Cleaned My ENTIRE Hard Drive. How can I restore it?

You have to go to a working PC, a library perhaps, or a friend.

What are you using to talk to us now ?

AddRAM said:

You have to go to a working PC, a library perhaps, or a friend.

What are you using to talk to us now ?

I'm using my Windows 10 laptop right now. So does that mean I could download the software on this laptop and connect that hard drive? I'm pretty sure it doesn't connect via usb, so I'll probably need clearance on that.

Hi,
You can install the hard drive in an exterior enclosure and try it on any os
Mini tool is compatible with win-10 I've used it for other operations
Cleaned My ENTIRE Hard Drive. How can I restore it?

Amazon.com: Sabrent ECS-STU35K USB 2.0 to 3.5-inch IDE/SATA or Serial ATA Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure Case (BLACK): Electronics

Why would you take out the HDD from the laptop, buy an external enclosure, put that HDD into that external enclosure and then try to recover the data?

Download the bootable CD Free version ISO from here https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

Note: Download the free version and not the server edition. If your Windows 7 was 32bit, download the 32 bit version. If 64 bit, download the 64bit version.

Create a bootable pendrive with that ISO using Rufus. https://rufus.akeo.ie/ ( Make sure your pendrive is empty. You should back up any data in it elsewhere before using Rufus on it.)

You can then boot your HP laptop from that pendrive and run Partition Wizard to check the HDD on your HP Laptop.

( Follow the procedure here Is there any way of saving a completely unrecognisable hard drive? to create the bootable PW pendrive. You will be using the PW ISO instead of Lucid Puppy ISO in that post. During the creation process Rufus will ask your permission to download the new vesa menu. Say yes and it will do the job.)

One Important question: Did you use diskpart Clean or diskpart cleanall. If you had used diskpart cleanall, it would have written zeros to all sectors of the HDD and your data is lost irrecoverably. The data which has been zeroed cannot be recovered by any means.

jumanji said:

blunde said:

........So if I was to create a bootable pendrive of the Bootable Partition Manager using Rufus and boot from the pendrive on the PC, I will be able to use the Partition Manager software without having to take out my hard drive and connecting it to a different PC is that correct? Also, if I do this, I won't need to purchase an external enclosure right?.......

You are right. You can use the bootable pendrive and run Partition Wizard.

Noted it is a desktop and not a laptop. It does not change the equation. Wherever it is mentioned as a laptop, you may read it as desktop :).

Please note that even if Partition Recovery Wizard is able to find the partitions of interest and shows the files, you may not be able to make your HDD bootable. You may have to use bootable Lucid Puppy to copy the files on your HDD to an external HDD.That only if Partition Wizard is able to recover the partitions successfully.

Wow the Bootable Partition Manager software successfully restored my entire drive. I can see all my files are still there via the explore partition feature.

But I ran into an issue which I just want to see whether you can help fix it. After I exited the software and took out my usb, the computer booted and showed me this screen:


link to original picture: http://oi66.tinypic.com/2j5o2f4.jpg

This is normal, it shows this screen for five seconds every time I turn on the computer, then later continues to my booting device. But, it doesn't boot to my hard drive. As you said earlier that it may not be able to boot, I think this is the same issue. My computer doesn't pass this screen and a symptom is that I can't access the setup, boot menu, system recovery or diagnostics either.

I again plugged in my usb so it becomes the booting device, and it booted properly to the Minitool Partition Manager software. Upon exiting, I wanted to test if the functions displayed on the boot menu work now, and they did. I was able to access setup. So I thought there is an error with my boot disk (which is the 100 MB partition named "SYSTEM").


Here is a picture of the software with my partitions so you could understand my preceding thoughts:
Link to original picture: http://oi64.tinypic.com/2lmqheg.jpg

I went back into the Partition Manager and saw that the status of the system partition was "None" so I changed it to Active. Still, the problem remained and I went back to the program to see that the HP partition (one where all my files are on) was automatically changed to "System" from "None."

I have some knowledge about hard drives and partitions so I thought that I may need to assign a drive letter to the HP partition, which was initially labelled as the C: drive which is default in Windows. But I just want to confirm if doing this will be safe. If it won't work, I might just use Lucid Puppy to copy all my files to an external hard drive. Or maybe if there is a way I could simply fix Windows 7 or reinstall it so all my files are intact.

This issue is almost solved so it'll be great help if you could tell me. It could save me a lot of time and money.