Recovery of backup drive

Hi everyone. I have windows 7 running 32bit and have 2 hard drives installed. One is C: drive that has windows on it the other which use to be used as my main hard drive is now only used as a back up drive. It was formatted before i started using it as a back up drive.

I backed up windows live mail, Nortons identity safe, and photos and other documents to this back up drive.
I just had to reformatt my C: drive and reinstall win 7 so did the usual back up of files etc: to my backup internal seagate drive.
When i went to open it to restore my nortons identity safe and livemail (just a few files i needed) the drive was still seen on my computer but had somehow become corrupted and would not open.

I did a checkdisk using a seagate tool and it ran for a long time (80gb drive) and showed no errors at all. So i did a quick formatt and now i have acees to the drive. I now now that there are programs that could fix the corruption but alas learned this after i did a quick format.

I thought id be able to use a recovery program that would get my files back.
But when the recover files they are still picking up files from when i had xp installed on this hard drive. The files are not being recovered in folder either.

Most annoyingly my windows live mail folder, Nortons .npm extension and .iaf files are not being recovered.

Nothing has been written to the drive since i did the quickformat as i have the 2 drives and i want the best chance at recovery.

Does anyone know of a program that will maintain folder structure as well as resore the not so common files like the ones i have listed.

i have tried easeus, recover my files and another one that i have since removed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know i should not have done the quick format but at the time i was just thinking that a recovery program would be able to help.

The drive is in perfect health now so im not sure what got corrupted in the first place. I am pretty good with computers but the recovery programs are not making much sence to me.

Sorry for the long post.....Tracey:-o

 

Hi,

I'm just going to post a possibility of recovering your original file structure which still might be corrupted even when recovered. You are wise to not have written anything to the drive and you probably don't want to write anything with my suggestion but it may be worth running it far enough to see what possibilities are available.

As you have determined Window's chkdsk which looks at the file system is different than Seagate's scan for bad sectors on the HD. They are two different types of corruption. If you can restore the pre-format file structure then perhaps Windows's chkdsk will be helpful.

Partition Wizard's partition recovery will attempt to find lost partition such as the one you deleted. It differs from Easeus (not sure which Easeus product you used) as it is less automatic and shows you possible partitions before restoring them. This guide in screenshot #4 shows you the possible output. Double-clicking on any partition in the list will show you the basic list of files. You would be looking for the one that matches the last set of files you had on that partition. You would also be comparing the starting and ending LBAs of any partitions it finds. You can't recovery two partitions that are using the same LBA. So if it finds one partition that starts at LBA 1000 and ends at LBA 5000 and a second that starts at LBA 5001 and ends at LBA 10050, those two partitions don't overlap and could both be recovered. However if the second one were to start at LBA 2000 and end at LBA 10050 there would be an overlap problem because both partitions would be using some of the same LBA (those between 2000 and 5000 overlap).

So you would install PW and then click on the DISK # for your 80gb HD. Then select Partition Recovery. Try Full Disk and Quick scan option and see what it comes up with in screenshot #4. Double click the partitions to get a list of files. If none match what you expect go back and try again with the Full Disk and Full Scan options. See if any match up to your list of files. You can just hit cancel to avoid any actual partition recovery but running the program will tell you if there is at least a possibility of getting back to before the format.

If none of the possible partitions match your expected files than data recovery is the next step which probably will be much as you have experienced with no proper folder structure.

 

Hi, thank you both for the reply. The things i had backed up in there were just copied and pasted into the har drive. I didnt use a back up program. The files were microsoft office files, Windows live files, .iaf mail accounts my Nortons identity safe that contains all passwords to websites and banking etc:
It also contained photos and Boardmaker project files. Even serial numbers to my programs were in there. So a big Dohhh on my part.

The error message was "windows is unable to access drive: D as it is corrupt" or something very similar.
Before doing anything i shut down and restarted to see if hard drive was still being seen in the post which it was and it was still being seen in my computer so that was when i ran a disk check from seagate. I will look at the info given to me by Sach2
I am actually the admin and it isnt an ownership issue. Once i did the quick format the drive is completely accessable. Not that i have written anything to it as it was just a storage drive.
I will post back to let you all know how i get on.....

 

If the message is that it was corrupt then Windows chkdsk may very well help. It specifically looks for corruption in the file system and attempts repairs, often with very good results.

I suspect that PW may very well find your most recent partition and be able to display the file list using Full disk and Quick scan options. If that is true then we can try restoring that partition and then running Windows' chkdsk on it to see what it can do.