I need some help recovering a hdd partition

reble · 07 Dec 2016

The OS is Win7 Home 64 bit on my laptop. I was using prog called Mini Tool Partition Wizard to wipe and reset the partition on a SD card back to 1 partition. I got careless and I didn't verify the drive letter that I was working on before wiping the partition. I ended up wiping the partition on my D hard drive in the external USB case.

Nothing has been done to the D drive yet. nothing has been written to it. I have tried 5 that are supposed to be free recovery and restore prog's. They let you scan the drive but they catch you when it comes to doing the recovery it self. They want you to pay to do the recovery and 1 of those progs I think partly reset the D hard drive. The D hard drive is now coming up as D:\ otherwise blank on Windows Explorer. Does this meen that the D hard drive has been partitioned and re-formated? And have I lost all hope of recovering the files. I am getting my old tablet ready to sell because I got a new tablet in the packaged deal with my new cell phone. As a side note. I was about 2/3rds done on updating the D hard drive backup dvd's. When I started work on the tablet's SD card. Is there a totally free scan and recovery prog that can still recover the files with? or is it already to late to recover the files?

Steve

Megahertz07 · 07 Dec 2016

Don't try to recover.
Ask Jumanji ffor help. He is the disk guru. https://www.sevenforums.com/members/jumanji.html

Lady Fitzgerald · 07 Dec 2016

reble said:

The OS is Win7 Home 64 bit on my laptop. I was using prog called Mini Tool Partition Wizard to wipe and reset the partition on a SD card back to 1 partition. I got careless and I didn't verify the drive letter that I was working on before wiping the partition. I ended up wiping the partition on my D hard drive in the external USB case.

Nothing has been done to the D drive yet. nothing has been written to it. I have tried 5 that are supposed to be free recovery and restore prog's. They let you scan the drive but they catch you when it comes to doing the recovery it self. They want you to pay to do the recovery and 1 of those progs I think partly reset the D hard drive. The D hard drive is now coming up as D:\ otherwise blank on Windows Explorer. Does this meen that the D hard drive has been partitioned and re-formated? And have I lost all hope of recovering the files. I am getting my old tablet ready to sell because I got a new tablet in the packaged deal with my new cell phone. As a side note. I was about 2/3rds done on updating the D hard drive backup dvd's. When I started work on the tablet's SD card. Is there a totally free scan and recovery prog that can still recover the files with? or is it already to late to recover the files?

Steve

It may be too late already. It's entirely possible one of the recovery programs you tried may have written over you data, in which case, goodbye data.I strongly recommend that people never attempt to recover data themselves since it is do easy to mess things up so, before you do anything else, consider using professional data recovery. Be aware it will be very expensive, easily thousands of dollars, with no guarantee of success.

While this coming too late to help you, to avoid this kind of data loss (or any other kind), I strongly urge you to invest in some external drives (or bare drives used in a dock)to use for backups. At least one onsite and one offsite backup drive for each drive in your computer is considered a bare minimum although only one backup drive per drive in the computer is better than nothing (in case money is tight; we've all been there). If you had all your data backed up, you could have easily and fairly quickly recovered from your current dilemma.

samuria · 07 Dec 2016

You dont use file recovery you need partition recovery specific software theres lots to try if one doesnt work try another parition recover free software‬‏ - بحث Google

jumanji · 07 Dec 2016

Did you really wipe the partition?

Did you get this screen to wipe?

I need some help recovering a hdd partition-08-12-2016-08-13-56.jpg

If you had wiped the partition as above, then there really is no chance of DIY data recovery.

If on the other hand, you had only deleted the partition/s ( calling it a wipe mistakenly- we all do :) ), then we may check to see whether data is still there and if it is, try to recover it.

Do this.

Install and run the trial version of GetDataback Simple https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm Please read the how-to Guides and all other documentation in that webpage.

Scan your external drive which you have massacred. ( Please and for heaven's sake unplug all other external drives/storage devices when you try to do anything on a particular drive/storage device and make it a habit) Check whether it shows all your files. You can also open and preview the files.

Report.

( Do not worry. This program does not write anything to your drive/s. So you can play with it as you like to get a grip on how it works, try different levels. Nevertheless read all documentation on the website.)

reble · 07 Dec 2016

I can't afford professional data recovery. I live on SSDI disabillty. I was about a bit under half done doing the latest backup to DVD's. Again it was do to my own careleessnes and lack of attention to detail. I also don't believe in those off site storage things, like Cloud, because any system that is online all the time can be hacked, not that I have anything worth hacking anyways. What other sort of backup's are there that I can use at home besides DVD's?

Steve

Lady Fitzgerald said:

It may be too late already. It's entirely possible one of the recovery programs you tried may have written over you data, in which case, goodbye data.I strongly recommend that people never attempt to recover data themselves since it is do easy to mess things up so, before you do anything else, consider using professional data recovery. Be aware it will be very expensive, easily thousands of dollars, with no guarantee of success.

While this coming too late to help you, to avoid this kind of data loss (or any other kind), I strongly urge you to invest in some external drives (or bare drives used in a dock)to use for backups. At least one onsite and one offsite backup drive for each drive in your computer is considered a bare minimum although only one backup drive per drive in the computer is better than nothing (in case money is tight; we've all been there). If you had all your data backed up, you could have easily and fairly quickly recovered from your current dilemma.

Lady Fitzgerald · 08 Dec 2016

reble said:

I can't afford professional data recovery. I live on SSDI disabillty. I was about a bit under half done doing the latest backup to DVD's. Again it was do to my own careleessnes and lack of attention to detail. I also don't believe in those off site storage things, like Cloud, because any system that is online all the time can be hacked, not that I have anything worth hacking anyways. What other sort of backup's are there that I can use at home besides DVD's?

Steve

Lady Fitzgerald said:

It may be too late already. It's entirely possible one of the recovery programs you tried may have written over you data, in which case, goodbye data.I strongly recommend that people never attempt to recover data themselves since it is do easy to mess things up so, before you do anything else, consider using professional data recovery. Be aware it will be very expensive, easily thousands of dollars, with no guarantee of success.

While this coming too late to help you, to avoid this kind of data loss (or any other kind), I strongly urge you to invest in some external drives (or bare drives used in a dock)to use for backups. At least one onsite and one offsite backup drive for each drive in your computer is considered a bare minimum although only one backup drive per drive in the computer is better than nothing (in case money is tight; we've all been there). If you had all your data backed up, you could have easily and fairly quickly recovered from your current dilemma.

Good cloud backup services, such as Carbonite.com, Crashplan, and Backblaze have security measures in place to avoid infective files penetrating your system. However, I can understand your concern and it is still possible to safely backup your drives. As I mentioned before, you need to get at least one external drive or bare drive (two would be much, much better) that you put in a dock.

There are various programs you can use to backup your files to the external drive(s). Imaging is the best way to backup system files (OS and programs). It is best you have your data separated from your system files, such as using a separate boot drive for the system files or putting them on a separate partition of a drive with the rest of the drive having a data partition (the fewer partitions you have on a drive, the better; it is far more efficient to organize data with folders instead of partitions). For imaging, I highly recommend Macrium Reflect Free. Images should be stored on a backup drive (or, like I do, you can store them on a data drive or partition in the computer for convenience but that drive or partition must be backed up on an external drive).

For backing up data (not system files), I recommend FreeFileSync. Many people recommend SyncToy. FreeFileSync is a folder/file syncing program that compares the drive or partition being backed up with the backup drive. When set to Mirror (not the same as RAID 1), FreeFileSync will then copy to and delete files on the backup drive as needed to make the backup drive be essentially a clone of the data drive or partition. Folder/file syncing is far more efficient than other forms of backups because only files that have been added, changed or deleted since the previous backup update will be processed instead of processing all the data on the drive, saving a lot of time.

reble · 08 Dec 2016

I use the D HD in the USB case as storage to hold the prog and so on that I dowload. The 250 gb Sata HD that was in the USB case was getting old and giving me errors. Everything was fine after I copied everything off the 250 gb hd to the C drive and then I put in a good/used 500 gb Sata hd that I pulled from a laptop with a dead power charger/regulator. everything was fine until I wiped the wrong partition. Just to copy the D drive to a directory in the C drive took a good chunk of the night, about 5 hours.
I am using a Dell Inspiron 3541 laptop as my main computer. The D hd is in a USB external case. What is a "bare drive"? Right now I back up the D drive directory's to DVD's. There was only 2 directory's on the D drive that I didn't get a chance to backup to DVD's. There is no operating system files or dir's on the D drive and I don't keep data files on the C (system) drive. I just store the install or setup exe's for the prog's on the D drive and data. Is there a better way to store the backups at home rather then using DVD's?

Lady Fitzgerald said:

] Good cloud backup services, such as Carbonite.com, Crashplan, and Backblaze have security measures in place to avoid infective files penetrating your system. However, I can understand your concern and it is still possible to safely backup your drives. As I mentioned before, you need to get at least one external drive or bare drive (two would be much, much better) that you put in a dock.

There are various programs you can use to backup your files to the external drive(s). Imaging is the best way to backup system files (OS and programs). It is best you have your data separated from your system files, such as using a separate boot drive for the system files or putting them on a separate partition of a drive with the rest of the drive having a data partition (the fewer partitions you have on a drive, the better; it is far more efficient to organize data with folders instead of partitions). For imaging, I highly recommend Macrium Reflect Free. Images should be stored on a backup drive (or, like I do, you can store them on a data drive or partition in the computer for convenience but that drive or partition must be backed up on an external drive).

For backing up data (not system files), I recommend FreeFileSync. Many people recommend SyncToy. FreeFileSync is a folder/file syncing program that compares the drive or partition being backed up with the backup drive. When set to Mirror (not the same as RAID 1), FreeFileSync will then copy to and delete files on the backup drive as needed to make the backup drive be essentially a clone of the data drive or partition. Folder/file syncing is far more efficient than other forms of backups because only files that have been added, changed or deleted since the previous backup update will be processed instead of processing all the data on the drive, saving a lot of time.

Lady Fitzgerald · 08 Dec 2016

A bare drive is one that is sold without retail packaging (it is up to the seller to safely package it for shipping), cables, screws, or a software disk. In this case, I used the term to refer to an internal drive with the case and, in the case of 3.5" drives, the power supply of an external drive. Bare drives are usually significantly less expensive than retail packaged drives and, since they don't have an external drive's case, are lighter and takeup less room. They also tend to be better quality than the drives sold in external drive cases.

I prefer bare drives for my backup drives because I can get better quality drives, they take up far less room in storage, are easier, for me, to use, and they cost less. For backing up my notebooks, I have a couple of bare drives I put in my own enclosures to protect them when in my notebook case when on the road.