Factory Reset - Gone Wrong, Data Recovery?

[DeanoBeano]

Hi,
Apologies if I've posted incorrectly.

1.Acer Aspire 5552 - attempted to use Acer erecovery Management to reinstall windows 7 due to corrupted files (Windows update wasn't working).

2.I chose option to have erecovery back-up my data to a separate partition before reinstalling OS; this didn't appear to work,
a. erecovery showed 'Restoring System 100%', 'Updating System 99%'
b. the programme seemed to get stuck on 'Updating System 99%'

3. I let the programme run for 3 hours then hard-powered the computer down, after powering up, computer reverted to erecovery Management programme where I commenced the procedure from the beginning, I left the computer running overnight - 9 hours later I was presented with the same problem as detailed in point 2a,b.

4. I also used the rescue disks that I created when buying the laptop - these didn't work either.

5. Not sure what to do I powered the computer down & powered back up - the computer attempted to 'resart services' but windows wouldn't fully load.

6. I pannicked & then did a factory reset; this worked, however I've lost about 40gb of files.

7. I pulled the hard-drive from the laptop immediately & haven't used it.

*What are my best options for attempting to recover my files (if any), I've downloaded Testdisk/photorec but have not had much success (I'm a novice with Testdisk/photorec).

*Any help would be greatly appreciated - I realise I should have done a separate back-up, but I trusted the acer erecovery management software to do this & it obviously hasn't!

Thanks
Dean.

 

[samuria]

Welcome to the forum. If file's have been over written the changes of recovery are very slim all you can do is try other recovery software you may get odd bits if file's were at the end of the disk

 

[DeanoBeano]

Hi,
Thank you for your reply, I will try Recuva & Wondershare Data Recovery which I found online.

 

[DeanoBeano]

Hi,
I have some questions about the recovery process I have undertaken so far:

1. I've used Recuva 1st; I have recovered 150GB of files to an external drive (Capacity 500GB).

2. I then used Testdisk/photorec to recover files that Recuva might have missed.
; this is where I have the problem:

a. Photorec keeps getting stuck whilst scanning the drive I'm recovering from (Capacity 250GbB).

b. I ran Testdisk several times which intermittently reports mismatching between number of heads to cylinders - I used the 'geometry' option to change this as recommended by Testdisk - I then resumed the photorec scan which continues for a bit longer but then stops for a long period of time.

c. Testdisk forum suggests the drive I'm recovering from may have bad sectors; it suggests taking an image of the drive and using photorec to scan this.

This is what I plan to do; I was wondering if it's the right thing to do?

1. Delete the files that I've already recovered.
2. Partition the HDD I'm recovering to.
3. Use Testdisk to take an image of the drive I'm recovering & save it to the now partitioned external drive.
4. Run photorec on the image & save the results to the other partition on the external HDD.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[RolandJS]

You are doing very well! Have you tested a few of the recovered files to make sure they actually can be read? And, as long as you do not allow anything to write anywhere to the hard-drive where the deleted folders and files reside -- you're doing great

 

[DeanoBeano]

Apologies for late reply!

Hi,


Apologies for my late reply! (I'd forgotten about this post).

Thank you, I appear to have resolved my issue, I just have numerous files to work through....