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data gone - format drive?

4K views 14 replies 3 participants last post by  merlin666 
#1 ·
I have an external harddrive which I used to back up my old XP laptop and has all programs etc. I wanted to rebuild some of my old computers applications as a virtual drive in my new Windows 7 computer, but when I attached the external drive to the virtual XP it was not found. When I switched the USB back to Windows 7 it asks to format the drive and there is nothing there. Also plugged it into an Ubuntu machine and it is not found. I ran Ontrack Easy Recovery disk diagnostics and it appears physically ok, but no recoverable partition was found. Is it possible that connecting the drive to virtual XP erased the drive?

After reading some of this forums I got the testdisk program but am not sure if I used it correctly:



I am interested in the 80Gb disk, and selected the D: drive first. As a result I got some very conflicting result, and have no idea how to interpret this:



Then I tried "physical drive 3" and got this result which indicates that everything is fine:



But when I go ahead to look for files on the partition I get this, suggesting that all is gone:



So where do I go from here? Is the information from image 2 useful at all to recover anything or did all the data magically get wiped?
 
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#5 ·
Update: recovering about 21000 files with recuva, estimated time left 3hours. There is no structure to recovered files (used deep scan) and it looks like recuva is not finding executable types. Can someone offer an explanation what may have caused corruption of the drive, and if there is a chance to restore it to the way it was?
 
#7 ·
Thanks, now I am running a scan with r-studio. This is a bit more informative and provides a "MFT outside of disk bounds" information.

1) Is there a way to "repair" the MFT?
2) If I manage to recover some more data, will the drive be usable again if I format it, or is this indication of physical problems and the drive is done?
 
#8 ·
The drive should be tested with the manufacture diagnostics the DOS version after recovery is finished to determine if the drive is ok to use. Some level of repairing the MFT can be done if you have the knowledge and are comfortable working on the drive in hex. That is way beyond the scope of this forum and no pro is going to share this hard earned info freely. With pro tools depending on what has happened to the drive to damage the MFT etc recovery with better results than you are currently getting are possible but not in the DIY realm. You are getting data back just not original file names. You are very fortunate that you are able to recover the data so make the best of it. The only way to get it back where it "was" is a restore from a backup which you don't have. This is a great time to start getting a good backup of your data to keep you out of this predicament in the future. If you find offense to anything above its not meant to come across that way its just the facts of data recovery life.
 
#9 ·
Thanks, actually r-studio is currently doing a great job recovering pretty much everything including the directory structure. I am extremely disappointed in ontrack recovery - it seems this tool is past its glory.

I am not sure what kind of DOS level diagnostics are available. Doing hex editing and advanced stuff is beyond my scope for sure. I think I woulds just be happy to have diagnostics to see if there is any potential in reformatting the drive and the using it for things that are not essential.
 
#12 ·
ntfslib is missing looks like a program error from testdisk based on my google searches. It could be a bug in the program as well. 2 things you can try find an older version of test disk and burn a copy to see if it gives same error this is assuming you are running the latest version or burn another copy just in case something went wrong with the first one.
 
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