Help! All data gone after failed "split"

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by officiallyme, Sep 17, 2008.

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  1. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    Hi,

    I urgently need you help. I wanted to split my HDD because I could not resize it due to bad sectors in the MFT so I applied the split command and he was supposed to just split the free disc space. It said xGB before and xGB behind the split and that was the amout of free space there was.

    I then applied the settings and again he aborted, stating that there were bad sectors.

    But now I have a completely empty HDD! All data is gone. He does not show me anything!

    What can I do to undo this?

    I have not reformatted, converted or anything. I have now left it the way it is. I need to get that data back!

    No idea what Disc Director did but it just made the data disappear :(
     
  2. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Does the entire drive show as unallocated space?

    Have you tried using the Partition Recovery Wizard?
     
  3. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    It shows as 78MB in use. No idea if this was going to be the size of the split use (I wanted to test with only a small size before losing data...duh, worked out great).

    The data recovery wizard just always tells me that there was no free disc space found on any of my drives. No idea why.

    The drive in question here is a 300GB USB 2.0 drive.
     
  4. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    In my opinion, using the Split and Merge features of DD is just asking for trouble. Any important data should be backed up as there is ALWAYS the chance of data loss when doing partitioning procedures even when the program used is supposed to be data-safe (this is good practice regardless of whether you use DD or another program).

    You would have to Clear the partition(s) from the drive using DD so that the entire drive is unallocated and then run the Partition Recover Wizard on it. Hopefully, it can find the original partition.
     
  5. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    I "deleted" the partition (there is no "clear") and then ran Partition Recovery. It showed the partition I had just deleted immediately. I waited for 5secs but there was no status bar progress or anything.
    Do I have to wait for something to happen or is the status bar extremly slow or would any partition found on the drive pop up immediatly?
     
  6. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Try using the Manual option and then try the Fast method. If that doesn't work, try the Manual >> Complete method. The scan can take a while and it should show a progress bar.
     
  7. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    just to make it easier for me, a while would be how long for each method? just a rough estimate?

    like, a 300GB disc would be scanned (fats mode) in 30sec or in 30min? complete mode in 60secs or in 5hours?

    i started running Restorer2000 Pro about three hours ago and it is about 1/9 through the drive. not sure which program to trust more (if the Recovery Wizard actually finds the paartition). I am letting the Recovery wizard run alongside Restorer2000 Pro for now (searching for the partition). As it does not seem to slow down the process. seems the scan is slower than the drive speed anyway.
     
  8. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    The Fast method just checks the beginning cylinders on the hard drive. The Complete method checks every sector. The time estimate would just be a guess, but probably not longer than running a chkdsk /r on the drive.

    I don't know if I would run two scans at the same time, but I don't think it would hurt anything. However, one may interfere with the other so the results may not be the same if they were run separately.
     
  9. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    recovery wizard keeps crashing so i will run it if recover2000 fails.
     
  10. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    currently running the partition recovery in fast mode because after 15h of restorer2000 pro the hdd seemingly stopped and did not come back so restorer did not complete the scan.

    restorer2000 attempts to read bad sectors and then moves on if it fails.

    does the recovery wizard do the same and can i set how long he will try? from the progress bar i assume it has reached one of the bad sectors but it seems like it is not really moving past it. anyway of telling it to just try twice or maybe three times and then just move on?
    would the information on the older partition be stored near the end or is there no beginning/end with this method?

    and IF it finds the previous partition in addition to the one i just deleted to be able to run the scan, will this then recover the data as well? will it have to actively recover the data or will it just restore the "information" about the drive and the data should just be accessible again (as I did not write anything over it).

    all the data still has to be there. no formatting or anything was done. all i need is for me to regain access to that data.
     
  11. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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  12. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    Honestly, I do not know what to use anymore. IS Acronis Partition Recovery Wizard better than Recover2000 Pro or is Active@ better or whatever. Or are they all the same?

    I don't want to use one and then find that it destroys more than it helps and then kills any hope of rescuing the partition with a different programm.

    i am currently running the Acronis one and it has been runnning (in fast mode!) for 7h now. Should be done in an hour and it hasn't found the older partition yet. Just found the one i just deleted in order to run the program. and it found that straight away.
     
  13. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    I would let the Acronis wizard finish. If it doesn't find the partition, you can try the Complete method or another program. It seems odd that it's taking so long, but it may just be the drive or your system. Just scanning the drive shouldn't cause further corruption.

    You could also run file recovery software to scan the drive and attempt to retrieve the files. Usually, these don't cause any corruption to the source drive since they copy the recovered files to a different drive.
     
  14. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    i did a test run on a small 8gb drive yesterday were i copied some images and movies to the 8gb drive, then deleted the drive and converted it to FAT32. then i tried a data recovery program (from active@ and another one i think) and it recovered all the files, or rather found all the files and created new ones from what it found. everything looked ok on the outside, but not one of the files actually worked.
    so to be honest, i am not to fond of data recovery programs.
     
  15. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    In principle, none of the tools I indicated will destroy anything, provided you use them in file recovery mode, because that's probably what you want to recover, not the partition itself but the files it contained. Some of these tools can even make an image of the HDD and work only on the image. I'll let you experiment...
     
  16. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    i tried running the acronis one and it did not find another partition. i am currently trying diskinternals partition recovery which found a second partition but unfortunetly did not let me see what was on it. not sure what it is doing at the moment as it is now "recovering" but i am not sure whether it is trying to just read the information on that partition it found or actually recovering.

    weirdly it has already found 81 folders (which is possible) and 150.000 files, which is not possible unless it found lots of files that are a kb or so. i'll see what it comes up with.

    i have decided to try this one, then paragon and then finally find and mount. if none of them manage to restore the files i want back, i will simply call it of and start rebuild everything from scratch.

    stupid disk director and it's bad sector policy :rolleyes: .
    it's an awesome program, but that bad sector nonsense really made me mess up the drive.
    it's me that screwed up, but DD made me ;)
     
  17. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    Please also consider Active@filerecovery/partitionrecovery. They are not free but they saved me several times where other software couldn't find anything useful. You also may want to try earlier partition findandmount since it is free and quite powerful also.

    I hope you do succeed !
     
  18. jonyjoe81

    jonyjoe81 Registered Member

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  19. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    i have found two programs that both managed to find all my files and i have done some test recoverys and all those files seems ok.

    of course i cannot recover until i've got another hdd to recover onto. but i guess i will just have to go and buy one soon. until then i will just leave that hdd turned off and once i have a new one i wil ru the recognition/recovery software again and restore them to a different drive.
     
  20. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    If I may ask : which 2 programs ?

    Thanks.
     
  21. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    You may :)

    Actually I think the third one (first I used worked as well). But for some reason after 15h of scanning, my drive seemingly turned itself off or wasn't recognized anymore, so the program failed to let me preview. At that time I thought the preview failed because it couldn'T recover the file but probably the drive was no longer available and i would have just needed to reconnect it.

    Anyway.
    1. EASEUS Data Recovery
    2. Diskinternals Partition Recovery
    3. Restorer2000 Pro

    EASEUS and Diskinternals use more processor power but scanned my entire 300GB drive in 7-10h. Restorer2000Pro took 15h but less processor power, which I think is not as smart as I'd prefer it to go faster and use more CPU.

    As a comparison, Acronis Partition Recovery in FAST mode (!) took 10h and found nothing!
    Even the freeware "Find And Mount" at least found old partitions.

    But I would recommend using data recovery tools such as the three mentioned. Restoring the partition itself is useless and a complete waste of time.

    Anyway, I would recommend EASEUS or Diskinternals. Both probably equally as good with DiskInternals a bit faster.
    DiskInternals is a bit weirder to use once it has found the files. If by mistake you let him refresh the drive list (because my drive was gone), you cannot see the folders and files he found anymore. So you bascally have to rescan the drive. Maybe it was me, but it seemed a bit awkward.

    Anyhow, both highly recommended but I personally would use EASEUS.
    I still need to buy an external drive to back up all the files, but I randomly selected 10 files (videos) and recovered them as a test and they all played flawlessly. So I will recover with EASEUS and if a file does not work I will try Diskinternals again and then combine the results. But I guess that EASEUS should do the job.
     
  22. xpcomputers

    xpcomputers Registered Member

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    When I had Disk Director mess up a drive for me that wasn't imaged in TrueImage first (I normally do that, but was in a hurry!!! DOH!), I used GetDataBack from Run Time Software. Not cheap, but is an excellent tool to have. The software gets free updates for life too.

    You can create a data recovery "image" file of the whole drive to another drive (so that your original drive remains available for another program to try in the future) and you just work on the image for the recovery. It scans that image for partitions and data. It really is very comprehensive!

    It can recover files that have been deleted, formatted, corrupted, new OS installed over etc etc.

    When I had Disk Director mess my drive up, it solved all my problems in a few hours (of course size & speed of disk will affect recovery times).

    It has helped me several times since too for other problems, and has proved to worth every penny for me. Of course, it has also taught me to ALWAYS image a drive before resizing it, no matter how much of a hurry I am in.

    It has also shown me that bad sectors are bad news when running these tools, so checking disk integrity before resizing is a big must!

    Acronis True Image is excellent software, and since you should always take an image before using Disk Director, they make perfect partners in my opinion.

    Mike
     
  23. officiallyme

    officiallyme Registered Member

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    i guess that the speed is mainly reduced because it is 300gb and a usb drive. usb seems to slow things down. i don't know if these tools only work with usb 1.1 or what, but most tools get really slow.

    anyway, these tools basically all do the same thing and just vary in options they give you and in their design.
    i personally prefer to restore individual files and folders rather than create an image. a good recovery program finds far more than you were looking for. in my case it found 60gb extra. of course a ood progam also tells you that these were deleted and part of the original last drive. but it is good to be able to choose. especially as i do not need the drive volume information, the bad cluster log etc.
    if you use an image you will get the bad sector count as well, which sucks.
     
  24. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    officiallyme, thanks for the answer.

    I also have a good experience with Easeus. I got a license some months agao through GiveAwayOftheDay. They had the full pro version ! Since they tend to re-propose software from the same publishers, you might want to follow their offers if you need a free license.
     
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