Help: Disk Cleaner cleaned/killed the wrong disk!

[Newb888]

I am not sure how I did this, but I happened to select the back up hard drive and disk cleaner started (selecting fast clean) and then I read what drive it was cleaning. I almost had a heart attack.

Is there any app or utility that I can repair the partition?

[markchicobaby]

Wow that is bad news. You are probably in luck though, if you were in fast scan mode it probably only killed the partition table or MBR.

Your best bet is to attempt recovery of the files. Its likely that the clean was half way through and now the MBR is corrupted.

Options from easy to time consuming (none really hard....)
- Windows recovery console, fixboot usually gives you a nice new MBR
- You can build your self a Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, it has a few tools to recover files off a disk.
- you could give these a go....

http://www.freebyte.com/filediskutils/#datarecovery

[K0LO]

Don't forget to try the Acronis Recovery Expert that is part of Disk Director 10. It will search the disk for evidence of partitions, and then rebuild the partition table if any are found.

[Newb888]

Yikes...both hard driver are now a mess. I am somewhat fortunate that I had another partition set aside for XP and it was a dual boot system (both XP). I restored the clean Acronis image that was for the SATA drive (Acronis partially cleaned) onto the IDE drive that I wanted formated and cleaned in the first place. The install went smoothly but things started going nuts afterwards. I tried to access System Restore to turn it off but I got the BSOD. I backed up using an older image for that drive but it only had XP SP2. I am not sure if the SATA image isnt compatible onto the IDE drive?

I downloaded Partition Manager 3 and it "quasi" fixed my boot record so that I could at least see what's on it. I have to use a floppy named fixntldr.exe (http://www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm) each time to boot onto the new OS which sucks.

I checked my SATA drive and "most" of the directories are there. I have lost quite a bit of backup programs though. I will try to see if I can recover any of them using Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional.

I am in the midst of trying to copy file by file, and directory by directory on to all my portable hard drives and useful files so I can wipe out the SATA drive by installing the SATA recovery image.

I havent tried Acronis Recovery Expert. I cant find the original disk. I did have it saved as an ISO file on the corrupt SATA drive. If I manage to find the CD, would it help to make that drive bootable again? Or should I just continue to restart from the Acronis image or even reinstall XP from CD?

[K0LO]

If you still have an ISO file of the bootable recovery version of Disk Director, then make a CD and run Recovery Expert from the CD.

[Newb888]

%$#. :-X

Unfortunately, I don't. I do have Acronis Rescue (?) to recover and back up images on a thumb/USB dongle Drive.

[MudCrab]

If the USB flashdrive has DD on it and is bootable, you should be able to boot to it and try the Recovery Expert.