Startup Repair Offline / Lost data

Hi guys, new to the forums and in need of some help.

I was called in to look at my parents PC despite being no expert myself. Windows was unable to boot and was giving a message along the lines of it was unable to access the device?!. The given options were to try booting Windows 7 again (which brought me back to the same point) or to go to System Restore. Having already been unable to use a system repair disk after receiving the message 'startuprepairoffline', I tried System Restore.

Mistakenly I thought it would give me the option to set the system back to a previous date but it was actually going to reinstall the OS. I only realised this after I had started the restore so I turned the system off by holding the power button as I didn't want my files to be lost. I thought my next best bet would be to connect the PC hard drive to my laptop, copying across the files and resuming the System Restore for a fresh install.

When I took out the hard drive and connected it to my laptop I couldn't find any of the files. In fact, 142GB of the 143GB drive appeared to be free! So I'm wondering what has happened to the data as all folders on the drive are empty. Could the system restore process have deleted the files (or file table) in the short time it was running? And is there a way to recover them?

Thanks in advance (and apologies for the long post)

 

The MFT (Master File Table) could have been damaged. Only thing I can suggest is run Piriform's Recuva (available here at Major geeks) from the laptop on that 143 GB drive to see if you can access and recover the files from it.

 

What make and model computer was the hard drive in?

If you interrupted a complete factory partition system restore in progress, mdonah is probably spot on. Usually the first thing such a restore does is delete the existing OS partition in preparation for reinstall of the factory OS image that is contained in a hidden partition on the hard drive. It would help to know more information about the computer so its particular restore scheme can be researched. Did the computer still give you the option to do a restore?

You didn't see any partitions on the drive? Is it indeed just a 143gb hard drive, or perhaps a bit larger to account for a hidden partition? The restore data has to be somewhere on that drive - or another drive if the computer had multiple drives.

In addition to what mdonah suggested, if the computer's boot sequence now lacks the option for a complete restore, I suggest you try:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ultimate_boot_cd_(ubcd).html

It has several tools that are useful in situations like this. Make sure you do a bit of research on a particular tool before you decide to use it. Most of them have pretty basic GUIs. Once you are done with Recuva, place the hard drive back in the original computer and use the boot CD there (if it is needed).

Recuva you can use on the drive while it's still attached to your computer as a secondary drive.

 

So I tried using Recuva on the PC drive, recovering the data to an external hard drive to make sure I had enough free storage. The program ran for 10.5 hours recovering but when it finished and I tried to view the files I got the message that the external hard drive is not accessible, 'The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable' and that it needs to be formatted. I'm starting to panic a bit as this was a drive I had my own documents and backups saved to, and I therefore wouldn't want to format it.

So it looks like I have created a second problem in trying to fix the first! Is there a way to make this drive accessible again without formatting?