All of my data suddenly gone.

[Starscream]

I have a Samsung t166 500GB in my PC. I use it for the OS (vista) and to temporarily store data (till i burn it or move it to an external HD).

Anyway the problem is that 2 days ago i booted the PC and no OS was found :/.
Tried to acces the HDD with a Live CD, it gave me the usual info about the HDD but when i tried to access it it gave me an error.

I then took the HDD out and hooked dit up to my Laptop (it runs Vista).
Vista gave me the usual info and told me how much space was being used etc. But when i tried to access it it gave me an error.

Every tool i used to access it gave an error.
So i decided to format it to atleast gain access to the HDD and then try to recover it.

After the format i could access the HDD. I then tried 2 diffrent recovery programms: GetDataBackNTFS and File Scavanger.

But both programms only found some 100MB of data (there was some 250GB on the disc).

Atm im re-running GetDataBackNTFS for a 2nd time with pretty much every setting enabled. But im not rly expecting to get any of my data back.

But has anyone got an idea of what happened.

[tiro_uspsss]

I cant believe u formatted! :O

did u by chance hook up the hdd to a diff os to see if it could read it?

[Starscream]

I cant believe u formatted! :O

did u by chance hook up the hdd to a diff os to see if it could read it?

yeah, to a PC running winxp and to a Ubuntu Live CD.
They all showed that the HD was there but gave errors when i tried to access it doesnt matter how.

tried everything i knew to access diffrent tools/software/OS.

And ive recovered stuff various times that i lost cause i deleted it by accident or cause i formatted the wrong HDD. But this time i havent recovered anything.
the only files i recovered were temp files.

[tiro_uspsss]

yeah, to a PC running winxp and to a Ubuntu Live CD.
They all showed that the HD was there but gave errors when i tried to access it doesnt matter how.

tried everything i knew to access diffrent tools/software/OS.

And ive recovered stuff various times that i lost cause i deleted it by accident or cause i formatted the wrong HDD. But this time i havent recovered anything.
the only files i recovered were temp files.

:( that sucks!

[nn_step]

2 things
1) Never format a drive you are trying to get information off
2) Don't defrag a drive you can't read properly

that being said, why didn't you use diskcheck? [error checking for the hard drive]

[Serpentarius]

bad sectors ... or corrupted boot disk
or the partition file system ... NTFS or FAT32 ... got corrupted ... cause you not able to read the HD itself

dont worry ... even if you've formatted you could still recover back the data by using the mentod you mentioned up, File Scavengger ...
i read that you could not perform it either .. if the data is really important you should get Data Recovery companies to do it for you.

Do not continue to access the disk unless you're 100% sure ur methods will able to recover it .. doing so, might endup creating even more data cache at the HD and overwritting the data .. and it'll be lost forever.

[Starscream]

2 things
1) Never format a drive you are trying to get information off
2) Don't defrag a drive you can't read properly

that being said, why didn't you use diskcheck? [error checking for the hard drive]

1: I didnt have another option
2: i havnt defragged it.

And i couldnt use diskcheck as it gave me an error that the disk wasnt accesible.
Like said i spend over a day trying to gain access to the disk.

bad sectors ... or corrupted boot disk
or the partition file system ... NTFS or FAT32 ... got corrupted ... cause you not able to read the HD itself

dont worry ... even if you've formatted you could still recover back the data by using the mentod you mentioned up, File Scavengger ...
i read that you could not perform it either .. if the data is really important you should get Data Recovery companies to do it for you.

Do not continue to access the disk unless you're 100% sure ur methods will able to recover it .. doing so, might endup creating even more data cache at the HD and overwritting the data .. and it'll be lost forever.

Ran File Scavenger 3 times in total. and i ran 2 other data recovery programs various times as wel.
The file system was NTFS. The data was important but not import enough to spend several 1000s of euros to get it back.
It was mostly old letters and notes and a crapload of pictures.

Like said i spend over a day to access the drive by every method i could think of or what i found by using google.
Then i spend several days to recover the data and took every precaution i could think of to make shure no data would be written to the disk.

Ive restored lost data before and always got some 99% of my files back. (last time i lost some 200GB by formatting the wrong drive and got some 99% of my files back and the other 1% was dmged.
The thing that pisses me of is that this time i cant recover a single file.

Like feck i put them files on this drive 2 days before and i did so cause it was the HDD with the most free space. I was only gona keep the files on that HDD for 4 maybe 5 days. Was gonna order 2 large HDDs and an external RAID solution to store the data. So this happening in exactly this moment is pretty :banana::banana::banana::banana:ed up.

[Serpentarius]

i'm sorry i cant help you much .. i'm not into this field of data recovery

try read these? hope it works
Hard drive recovery utilities: when you can't afford to lose that data (http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2005/12/hard-drive-recovery-utilities-when-you.html)
Data Recovery Myths (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/245)
Beginners Guides: Hard Drive Data Recovery (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139)


i suspect that your partion failed you and you formatted it ... so i guess you should target on recovery of your partition? it would be best if you get another spare empty harddisk and use partition recovery to copy the whole content to the empty harddisk

maybe you should try this? http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk (freeware)

worst comes to worst you might have to ask the Data Recovery firms to quote you.

[Starscream]

i'm sorry i cant help you much .. i'm not into this field of data recovery

try read these? hope it works
Hard drive recovery utilities: when you can't afford to lose that data (http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2005/12/hard-drive-recovery-utilities-when-you.html)
Data Recovery Myths (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/245)
Beginners Guides: Hard Drive Data Recovery (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139)


i suspect that your partion failed you and you formatted it ... so i guess you should target on recovery of your partition? it would be best if you get another spare empty harddisk and use partition recovery to copy the whole content to the empty harddisk

maybe you should try this? http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk (freeware)

worst comes to worst you might have to ask the Data Recovery firms to quote you.

Thanx but already did all that.
According to all the tools i ran the HDD is completely OK and there never has been any data on it :/

The reason i formatted it was cause i didnt get to access it no matter what.
And formatting a HDD doesnt destroy the data.
Paying a company to recover the data isnt worth it.

Like said ive pretty much given up on getting the data back and wil put the HDD back into the PC this weekend and will instal Vista.
My main questions are: Why cant i restore anything? And can i trust this HDD, like was this just bad luck or does this HDD now have an increased chance of this happening.

[Serpentarius]

bad luck? it did happened to me twice .. on different HD .. one on WD and one on seagate

i still cant figure out what happened .. i still using them

my colleugue got his pendrive and it occurred too .. end up having 18gb pendrive instead of 1gb .. lol

[One_Hertz]

probably bad sectors...

[Starscream]

that HDD was hooked up to a SB600. Seeing it aint the best south bridge could there be any possible connection to the problem?