Never format hard-drives while you're tired...

[evilsaint]

1: Back up everything important onto one drive. (@ 11:00PM, after work)
2: Install new motherboard/cpu/videocard/fans/cables. (@ Midnight)
3: Format boot-drive and install XP. (@ 4:00AM, six Mountain Dews and 2 Red Bulls later)
4: Smack self on forehead and go to sleep after realizing the drive with all the backups was formatted... (@ 5:00AM)
5: Install EasyRecovery, start recovering files, go to watch movie with friend (T+2 days @ 9:00PM)
6: Come home, look at monitor, grin like a clown at *this*. (T+2 days @ 1:15AM)

:thumbsup:

Just a little endorsement that I felt compelled to make as no matter how much experience any of us may have, there's always room for error

 

[Jeff7]

6. Come home, look at monitor, realize that EasyRecovery just restored all your normally deleted files from another drive TO the formatted drive, thus destroying any chance of recovery.

 

[loup garou]

OnTrack rules, their PowerControls software is the best Exchange disaster recovery software I've ever used.

 

[nova2]

ouch.

i can attribute such things to like, not enough sleep, or not eating properly, or rushing.

it probably was your own legitament fault caused by something you deny or don't realize, etc.

eg: i (actually) killed a port on a new UPS because i was woken up by someone and my sleep hours weren't wise.

but man, nuking all your data is insane.

unless you had another recent backup of all that data, then I can't say as much. I hope you did

 

[evilsaint]

Well, I got everything back, except for that one file shown missing in the screenshot. You figure it'd be some MP3 that i've never listened to or some picture that i'll never look at again; it was my Outlook PST file with all my e-mail from the last two and 1/2 years... time to stop being a packrat, I guess :-\

 

[evilsaint]

Sweet, GetDataBack NTFS now has another ringing endorsment from me, thanks to it recovering my Outlook PST