Can data be recovered from a partition whose file definitions are wrong?

[milesprower1010]

Yesterday, I accidentally kicked the power button on my file server while gparted was moving and resizing a data partition. Upon rebooting, the new, resized partition was present, with the directory structure, but few/no files (the process had just started). So I thought, ok, no problem, the old partition and all its data is still there, untouched, I can recover them. Well, I used a partition recovery software, and it saw the partition and recovered it- but to the wrong spot. The partition had 1.1TB of data or so, and was physically located in the latter half of the disk. The partition it recovered was at the front of the disk. All my files and folders are there, but windows says not a single one of them are actually readable. Pictures, movies, music all fail to open. I ran file recovery software on the drive, and it only identified the files that currently exist- all of which it says are "unrecoverable." I think the partition recovery software saved the MFT (it was an NTFS partition) but somehow all the file pointers are wrong or offset incorrectly, despite the whole directory structure being intact. I know the file data is still on the disk- I have been very careful not to write data to it (some data did get written, a very small amount when windows tried to run chkdsk, which was definitely a bad move, but I doubt it reached/affected the file storage areas).

What should I do to try and recover the files going forward? Is there anything I can do to fix the MFT? Or can I recover all the files from their resting place entirely without the MFT? If so, was the file recovery software I used just not doing a good enough job so as to find the files?

 

[hang-the-9]

From the sound of things, your file structures were pretty well messed up. I don't see you fixing this on your own now. You can try testdisk to get the partitions back to how they were. The recovery program saw the file headers for the names, but could not find where the data to those files lives on the drive, once that happens, you are in a bit of trouble. Professional data recovery service may be able to restore the files, but will be expensive.

You never want to be doing anything to a partition without having a backup of the data.

 

[amiga78]

I used to have an older version of Stellar Phoenix NTFS/FAT recovery. It had a RAW mode that could find files on drives without a valid partition table. But I don't know how their current version performs. Just realised this wasn't as helpful as I thought it would be =/ Good Luck.

 

[RolandJS]

I thought all recoveries are to be written onto external media or media that is not being worked on. (added the missing word, too late for the quote later, though )

 

[amiga78]

I thought all recoveries are to be written onto external media or media that is not the being worked on.

Yes of-course. The raw-mode just didn't care about partitions, it searched for the files directly on the HDD surface.