Solved New install & lost all documents, recovery options?

[swwebb1]

Hey Guys,

New to the forum as I've come stuck on a pretty major issue. I hope this is the right place to put it, sorry to admins if not.

I was using Acronis Disk Director to resize a partition which subsequently failed due to bad blocks and then needed a boot disk to do a startup repair, I went through the options and wouldn't repair, running it a number of times. left without PC and no other ideas In my infinite wisdom decided to reinstall windows over the top of the old OS, (didnt use the format option).

I had thought this would leave the old files in windows.old liek ti used to, but seemingly not. I'm running a 500gb hard drive but the new partition is only recognising 252 which was the remaining space prior to me messing everything up. I've now ran getdataback for NTFS and it doesn't bring up any of my old documents, but I can find old program files etc..

Does anyone have any idea how I can get my old documents and if it's even possible? Ideally I could do with images folder and music, but that isn't the end of the world if I don't get those...

I've now realised the importance of a backup and that my googledrive will come in much more useful....

Many thanks for your help in advance

Steve

 

[swwebb1]

Still probing into what exactly I've done and I'm a bit confused by the partition sizes. See where computer management shows 465GB and windows only 252GB.

Anyone ever seen this before?

 

[F5ing]

Still probing into what exactly I've done and I'm a bit confused by the partition sizes. See where computer management shows 465GB and windows only 252GB.

Anyone ever seen this before?

I realize you're trying to show as much info as possible, but it would be a tad bit better (for me at least) to split that into two screenshots. Either way, I gotta think about that one. Don't recall ever seeing anything like that before. How does the disk appear in Diskpart?

To recover files you might try photorec. You'll lose some filenames, but whatever can be recovered most likely will be: TestDisk Download - CGSecurity

The more you use the PC the fewer files you'll be able to recover intact.

 

[gregrocker]

If you booted the installer then you'd likely not get the windows.old folder, but you cannot count on it as a backup method anyway. Always keep files you can't afford to lose backed up externally to another HD, flash, DVD or upload to MS Skydrive which offers 7gb free storage for each Windows Live ID, and can Sync Any Folder to Your SkyDrive Account.

 

[swwebb1]

Thanks for the help guys, just signed up to SkyDrive so I can avail of the storage on top of google drive account.

Miraculously I've recovered everything, took your advice and shut the laptop down, swapped HDD to an old one I had lying around, booted up windows 7 on that. Ran getdataback with the original HDD plugged in via USB caddy. Took a while & is still running, but it managed to recover 95% of what I needed, don't know why it didnt show the previous time.

Once finished I'm rebooting on original HDD disk, will delete all partitions and complete fresh install. Still havent worked out what is going on with the partitions, maybe a corrupt HDD? Either way I'll have everything backed up externally from now on...

On a side note I've been flicking through the forum & picked up quite a efw tips!

Cheers for your help guys..

Steve

 

[gregrocker]

In the future use free Partition Wizard bootable CD which like DIsk Mgmt does not fail - in countless thousands of partitioning operations used here.

Run Disk Check on the HD.

Then I'd wipe HD with Diskpart Clean Command before following these same steps for Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7