Combine my external hards together and lost everything

[ShariM]

Urgent!!!

I have a 500g external drive - which held all my client data
I also have a 250g as well which held all my personal files

I recently installed Windows 8- which I HATE!!
I went and purchase a book Windows 8 Visual Quick Tips by Paul McFedries

I was following the instructions to Combine Multiple Drives into storage pool p. 100 - at no time does it tell you that it overwrite

Now I have no idea how to recover documents lost. Are they lost forever?

I am now trying to reverse the storage spool, in the hopes I will be able to recover documents
Any help wil be greatly appreciated.



Please help.
Shari

 

[The_Prophecy]

Reversing the Storage Pool setup will not recover your data, however you should be able to use some data recovery software to get it back. Whatever you do though, do not attempt to use the drives that need their data recovered in any way after reversing the Storage Pool settings. In fact, once that is done it might be a good idea to simply disconnect the drives from your system until you have a data recovery program installed.

There are lots of good recovery programs out there, but unfortunately, you have to pay for them.

I'm a fan of Easeus Data Recovery Pro. It's $70 for a personal license, but It's managed to get both myself, as well as my customers (via my technician license) out of some really sticky situations. There are others out there if $70 is more than you want to spend of course. A quick Google search should turn up other options.

For future reference, any time you are messing around with Storage Pool, or RAID, or anything else that changes drive geometry, ALWAYS assume that the existing partition(s) is going to be wiped, even if there is no warning that this is going to happen. It's always a good idea to have a another backup as well, preferably off site using Cloud Storage solutions. If you have too much data to back up (like myself), the alternative would be to get another hard drive to hold the third copy of the data, and connect it to your computer only when you intend to make a more up to date copy, and then disconnect it and put the drive on a shelf in a closet or something.

Then, if you have that set up and are changing the Storage Pool or RAID settings (if you have a RAID array set up), you will always have another copy. It can be a pain to restore it if something does go south, but at least you actually have the data somewhere else.

 

[ShariM]

Where can I get directions to reverse

 

[The_Prophecy]

The Storage Spaces window under Control Panel should give you the option to reverse it. If you can't find Storage Spaces , search for it via the Start Screen. Unfortunately I can't tell you exactly how myself, as I do not have a pool configured on my system. A Google search only seemed to turn up how to set a up a pool, not how to revert back.

 

[124elian]

I'm a fan of Easeus Data Recovery Pro toooo..check this..http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm