File Recovery Possible Post True Image Restoration?

[vechy]

Hi! I am refering to a machine using Windows XP and Acronis True Image Server (herein ATIS) program. My sister's ex-boyfriend prior to getting The Bye-Bye Boot from her, wiped out an entire partition of information. I do not have the Acronis program, nor does she, it was all installed by her ex . The harddrive partition set-up, as far as I can see, was
C : the primary/active drive which is the restored partition area when using ATIS
D : the drive holding all of the things she'd want to keep (jpg's , doc's , ppt's , psd's - no executable programs however) ,
and the Acronis Secure Zone (.tib file I believe).
According to the way she describes it to me, when she'd screw up her settings on her C drive or whatever, she would Restore it from the Secure Zone. Seemingly it worked out well. However, before her ex-boyfriend had the Restraining Order served on him , he (this is my crude assessment) seems to have RESTORED the Acronis .tib file ONTO the D DRIVE, INSTEAD of the C DRIVE ! So it looks like everything is gone, gone gone from the D DRIVE - jpg's, doc's, psd's, ppt's - everything! THAT CAN'T BE TRUE. That information of hers, especially the pictures and hundreds of Word documents from her classes, is STILL SOMEWHERE RIGHT? Help me help her PLEASE! If Acronis and its various programs CANNOT recover the files previously existing on the D Drive partition, please tell me which programs can. THANK YOU!

[foghorne]

Originally Posted by vechy

Hi! I am refering to a machine using Windows XP and Acronis True Image Server (herein ATIS) program. My sister's ex-boyfriend prior to getting The Bye-Bye Boot from her, wiped out an entire partition of information. I do not have the Acronis program, nor does she, it was all installed by her ex . The harddrive partition set-up, as far as I can see, was
C : the primary/active drive which is the restored partition area when using ATIS
D : the drive holding all of the things she'd want to keep (jpg's , doc's , ppt's , psd's - no executable programs however) ,
and the Acronis Secure Zone (.tib file I believe).
According to the way she describes it to me, when she'd screw up her settings on her C drive or whatever, she would Restore it from the Secure Zone. Seemingly it worked out well. However, before her ex-boyfriend had the Restraining Order served on him , he (this is my crude assessment) seems to have RESTORED the Acronis .tib file ONTO the D DRIVE, INSTEAD of the C DRIVE ! So it looks like everything is gone, gone gone from the D DRIVE - jpg's, doc's, psd's, ppt's - everything! THAT CAN'T BE TRUE. That information of hers, especially the pictures and hundreds of Word documents from her classes, is STILL SOMEWHERE RIGHT? Help me help her PLEASE! If Acronis and its various programs CANNOT recover the files previously existing on the D Drive partition, please tell me which programs can. THANK YOU!

if your c: image has been written into the D: drive partition, it will have overwritten data there. The only chance you have is if there was significantly more data on the D: than the C:, then some data might not have been overwritten. Note that the data which was on the sectors which have been written to on D: has now gone.

If you want to see if there is anything which can be recovered from D: you need to run a data recovery program such as R-Studio (http://www.data-recovery-software.net/). There are plenty of similar products on the net do a google search. The useful thing is that they usually supply a free trial which allows you to scan to see if you can see any files before you pay for the pucker version. The trial does not usually allow recovery, just scanning.

One last thing. If you install any software on the machine, like a data recovery program, don't install it on the D: drive. Anything you write there will be overwriting more old data.

F.

[jmk94903]

Originally Posted by vechy

...That information of hers, especially the pictures and hundreds of Word documents from her classes, is STILL SOMEWHERE RIGHT? Help me help her PLEASE! If Acronis and its various programs CANNOT recover the files previously existing on the D Drive partition, please tell me which programs can. THANK YOU!

Did she have a backup of the old D partition somewhere? That's possible since she was backing up the C partition. If so, you are in luck.

Otherwise, everything on the D drive in the space now occupied by the image of the C drive is gone unless you know someone in the CIA who will help. Commercially available recovery programs won't be able to recover that data.

As foghorn said, you may be able to recover data that was written in space not used by the restored C image. It's probably worth a try.

You both have my sympathy for the unhappy ending to this relationship.