Have a re-formatted drive recovery question

[hoorah]

So recently I migrated my dad's file server over from a spare windows 7 box to a windows home server box. The drive he was using was a 1TB drive that was just shared so he could access it. There were 2 shares, one for data and one for "personal backups" where I planned on telling the automated backup in windows Vista (on his laptop) to backup to.

Never got around to setting up the automated backups in windows, so never used the directory.

So, we did finally get around to building him a windows home server box (both boxes, the original server and the new WHS box have separate O/S hard drives) Set the box up, plugged in the hard drive he was using. Copied all of the data over from the hard drive on the old computer to the current drive pool in WHS. Then, added the old drive to the drive pool, which of course formatted the drive.

All of the sudden - "Oh yeah, I found that personal backups location and stored a bunch of files on there. Where is it?" FK me!

Any idea if I have a shot at recovering any of that data that was on the original hard drive? The WHS box has about 200GB of data set to duplicate between 2 1TB hard drives (the new one and the original drive). By now, I imagine, the folders have been duplicated across both drives.

So, cliffs.

200GB + unknown data on 1 TB drive 1.
Copied good 200GB from drive 1 to drive 2, missed unknown data.
Formatted drive 1 using NTFS in WHS, added to drive pool, WHS copies 200GB data back to drive 1.

Any way to recover original unknown data from drive 1? I realize some sectors may have been overwritten, but some might not be. I'd be grateful for anything I can get.

 

[FishAk]

First, clone the disk to another disk, so you can work on the copy to be safe. Try something like Recova, or Recover it all (both free) R-Studio will recover everything easily, but it's about $75.

 

[RebateMonger]

As FishAk noted, you need to attach the disk to a computer running data recovery software. Even commercial software has a "trial" mode that'll let you see what data can be recovered.

Conventional data recovery software shouldn't WRITE to the disk, so, technically, you might not need a clone. But it's certainly a good idea. No reason to lose even more files in this process.

 

[strep3241]

There is also a program called File Scavenger that works. I just had to use it. It costs $50 only to recover the files and is free to scan.

This program found stuff from ages ago. I could not believe it.

 

[hoorah]

Alright,

Ran off on my lunch break to a buddies house that lives close to work. Installed hamachi, remote desktop'ed into the server. Removed the drive from the storage pool (took 30 minutes of my break). Installed recuva, ran deep scan for 10 mins. Got to 1% (expected 20 hours remaining). Hit cancel - saw what it got so far. Nothing from the stuff he needs yet, but showed lots of previously deleted stuff. Got fingers crossed for when I get home from work tonight.

Unfortunately, cloning the drive isn't really an option. He's about 2 hours away from where I work (1 hour away from home) and I don't want him opening up the box. The WHS box has 3 drives for redundancy, so I was able to just remove one from the pool and keep it functioning.