[vouksh]

I'm currently working (and posting from) a friends computer. I did some hardware work for him (he tried to build a PC himself and a few parts were DOA and/or incompatible, however that's done and fixed).

Well, he knew how to install Windows 7 himself, so I let him take the pc and he paid me for the hardware work. Well, he accidentally tried to use a windows xp disk, and while attempting to install winxp, he deleted the partition on the 1TB drive, instead of his 120gb boot drive without realizing it.

Well, he brought the computer back to me with his proper windows 7 disk, and had me install it, and during the install I noticed that the 1TB wasn't allocated, and it has a 100mb system reserved partition on it. Not sure if that was there before, but it's there now.

Is there any way to recover his partition? The 1TB was originally external, and is an SATA drive. I've tried Partition Table Doctor, and that doesn't find it, and TestDisk was taking for-ev-er. (after an hour it was only 20% done)

He's expecting to pick it up tonight. Should I tell him he's SOL (I haven't told him about the partition at all yet. Was trying to recover it before I dropped the bomb on him), or is there a (fairly quick) way to recover this partiton.

I'm pretty sure it was NTFS, seeing as it's 1TB.

 

[Networks]

Re: Recovering a partition... weird situation

Nothing quick about data recovery "trust me on this one" testdisk is a great utility but it can take time to scan a 1TB drive just due to the size. You can also download the trial version of r-studio scan the drive and see if it can locate the partition also get back data is another good program to locate lost partitions.

 

[vouksh]

Re: Recovering a partition... weird situation

Yea, after letting testdisk run a bit more, I decided to call him and see what he wanted to do. Turns out that there was nothing really important enough on the drive to warrant taking the time to recover it, just music and a few random things, and he's got most of the music on his iPod.

Thanks for the reply though, I'll keep that in mind if I ever need to do a partition recovery again =)