Lost Hard Drive !

Hey folks,

my flatmate was rebuilding his pc and had a USB2.0 external drive plugged in as he was installing widows ..

he got to the 'select partition to install on' .. set the external as the main partition and hit 'L' !!

the drive didn't go thru the formating process but its still 'wiped' according to my machine ..

can i go in and reset/write the MFT(guess) to tell it it's not wiped ? i ask this as i don't think the drive has been properly formatted yet ..

ta

b

 

Well, you can download the Restoration 2514 program from Majorgeeks, which can help to recover deleted files:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Restoration_d4474.html

I don't know if it will work for you; I've used it to recover deleted files, but I don't know how well it will work on your external harddrive; as you know, the MFT is probably mangled. Resto2514 is non-destructive, so you can download it and install it onto an internal harddrive to run it from there, or you can copy it onto a floppy disk, and use it from the floppy drive. Since the external drive is not your boot drive, it won't make a difference how you use it, though running Restoration from the floppy drive can take a LOT longer...

Bottom line is, I'd install it onto the boot drive, then use it to scan the external drive to see if any files can be recovered.

Good luck; let us know how this turns out for you...

 

thanks mal..

i went and got myself 'Data Doctor Recovery' .. worked just fine .. recovered everything with folder/file structure intact ..

thanks for the help and i'll be back soon no doubt !!

b