How screwed am I?

[TremblingBluStar]

I hate to come here with tech related questions and/or problems, but I'm really stressed over something my dumb ass did tonight.

I have three hard drives - a 300GB PATA drive (D, a 300GB SATA (E drive that contains my Windows installation, and a 500GB PATA (G drive that contains a back up of the 300GB PATA drive (both of which contain all of my important files, such as music, games, ect.)

I've been having trouble with my Windows drive for a while now, as there is some sort of short that causes the SATA cable to not insert properly. I was having trouble getting Windows to even install tonight, so I did something monumentally stupid and installed my Windows disk into the DVD drive.

I went to Windows setup, figuring I could create a partition on the G drive and install Windows and thus throw out the failing E drive. I formatted a partition, which turned out to be on my D drive by mistake. After fumbling a bit, I finally have Windows up and running from the E drive (didn't complete the installation to G).

Problem is, now both of my G drive and D drive, which again contain all of my music, videos, ect. are gone! I tried Windows system restore and it did nothing. My D drive is showing up as empty with just the Windows directory, and the G drive is showing up as unformatted and unallocated.

So, is there anything I can do to recover my stuff? Or am I monumentally screwed?

 

[hyzmarca]

I hate to come here with tech related questions and/or problems, but I'm really stressed over something my dumb ass did tonight.

I have three hard drives - a 300GB PATA drive (D, a 300GB SATA (E drive that contains my Windows installation, and a 500GB PATA (G drive that contains a back up of the 300GB PATA drive (both of which contain all of my important files, such as music, games, ect.)

I've been having trouble with my Windows drive for a while now, as there is some sort of short that causes the SATA cable to not insert properly. I was having trouble getting Windows to even install tonight, so I did something monumentally stupid and installed my Windows disk into the DVD drive.

I went to Windows setup, figuring I could create a partition on the G drive and install Windows and thus throw out the failing E drive. I formatted a partition, which turned out to be on my D drive by mistake. After fumbling a bit, I finally have Windows up and running from the E drive (didn't complete the installation to G).

Problem is, now both of my G drive and D drive, which again contain all of my music, videos, ect. are gone! I tried Windows system restore and it did nothing. My D drive is showing up as empty with just the Windows directory, and the G drive is showing up as unformatted and unallocated.

So, is there anything I can do to recover my stuff? Or am I monumentally screwed?

Yes, you can recover your stuff. And yes, you are screwed.

If you had just formatted D, your files might have been all recoverable, though some might be corrupted. But, since you've also installed (or partially installed) Windows on it, so that will probably have overwritten some of the files and corrupted others.

There are data recovery tools that can work, many, in fact, but they won't be able to save everything on D.

G is a different story. I'm not sure about that. Most likely, it just has a damaged partition table. If that's the only problem then you are in luck. But there could be other issues.

The software that will do you the most good is TestDisk with PhotoRec also being useful. One important thing to remember. Do not perform any sort of write operations to either of your file disks until this is all sorted out. Writing to the disk will overwrite lost data, corrupting files and making total recovery impossible.

I'm strongly recomend focusing on G, first attempting to repair the Partition Table, and then just using PhotoRec on it if that doesn't work. If you have to use PhotoRec, save the files that you recover on E, for the love of god. Then, if some are unrecoverable, use the same program on D to see if they're intact on that drive. If they are then save them to E, as well.

If everything on G is recoverable, but you don't have enough space on E to save it all, then put the extra on D. You'll overwrite some more of D, but since it's all the same as G anyway (and already partially overwritten) that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Thanks! For now, i have every drive except for my Win drive unplugged and unpowered.

I'll try the files you suggested. I also tried a program called Recover my files, which found several mp3 files - but it is $80 to activate. To be quite honest, I doubt I have enough on there to justify spending that much! So cheaper or free solutions would be preferable!

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

True about the overwriting thing, it's unrecoverable if it was overwritten.

I accidentally quick-formatted the wrong drive during an install of Windows 7. I tried to use EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional, and about 90% of the "recovered" files were corrupt and I haven't been able to find a program that actually fixes most of the lost .jpg, .gif, & .wmp files.
Further, usually once a recovery program "identifies" the files for recovery, no other program can find those files, as I found out the hard way. So then you could be stuck using that particular program, good or bad.

Good luck.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

^
That is what worries me.

Granted, this was a few years back, but I remember the last time I tried recovering mp3 files that were accidentally deleted, the program I used recovered them but I they were cut up pretty bad. Like most were only 15 seconds long, which makes very little sense.

I'll give TestDisk a shot tonight, and Disk Investigator: http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html

But I'm hoping things work better than last time. problem then was I used the drive quite a bit before noticing the files were gone.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Thanks for the replies, everybody!

I'm using a program called GetDAtaBack that a friend at work was lucky enough to have a license for (so I saved $80), and it appears to be working! I've gotten about 10GB of MP3's moved over to my good drive, and hopefully will find the rest somewhere in there, as well as files from the other drive!

 

[darkshadow0001]

Problem is, now both of my G drive and D drive, which again contain all of my music, videos, ect. are gone! I tried Windows system restore and it did nothing. My D drive is showing up as empty with just the Windows directory, and the G drive is showing up as unformatted and unallocated.

So, is there anything I can do to recover my stuff? Or am I monumentally screwed?

Not necessarily, it maybe a painstaking task, but couldn't you just re-obtain everything?

 

[Meredith]

When I do such drive shenanigans, I always unplug the drives I don't want to be dealing with.

I know a fat lot of good that does you. But I learned the same lesson the hard way as you have.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Or, just having backups, at least of the important stuff.

I had to re-rip several seasons of M*A*S*H since I hadn't gotten the .wmv files onto data DVDs, but at least I had the other several shows' episodes backed-up.

95% of the photos were things I downloaded over a number of years. Not my stuff, but a lot of trouble just the same.