Made big mistake-used Ghost and now can't find my c:

[Netma]

I was going to use Norton Ghost to make a disk to disk copy of my hard drive. Was distracted by phone and copied the new hard disk which only had the system files on it to my C drive which had 3 years of data and programs. Obviously I meant to do it the other way around. Norton Ghost refers to the two drives as 1 and 2. Stupid me, I copied drive 1 to drive 2 thinking I was copying my C drive to the new drive.

Since the whole process only took about two seconds, I assume all the data is still on the HD. Does anyone know how to recover from this. Thw C: drive now shows command.com as the only file. I am afraid to do any more. Win98SE was the opertating system.

 

[Waveslidin]

ouch. you boot up now and all you get is c: with command.com? if so, sounds like it is hosed. of course the data is still on there, but you are talking some big bucks at a data recovery place to get that data for you. hope someone else comes up for an idea with you. anytime you are messing around with disk copy and formatting...you may want to let the phone ring. Hope it works out for you.

 

[Waveslidin]

any backups?????? 3 years??????? I've worked in the it industry for years. I can promise you this....hard drives fail.....alot!!! I can't tell you how many times backups have saved my hide, but oh I learned the hard way too. i live by those things now though.

 

[morkinva]

ouch is right.

Maybe some of these:

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Good luck

 

[Netma]

Thanks Morkinva, Do you know which software works best? The last one os the most expensive, but says it is fully automatic.

 

[morkinva]

Sorry I've never used any of this type of software myself. Maybe someone here can assist with that. There's probably a dozen more companies that make similar products.

 

[Daxxax]

Wouldn't be easier to install the drive in another system, pull all of your data off of it, then do a clean install on your system and then either send the data back to yours over a network or by burning a CD?? seems like alot cheaper, easier solution to me......

 

[Netma]

Daxxax,
That would be a good idea except that the only files on the disk are the Win98 DOS files. Three files to be exact. I went ahead and ordered the Stellar Phoenix software and it will be here tomorrow AM by Fedex. I downloaded their demo and ran it. It took about 6 hours, but it found all of the files or so it appears. When I get the real program it will automatically reconstruct all the files and possibly the operating system. Takes about twelve hours to complete the process, but will be worth the $71.00 for the program plus shipping if it does what it claims.

It's the only program I could find that will do all of it with very little input from me. There are about 8000 files on the HD and I don't want to sit at the computer for days and select files. It restores the files to another HD or partition of your choice. This was a raid stripe setup on a KT-7 Raid MB. Next time I am going to set it up as a raid mirror so that both drives have exactly the same information. The stripe setup is faster, but only about 15-20 percent.

I really don't expect to have a 100% recovery, at least not all the operating system and program files. If it just saves all the files and data that I have created, I will be most happy. Fortunately I am pretty good about backing up my banking (Quicken) files. I had done it three weeks ago. I was able to reconstruct the last three weeks by going online at my banks site and getting the transactions that way. I have 12 years of banking on my Quicken database. Sure makes it easy to look something for a few years ago. I remember keeping both a checkbook and Quicken for the first year. Didn't trust Quicken back then. Now neither I nor my business has had a checkbook in more that 11 years.

 

[morkinva]

I hope you can get all of it back. Let us know how it went

 

[Daxxax]

oh, I guess I should read the entire thread before I put in a half ass response, sorry about that.

 

[dude]

I'm too late but the Forensic utility suite's Recover NT is pretty good.
It's pretty fast and works well. The only drawback is it's $199. It's great though if you are in the PC business. I use it for customers who have freak accidents or accidential erasures. Of course, just serving one customer makes it's money back many times over.

It's also got remote recovery for recovery over the network.

 

[Netma]

I used the Stellar Phoenix software. Takes a total of about 11 hours for it to recover about 13GB of data. It recovered virtually everything and wrote it to another HD. Some of the programs still work and some don't, however ALL the data files were recovered. I am in the process of reinstalling the programs I still use and then transfering the data files. I would rate the Stellar Phoenix software an 8 or 9 out of 10. All of the new directories ( folders ) it creates are numbered which at first had me a little unhappy. But by using the windows find function, I was able to identify the directories which had the data I needed. Once you open the correct numbered directory, all the subdirectories are there with their original names. There is also a utility included with the software which restores your long file names.
Even though the software created about 150 numbered directories, most everything was in five or six of them. The rest were duplicates of some of the files.

 

[WarCon]

Glad you got your data back.........

 

[gaterl8r]

if i had a fully running XP system already working, and i wanted to transfer all that data to a new faster hd, would it be feasible to copy paste everything from the old HD to the new HD while theyre both in my computer, then i can format the old hd, and have everything run off the new hd?
I mean would this work? would all my programs be retained and my registry, etc?
Thanks for any input, i wanna transfer one hd's data to another hd, but i cant dish out 50 bucks for software....

 

[Netma]

There are several shareware programs that will perform the job for you. One of the names I remember is xxcopy. I also know that the Maxblast software that comes with a Maxtor HD will do it. Remember the new drive has to have an active primary dos partition.

The problem that happened with me was I made a mistake and copied the new HD to the old one and wiped it out.

We are upgrading our workstations at my office and I have discovered that it is possible to temporarily attach the hard drive from the new workstation to the old workstation and then copy the old drive to the new one. Once this is done, I then install the new HD in the new workstation. However, I don't allow windows to boot. We still use 98SE, so I put in a windows 98SE boot floppy and enable cdrom use at the prompt. When I get the dos prompt, I put the 98SE cd in the cd drive, type setup and let windows reinstall the windows operating system. It only take about 20 minutes and installs the correct drivers for the new hardware. Make sure you have all the drivers disks for the new hardware. When it finishes, I connect it to the network and am ready to go. Saves a lot of time and aggravation and you don't have to reinstall any of your software. I don't know if this works with any other version of windows.

BTW I think everyone knows that the 98SE upgrade disk will also do a 98SE install from scratch on a new system. Just have any WIN95 cd disk handy so it can verify that you had a previous version.