Retrieving files from FDISKed drive! HELP!

[TheHorta]

I am in need of some high-end help here. I will forever be in your debt if you can assist.

I have a very close, very old (75+) friend who's HP with Win98 BSOD'd on him. Foolishly, he called HP tech support and they, without informing him that he would lose data, told him for some reason to "FDISK your drive" and proceeded to walk him through the steps.

Well, he's an AUTHOR for pete's sake who doesn't have a clue about things like "backing up." He's been writing his latest book in an education series, which is nearing completion after 22 months of daily writing and research.

It's gone.

He's understandably "upset" but I told him not to do a single thing and FEDEX the drive to me immediately. Fortunately, he only deleted one partition using FDISK, but unfortunately it was the partition with all of his unarchived critical data. I tried plugging it into my Win2K machine and using UNDELETE 2.0, but I can't locate any of his data files with it. I don't know if it recovers from blown partitions or not.

Basically I am looking for the best application for the job, OS independent but preferrably compatible with Win2K. Back in the days when Peter Norton was just getting started I would've use NU 1.0 or something to recover what I could, now that I haven't had a need to recover deleted files in years, I'm just not sure what to use - so off to AT I go in search of someone with expertise.

Thanks.

 

[jagr10]

If it is extremely important to him which it seems like it is, then I suggest you take the Hard Drive to a data recovery firm. THere are a bunch of them if you search for it in yahoo or any search engine. Look for one in your yellow pages maybe. They flash the hardware inside the drive and recover data that is supposedly lost to the user. THey can recover information from drives that have been driven over by a truck. When you delete stuff it's really not deleted. I doubt you can get it back using software, but try out the data recovery companies and go that route. They do charge a fee though.

 

[Thespeedster]

there are some programs that is supossed to recover you data from formated drives (not sure about fdisking though) norton's has a file recovery program in it. Have you tried it

 

[DuffmanOhYeah]

From what I understand about the subject, FDISK (I assume repartition and subsequent format) does not completely erase, and information is still recoverable (data can still be recovered, even after a format). I have to agree with jagr's suggestion to take it to a data recovery firm. I have a friend who once accidentally put the ide cable in upside dawn and lost one of the connector pins. For $250, they claim to have removed the platter from the drive and gotten the data from it. Don't know if they actually did, but they got all of his data back. Now this isn't exactly like your problem, but it can give you an idea of what they can do. May cost some money, but I think they are your safest way to recover this data. Just my $0.02

 

[MrMilney]

I went through this when my wife lost two manuscripts she was working on to a dead Western Digital. I strongly suggest you (or your friend) bite the bullet and pay a data recovery firm to do the work.

 

[oblivion2888]

go buy lost and found....worked for me

 

[medic]

Try Directory Snoop

Fully functional shareware, put it in a W98 box as a Slave.

 

[bacillus]

Startup with a bootdisk or another drive and run this program:
ftp://ftp.powerquest.com/pub/utilities/ptedit.exe
Select the drive you accidently fdisked and then hit the set type button. Set the format to what it was before you destroyed the table

Whatever you do, don't write anything onto the drive or use it in anyway.
good luck.

 

[stultus]

I would also mention Lost & Found... but for 22 months worth of work, the chance that you lose the data because of some stupid software/user error is too great. Pay money and let the professionals do it.

PS: HP is bad.

 

[wasnlos]

short time ago i did the same to one of my own drives, deleted all partitions and created new ones on the fly with POWERQUEST PARTITION MAGIC 6.0.
but thank god i realized in time what i had done and didn't write any data to the drive.
i was able to recover all the data with NORTON UTILITIES DISK DOCTOR.
not bad since i thought NORTON products would be crap, really changed my mind.