Erased Partition on external hard drive by mistake! Help!

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d4n131m3j14

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Hi! I had just installed XP on my system and after installing some software from my external hard drive i realized that something went wrong with the install so i decided to reinstall the os. I forgot to switch off my external hard drive and when windows loaded all the files and asked me where did i wanted to install xp and all that, both drives appeared, my internal hd and the external with all my data. I was doing something else at the same time and i wasn't paying all the attention i should have so i deleted the partition of my usb Hd and just after i did it i realized my mistake and in a moment of desperation I removed de usb cable and turned off the ext hd. The file system for that drive is ntfs and there was only one partition. I did not formatted the ext drive, i only deleted the partition.

I need to recover those files, they are irreplaceable and really important.. If anyone has a solution it will be gladly appreciated.
 

SomeJoe7777

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No, Partition Magic is for manipulating existing partitions, not recovering them. You need these dedicated data recovery tools to do what you need to do.
 

SomeJoe7777

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Not really, Active@ Partition Recovery will only write the MBR/partition table back to the drive when it has completed the scan and found all the partition information.

GetDataBack treats the drive as read-only, and writes your recovered data onto a 2nd drive.
 

d4n131m3j14

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Oh my god you ARE a god! thank you so much! Active partition recovery did the job better and faster than i expected! everything is great! Thank you so much!
 

warshez

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i had my whole drive formatted by mistake. i recommend you use ontrack file recovery professional. you will recover most of the data but you will lose their filename
 

CincinnatiKid

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I was in the same situation. I accidently deleted my ext HDD partition when upgrading from XP Home to XP Pro. I read that you said that Active Partition Recovery 5 worked well and it had a demo. I tried the demo and it displayed all of my ext HDD files. So I bought the software to recover my files. It cost me $41.14 (canadian conversion).
It's a terrific product. My drive was about 250GB and it took about 4 hours to do a superscan but a very short time to recover my files.

Again, great product. Thanks for the great advice you gave about this product.
 

FelipeBR

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Hello,
Right now I'm scanning my faulty HD with GetDataBack 2.31 (which was a part of Hiren's Boot CD 8.9). Earlier on today I used Active Partition Recovery, but the only way I could repair the partition was fixing the MBR. I didn't do it because I was afraid that maybe I could loose everything if some weird MBR would be written. Specially since I could see the folders and files names... Anyone know it that'd be safe?

Well, 30 minutes to go until GetDataBack finishes scanning my drive... hope it's all ok.

Thanks for any info!
 

FelipeBR

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Well... I went to format my mom's HD. I setup there a C drive and a D drive, so it'd be easier to install just windows, since she'd keep her files and e-mail at D. Ok. Booted windows, deleted C partition and BAM! D partition also got sucked in... So, right there I stopped, since i knew data shouldn't have been lost yet. Put the HD in my computer and am trying to recover the data... But just now I found this thread, so I've been all day scared to death that she'd loose her business stuff... GetDataBack is still scanning, just a while till it finishes... hopes all goes well.
 

d4n131m3j14

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if you only erased the partition just use "active partition recovery" it will take seconds and wont erase anything (if its still there) but if you formated the hd use that one you are using.. I repeat, if you only erased the partition just use active partition recovery, because get data back is probably going to take too much time doing innecessary h¿things and messing ups folders and names..
 

FelipeBR

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Active Partition Recovery did show me the files, so yeah, all the windows xp installer did was erase the partition info.

I ended up using the GetDataBack on a friends advice. It took one hell of a long time (about 1 hour!) but in the end it did work.

So, you're saying that, in Active Partition Recovery, if I had chosen the "Fix MBR" option, there would be no chance at all that i'd loose the data that was there? (Im only saying the data was there because the program told me so when i did a scan...)
 

migrax

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I have done the same thing, but here is a tip that might work next time: if you use a slackware startup disk, you can restore a deleted partition without even a second thought. But that is for a ReiserFS partition, I am not sure if it would work with NTFS. Partitioning software just alters the boot sector, I believe. It doesn't actually delete the files in the partition. I believe you can also do the same with Patition Magic, defintely something I would keep in my Windows arsenal of must have utilities.

migrax


God makes the colors, but the color doesn't make you God -Rez
 

d4n131m3j14

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yes, active partition recovery would only write some kilobytes of information and you are done! in less than a minute with no scanning at all.. the other ones rewrite the files and slowly scan stuff they are good when your hd has major issues, like being formated or so.. i know this now.. but i did the same as you when i had the problem.. altough i used active partition recovery after i scanned and then i knew scanning had wasted several hours of my life.. because erasing a partition means that you erase some files that allow the computer to read the hd, you just need to restore them and you are good to go, your files are untouched.. but tell us how was your experience with getdataback?
 

FelipeBR

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Hi and thanks for all the feedback!

So, next time I guess my pain will not take that long and I'll use Active Partition Recovery :)

GetDataBack is quite a nifty program... It took about 1 hour to scan the harddrive plus 10 minutos to do something else which i didn't pay much attention (sorry :p I think it was indexing the files, or something like that...) and then, bam! The files were all there (in the program!) for me to copy (again, in the program!). So I just selected the folders I wanted, and told it to copy to a folder on my good harddrive. Thats it, the files are perfect, no corruption so far. Its an awesome program! Slow, but awesome! I used the version which is with Hiren's Boot CD 8.9, but there is a newer version around.
 

sanfrangirl

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i had the same problem of re-installing windows xp and accidently deleting all of my files from my external drive. well actually, it was the technician on the phone who failed to tell me that he was going to delete the partitions on my pc so that i could remove all drives safely. i used a demo of Active Partition Recovery per the suggestions made on this posting and did a super scan. it seemed to have found my deleted files. of course, in order to restore those files i had to pay $41 to acquire the registration key for the program. after attempting to restore the data on and off for 2 days, i called LSoft Technologies, the seller of the program. i only got to a voicemail after several calls and i left 2 messages in 2 weeks requesting for help. i opened a ticket online for tech support, following ALL tedious directions. i got a confirmation and ticket number emailed to me, but no response after 2 weeks.

Active Partition Recovery IS A HOAX!! whatever number it is up in canada that the website says to call is merely reaching a voicemail box with NO human accessibility. i'm very upset about wasting $41 for nothing. i would like to report this company to a government claims institute. i'm not sure what the previous postings here are talking about when they state successful data recoveries. my experience was far different. is someone from LSoft Technologies writing all these postings??
 

d4n131m3j14

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we are not discussing if its a good company or if they support center meets our needs.. just the capabilities of the program, it is good and that's it. i am sorry they are that bad, but then again this forum is about how can you recover your drive, and this program gets the job done.
if you already payed and there is no answer i think the way to do it is download it from a peer 2 peer program, this is illegal and i do not recomend it, but in your case is the only fair thing to do..
 

SomeJoe7777

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Well, from your description we don't know exactly what happened to your external drive. If you were following technicians directions and he told you to delete partitions, off hand I'd say that technician didn't know what he was doing.

No matter what, Active@ Partition Recovery is for one specific purpose - that is to recover a partition that was deleted with a partitioning tool. If anything else on the drive was overwritten, including partition boot sectors, portions of the file system/MFT, directory information, etc. then Active@ Partition Recovery is the wrong tool and will not work properly.

In those cases, GetDataBack for NTFS is the proper recovery tool.

Nevertheless, Active@ Partition Recovery is excellent software, works perfectly and precisely for it's specific purpose. I have used it personally and it has perfectly recovered many partitions for me.

If their phone support is not working properly for whatever reason, try their e-mail support. Sometimes companies have much better response via e-mail than phone.

I object to you calling the program a "hoax", it is not. There is no conspiracy here for the conspiracy theorist in you, no one here works for LSoft or owns their stock. We simply have used the program with good results.
 

chris1784

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hello everyone, i just had the same problem. I've tried the program suggested (active partition recovery) but it doesn't find the partition.
Here is where my situation might differ. I bought this external HDD two days ago, I uploaded all my documents into it, about 15 to 17 gigs and then went on to install Windows back on my PC. During that process, I accidently erased the partition on my external HDD. Now that I'm trying to recover my partition, the "Active@ partition" program sees my HDD as a 232Gig Drive. I went on to Disk Management and it shows the 232Gig unallocated drive. Keep in mind that I uploaded about 15 to 17 Gigs. So my question is, how do I go about resolving this problem. Where you guys, who fixed this problem, able to see the entire drive? Thank a lot for the help

Chris.
 

chris1784

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:D GOOD NEWS, i recovered the data with Active Undelete. Now I just need to know how to make my ext HDD normal, so that it'll say 250Gigs like its suppose to. Any here can elaborate to that? thanks in advance
 
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