Lost files after using Windows Recovery ( not Restore )

[johnsonbrewer]

Like the title says, I used the Recovery Console to recover Windows Vista. Doing so wiped out everything I've done since early last year on my boot hard drive. Luckily I store my pictures and videos, etc. on a separate hard drive.

Background : I have a hard drive set up with a dual boot of XP and Vista and the XP partition was almost out of room. I imaged XP and Vista onto a larger hard drive with larger partitions knowing full well that I would have to repair the boot loader. While trying to repair the boot loader using the Vista install disc I selected Recover expecting it to only fix what was messed up in the boot loader. However it "recovered" Vista from early last year and in the process losing any / all programs and updates since then.

Is there a cheap and easy way to recover any lost programs or files, such as Windows Mail emails from before this "Recovery"? Hopefully there is, but if not its not the end of the world and shame on me.

Please chime in if you can help. Thanks.

 

[pcgeek11]

Like the title says, I used the Recovery Console to recover Windows Vista. Doing so wiped out everything I've done since early last year on my boot hard drive. Luckily I store my pictures and videos, etc. on a separate hard drive.

Background : I have a hard drive set up with a dual boot of XP and Vista and the XP partition was almost out of room. I imaged XP and Vista onto a larger hard drive with larger partitions knowing full well that I would have to repair the boot loader. While trying to repair the boot loader using the Vista install disc I selected Recover expecting it to only fix what was messed up in the boot loader. However it "recovered" Vista from early last year and in the process losing any / all programs and updates since then.

Is there a cheap and easy way to recover any lost programs or files, such as Windows Mail emails from before this "Recovery"? Hopefully there is, but if not its not the end of the world and shame on me.

Please chime in if you can help. Thanks.

What did you do in the recovery mode?

Use automated recovery or the command line.

The command line is what I use for this:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /rebuildbcd

pcgeek11

 

[RebateMonger]

You had both the original disk and a second disk with some sort of image of the first disk. Are they both "destroyed"? It'd seem like one or the other would still have the files you want.

 

[johnsonbrewer]

What did you do in the recovery mode?

Use automated recovery or the command line.

The command line is what I use for this:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /rebuildbcd

pcgeek11

I used the automated Recovery from the menu option, not in the command line. With the computer off, I had the Vista disc in the DVD drive and booted from there.

 

[johnsonbrewer]

You had both the original disk and a second disk with some sort of image of the first disk. Are they both "destroyed"? It'd seem like one or the other would still have the files you want.

Yes, I had the original hard drive ( 500 GB ) imaged onto a backup drive ( 1 TB ). The 500 had two partitions on it -- a partition of 50 GB with XP on it and some misc. programs and the remainder ( ~ 450 GB ) was used for Vista and misc. programs. I was out of room on the XP partition so I wanted to create a 150 GB partition on the new 640 drive and another partition for Vista. I knew I would have to repair the boot loader up front, so after using Paragon partition manager to move the individual partitions where I wanted I booted from the DVD drive to repair. It said it could not find a Vista installation to repair so I rebooted and picked the Recovery option. It appeared to do so fine except I quickly found out that it "recovered" Vista from early last year so I lost emails, programs, etc. from later on last year.

I may have goofed by not unplugging the backup 1 TB drive and it may have "recovered" from that drive, which is the time I backed up now that I think about it. But I have hooked up the 500 GB drive in an external drive USB and I still can't find missing files. Are the files still there but in either a hidden folder or in a renamed folder?

Still scratching my head.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is it possible that it used the system restore functionality to roll-back the system, except that it did it on the cloned disk, so that the system restore data didn't match up with teh filesystem disk sectors? Although, I would think that would scramble files, not delete them.

PS. You should NEVER boot your OS, with a cloned identical filesystem on another disk. Windows gets confused, and starts to access both of them for various things. Then when you take one away, Windows fails to boot properly.

 

[johnsonbrewer]

Is it possible that it used the system restore functionality to roll-back the system, except that it did it on the cloned disk, so that the system restore data didn't match up with teh filesystem disk sectors? Although, I would think that would scramble files, not delete them.

PS. You should NEVER boot your OS, with a cloned identical filesystem on another disk. Windows gets confused, and starts to access both of them for various things. Then when you take one away, Windows fails to boot properly.

I realize I was being sloppy with the backup drive still plugged in, should have unplugged it.

 

[pcgeek11]

I see what happened now... You chose to recover (from a backup) which looks for a Windows WIM image and restores it to the system. Too late now but the commands I posted are what you should have done.

Automated functions = You have NO Control over what gets done or not done to the system.

pcgeek11

 

[johnsonbrewer]

I see what happened now... You chose to recover (from a backup) which looks for a Windows WIM image and restores it to the system. Too late now but the commands I posted are what you should have done.

Automated functions = You have NO Control over what gets done or not done to the system.

pcgeek11

Live and learn. I'm certain now that's what happened, I recovered from the older backup of Windows.

But there is no chance to recover missing emails -- Emails that I received since I made the imaged backup??

Thanks for everyones help as always.

 

[pcgeek11]

Live and learn. I'm certain now that's what happened, I recovered from the older backup of Windows.

But there is no chance to recover missing emails -- Emails that I received since I made the imaged backup??

Thanks for everyones help as always.

No chance without a backup.

pcgeek11