Data recovery possible?

[jcool]

Hey guys,

I'm in big trouble. I wanted to try my Savvio 15k.1 on another controller, because my Promise TX2650 sucks performance-wise. So I initialized the drive on an Adaptec 5405... big mistake. The Adaptec somehow killed not only the Boot sector but the entire partition and/or filesystem :(
Now the drive appears empty, filesystem "raw" under windows. This was my OS disk and contains all of my important data. Any chance of recovering that data? I mean, the disk wasn't overwritten at all.

If you can recommend any software I'd be greatful. I don't care if it's expensive BTW. You just shouldn't work late I guess :shakes:

[zanzabar]

try this on the promise card
http://www.partition-recovery.com/

[Serra]

Lots of free options out there too - just do a google search for Free Data Recovery Software.

[One_Hertz]

If you care about your stuff a lot then send it off somewhere... But running your own recovery programs will be almost as good in your case, considering you don't screw up. Make sure to not write ANYTHING to that drive. As in, having it mounted in windows is writing to it for example. It may or may not be possible...

[Xel'Naga]

If you care about your stuff a lot then send it off somewhere... But running your own recovery programs will be almost as good in your case, considering you don't screw up. Make sure to not write ANYTHING to that drive. As in, having it mounted in windows is writing to it for example. It may or may not be possible...
I he is knows a little bit of Linux he should use a liveCD and mount the hdd with anything except ntfs-3g. This will ensure that no data is modified
That's what I would do

Edit: But then again, the recovery software may not be as good on Linux...

[One_Hertz]

I he is good with Linux he should use a liveCD and mount the hdd with anything except ntfs-3g. This will ensure that no data is modified

linux is not windows lol. Windows writes to all drives it has mounted to no end.

[jcool]

Mornin folks,

If you care about your stuff a lot then send it off somewhere... But running your own recovery programs will be almost as good in your case, considering you don't screw up. Make sure to not write ANYTHING to that drive. As in, having it mounted in windows is writing to it for example. It may or may not be possible...

oops... mounted it yesterday already in win to check on it and left it on for the night... hopefully windows didn't write too much on it (but why should it? for Windows, it's RAW and not even formatted?)
Am running a recovery program right now, it seems to find a lot of data so we'll see. Thanks everyone for the input!

[jrecks]

Hi,

You can try stellar phoenix data recovery (http://www.stellarinfo.com)software which recover damaged disk, partition as well as deleted file from windows, novell, Macintosh and linux OS.

more detail. http://www.stellarinfo.com

Thanks

[stevecs]

I'd be interested but doubtful that you'll get much back. If I remember correctly adaptec, when you select initialize, will zero out all the sectors it's not the same thing as an OS format (the controller knows nothing about file systems just raw sectors) (not to add any salt, but why did you want to initialize it in the first place?)

[jcool]

Wow, this seems a long time ago now :D
As a matter of fact I got 99,9% of the data back... only 1 or 2 files were damaged and unusable. The software I used is called "get data back".

Why I wanted to initialize it? I thought that was clear.. to test the HDD's performance on the Adaptec. Since it was a single drive and no RAID or anything, I figured I could just run it in JBOD mode on the controller like any other SATA disk on any other controller. Guess I was wrong ^^

[stevecs]

you know I never even noticed the necro-posting. ;) Glad you got the data back though, that's interesting I could have sworn that it would have zeroed it. I'll have to give it a go here on some spares.

[jcool]

Thankfully it did not wipe the disk.. just a few sectors, it seems.
Anyway, I've moved the Adaptec to my server, where it belongs (killer XOR, rocks for a raid 5 :up: )
With the arrival of the Velociraptor, I'm off the SAS train - at least on my mainrig. DFI boards and dedicated controllers don't really match, since you have to do like 100 reboots if you want to tweak your system properly. Makes you go insane waiting 2 minutes every time you want to enter the bios :shakes:

*wonders what to do with the Savvio 15k.1 now*

Database server projects anyone? :D

[Speederlander]

Guy at work last week had to get a 400GB HD recovered. They got all the data back. Cost: $2000.