mark on the HD and scan the remaining 20gb of the hd sector by sector. The sector by sector takes a while but I should think less than hour no matter how much space is involved.

In your case the whole thing should take 20 minutes tops for identifying the partitions. A few minutes for you to double click the partition(s) in the list of found partition(s) and look at the list of files. You select the partition that has all your files (I would generally say select all partitions but if there is more than one ask for advice since on an external that may have been formatted more than once I don't want to generalize) Then just a minute to Finish and Apply changes.

You are not copying anything just recovering a lost partition and writing the information to the partition table so all time spent is analyzing the drive not copying files.

 

I've got it up and all I see is System Volume Information and Recycler - total of about 24k.

That's all, so I guess all the data is lost.

 

Did it only find one partition? If so go ahead and do the Full Scan overnight and see what it finds. It won't do any harm as you aren't writing to disk, you can always try testdisk afterwards. As long as you aren't writing files to the drive if the files are there they can be recovered.

I'll take a quick look at testdisk to get you a step by step but PW will still be easier if it can find the older partition. The PW full scan may present you with options of 320gb partitions to recover with one having considerably more used space (your files) than others.

 

Yes, only 1 partition.

It's morning and is running - about 35% (as the All Blacks have it 5-0 at half time).

Looks like it'll take around 5-6 hours for the full scan. Doesn't give me any details yet, just runs....

 

After the Full Scan it's exactly the same as the Quick Scan. So I guess the files are gone.

Thanks a lot for your help. I'll just do a reformat and chalk it all down to experience

 

Don't give up yet. You can use Photo-Rec to get back your files or for a simpler solution you can use Minitools Power Data Recovery to get back uo to 1GB or files for free. If you can find v6.5, you will be able to recover an unlimited amount if it is possible. Just remember to save back to someplace other than the external drive you are retrieving the data from.

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

Recover formatted disk or partition

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

PhotoRec Step By Step

 

Already done the format.

The main bits I wanted were some brands that I did. I can, manually (when I'm in a good mood ) rebuild them from gifs, bmps and jpegs. I had just thought it would be nice if I could recover them. There were a few invoices and some fonts (which I'm already trying to locate again) as well.

Thanks for your time anyways.

This is the only time it has ever happened to me in 20 years.

One thought just occurred to me. Is it possible to run two USB 2 disks like a RAID? Where when I save a file on one it also saves it on the second drive? That way if something ever happens, I have a good copy. Though I think there might be speed problem - dunno.

 

Sorry, I am not familiar enough with raid but I have never heard of using USB drives in a raid configuration. Hopefully somebody else on the board will give their opinion on this.

 

As the idea occurred while I was typing in the reply, it was only a passing thought.

I've done a search since and the general consensus seems to be that it's not a good idea. There can be speed problems and read problems. Especially as both my drives are powered via my Dell Inspiron 9300. It has 6 USB ports, 4 rear and 2 on one side. The drives are plugged into the rear ones. I can see, read and save on either, but it may be somewhat iffy to try doing a software RAID.

As the machine is now only going to be used for Photoshop work and the odd Perl script development, then I can do what I did before and just drag/drop (drive and flash stick) as I work.

I might be able to do it on my IBM laptop though, as I have my main drive and an ultrabay (slide-in internal) drive. Again, just a thought, hmmmm......