Solved NTFS Formatted HDD shows up as unallocated space after I/P shutdown

[Kritos]

Ok...So the title speaks for itself, and I'm stuck. My PC recently locked up b/c of my video card. Something w/in the audio driver for the HDMI/DVI drivers do not completely agree with adobe flash 10.0 and on, but thats a different problem. What I am trying to do is recover my data from my brand new 1.5TB Seagate 7200 RPM HDD. So my PC locked up, forcing me to manually restart...which happens on and off 100's of times since ive had the video card, and am very dissapointed and will never buy another XFX or possibly Radeon ever again!! Anyways..after I restarted, my HDD wouldn't show up in my compter which immediately made me freak out. I checked device manager and there it was...went into manage>storage, and there it was as 1373GB unallocated space...WTF!!! I have downloaded and tried a few programs, tried Raw Recovery and just gave me a bunch of useless files. I have about 850GB of data on there and I am sure that I can get my info off of it as long as i dont delete the partition, but not sure exactly what method would produce said results. PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!!!

 

[Brds7t7]

Hello Kritos,

Have you checked the drive for errors? Is the drive an internal or external drive? Have you got backups of all the files on that drive?

Also, Easeus and minitool do free programs called Partition Recovery:

Free Partition Recovery Software - Recover Deleted FAT/NTFS/HFS/HFS+/HFSX/Ext2/Ext3 Partition in Windows and Mac OSX.

http://www.minitool-partitionrecovery.com/recoverymore.html

Just make sure you don't write any data onto that drive until you have managed to recover your files/partition. As you'll be writing over the data and will make it unrecoverable.

 

[Kritos]

Burdus32,

First of all, thank you for the reply! It is an internal drive, and unfortunately, since I had just installed the drive I moved all of my important data onto it with NO backup (stupid). My video card locked my pc up and I manually restarted. The drive didn't show up in my computer, and once I found it in my computer>manage>storage, and saw it was now unallocated space, I did a disk check and there were no errors. I then proceeded to try and find a recovery program that suited my needs and situation. I will definitely try those programs you mentioned, and thanks again for the advice! I do have one more question though. What would be the best method to get all my info back...raw recovery, cloning, imaging or any other method there may be for an unallocated drive? Thanks.


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[Brds7t7]

You'd have to see if you can recover the partitions first. Did you have just one partition? Or was it split onto more than one drive? Eg. C drive for Windows and D drive for data?

 

[Kritos]

I have 2 total internal drives: 750GB (not sure which brand) HDD C Drive for windows and the 1.5TB Seagate HDD D Drive as slave, and it only had one big partition.


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[Brds7t7]

OK give those programs a try first. As for backing up there are a lot options. It's better to have a few different backup strategies.
I use Windows system imaging, macrium reflect and a programme called Casper for my data backup. The first two image the system drive and Casper backs up my data on a folder to folder basis. I don't like the idea of having my data packed into one archive in case the archive gets corrupted. My data is easier to access if it just copies the folders.
There are a lot of good backup programs around.

Hope that makes sense?

 

[Kritos]

Thanks so much for everything, you have really helped me out. I have those mini-tool programs now and still trying to get my data. The quick scan couldn't find anything, so I'm going to try the full scan and keep my fingers crossed. If I can't get anything out of it, I will definitely be backing up everything from now on because I have learned this lesson the hard way. I will post my results. Thanks again!


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[Brds7t7]

If the minitool program doesn't work try the Easeus one too. Don't give up hope yet. Remember that the data isn't actually gone until it's been overwritten so there may be some other ways of getting it back.

 

[Kritos]

True, I'll keep that in mind. I am still scanning and the file counter is steadily going up and up so, hopefully by the end I will be able to see my data. I had to start over because my pc decided to freeze and then crash when the deep scan was 4hrs in and at 60%, so that was discouraging, but I restarted and everything seems ok still, so we will see in about 4 hrs what turns up.


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[mjf]

It may be too late at this stage but you could try
Partition Wizard Bootable CD
and try
1st) Partition Recovery Wizard
2nd) Free Data Recovery Wizard

 

[Kritos]

Ok, so by using mini-tool power data recovery I finally saw my data for the first time in about a week, and I am ecstatic! I am currently recovering everything and unfortunately have to wait some more but it's all good...props to you Burdus32 and all the help. And props to mini-tool and their awesome program. Now everyone can check this thread out when they have a bad day like me.


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[Brds7t7]

That's great! It should restore it all back now.

Report back if it works and don't forget to mark the thread as solved if it's all okay. It'll help people in future.

 

[Kritos]

All is right in the world again...

Everything is good again...got all my data back, and I've learned a lot thanks to you Burdus32. Cheers, and hope this helps people that get into my situation in the future. And if you ever have any questions don't hesitate to ask. This is the first time anything like this happened to me, and I have always known better, just never had multiple back-up strategies...let me just say, never going to be that dismissive with a PC again..Wheew!

 

[Brds7t7]

That's great you got it all back. One thing you could look at is buying an external drive. Internal drives are good as backup but if you ever get a virus it could infect both internal drives. You could do a 2nd backup to an external and only plug it in when you are doing a backup. That way you'll still have the data safe on your external drive until you've cleaned the infection.

Maybe I'm just too cautious but better to be safe than sorry I say