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Thursday, 21 May 2015 00:00

How I saved my hard drive! (Recovery of deleted HDD partition)

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b2ap3_thumbnail_iStock_000006013586XSmall.jpgThere is a story I want to share with you…

My friend brought a computer with failed hard drive (capacity – 80 Gb)! It says: RAW partition format!!! My actions?

I downloaded a pile of software, wanted to recover it to avoid copying information because of space scarcity...

Finally I found out that there is only 30 Gb of information. That much space I can spare :) Using a very comfortable program “Find & Mount”, connected failed drive as disk and swapped information to my storage device (I have a 640 Gb drive and made 60 Gb free to rescue data). So, I transferred the data and decided to delete failed drive partition, then clean everything and...!!!
And crashed my own 640 Gb!!! drive :( I deleted NTFS partition via WinXP manager. As a result, I can connect my hard drive with “Find & Mount”, I can see there all information but cannot write anything to it!!!

To copy data from my drive I need another 640 Gb drive, but I don’t have one :( I started searching for other programs, write on forums, etc. I received so many recommendations, including Acronis with Partition Table Doctor (they say that device is not supported), and Active@ Partition Recovery Enterprise, and DiskInternals Partition Recovery, and GetDataBack, and R-Studio, etc... (these programs can copy recovered data to another drive but they do not restore the source.)

To make a long story short, I searched dozens of different programs! The result – nothing... On one of the forums they suggested trying MHDD program... I visited developer’s website and found a huge software collection that can be handy to repair computer, recover data, etc.!!! The main thing is that virtually all were free!!!

But its not the point.

MHDD didn’t help me, but I found another one that did help. The link, of course, I found on that website! Its name is TestDisk! It worked perfectly! It found the partition and connected it (i.e. it recovered MBR and Boot). And all that from Windows!

3-day internet quest and my journey ended up successfully!

But do draw conclusions from this experiment!!! Never hurry when trying to repair something (setup, recover data) on computer!

Last modified on Thursday, 21 May 2015 21:27
Data Recovery Expert

Viktor S., Ph.D. (Electrical/Computer Engineering), was hired by DataRecoup, the international data recovery corporation, in 2012. Promoted to Engineering Senior Manager in 2010 and then to his current position, as C.I.O. of DataRecoup, in 2014. Responsible for the management of critical, high-priority RAID data recovery cases and the application of his expert, comprehensive knowledge in database data retrieval. He is also responsible for planning and implementing SEO/SEM and other internet-based marketing strategies. Currently, Viktor S., Ph.D., is focusing on the further development and expansion of DataRecoup’s major internet marketing campaign for their already successful proprietary software application “Data Recovery for Windows” (an application which he developed).