Deleted partitions

[Yanosh]

Hi to all. I've just managed to destroy the partition on one of the hard disk on one of my computers. It's the only one with Windows on it... I must try to recover the old partitions on that computer. This happened while trying to install IcAROS on a usb stick, so I choose to wipe the whole disk but forgot to select usb as installation media. No, I have not installed IcAROS on the hard disk... just stopped after I discovered that the usb stick was still intact after rebooting. Can someone help me? Please, tell me I can recover all my data.

[aha]

Usually there is a Windows Emergancy CD/DVD. Maybe this can already help?

Years ago I found also a small Linux-Distribution that can be installed on a USB-Stick and boot from there. It had very easy to use recovery tools, but I can not remember its name unfortunately.

[ncafferkey]

The installer will only have overwritten the partition table, so all the data on your drive should still be there. I'm sure there are many websites giving advice on how to recover from a damaged partition table or boot block, so I'll let you Google it rather than give my amateur advice :-) Good luck!

[Yanosh]

Found a freeware utility called Testdisk. Hope this can save all the partitions. But now I need to know if I must delete the new partition table created by installAROS before trying to restore the old partition table. Do I need a full cleaned partition table?

[BSzili]

I did this once too, but I managed to salvage 99% of my data with the freeware EASEUS Partition Recovery utility. I think that program is EOL now, but they have similar tools that do the same.

[Yanosh]

Tried to scan the hd with Testdisk and this is what it says:

TestDisk 7.0. Data Recovery Utility. April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>

Disk /dev/sda - 82 GB / 76 GiB - CHS 10011 255 63

The harddisk (82 GB / 76 GiB) seems too small! (< 123 GB / 114 GiB )
Check the harddisk size : HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...

The following partition can't be recovered:
           Partition                   Start              End    Size in sectors
>  HPFS - NTFS          10010 254 63 15008 253 62 80292807


[ Continue ]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 41 GB / 38 GiB

What can I do? This hd is a 80 gb serial ata. I don't remember the partition's size. One should be around 5 gb or more for Windows 7 and 2 partitions for programs and data. I'm not sure of this because on that computer are 3 hd... one is for IcAROS and it's ok and 2 for Windows. All the partitioning and installation was made years ago, so I don't remember how was partitioned. I should have a backup of windows on the working hd... can I install back that one and with that recover the original partition table?

If this is of any help, this is what the bios says about the hd:

HDS728080PLA380 PF2OA60A

[cavemann]

There are some recovery tools on hirens boot cd, It can be downloaded at https://www.hirensbootcd.org/hbcd-v152/

I use hirens frequently, but I haven't tried using the recovery tools. Hope it helps.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Yanosh TestDisk is the only multiplatform tool capable of recovering disks and partitions and allows rewriting the corrupted NTFS boot sector. With TestDisk in the past I have repeatedly recovered Hardisk become RAW due to viruses.

I do not remember the steps, but it is not difficult, if you choose the right parameters you will review your partitions and remember to save "Write" you will find the option under the GUI.

Here is the tutorial with attached screenshots :https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#Partition_table_type_selection

[paolone]

Hi to all. I've just managed to destroy the partition on one of the hard disk on one of my computers. It's the only one with Windows on it... I must try to recover the old partitions on that computer. This happened while trying to install IcAROS on a usb stick, so I choose to wipe the whole disk but forgot to select usb as installation media. No, I have not installed IcAROS on the hard disk... just stopped after I discovered that the usb stick was still intact after rebooting. Can someone help me? Please, tell me I can recover all my data.

Sorry to know about your incident, but unluckily shit happens. I once rebuilt a damaged partition table with a tool from EASEUS. It also saved me when a NTFS corruption occurred on a production Windows drive. Next time, however, please pay more attention when dealing with drive partitions. Even better, use a virtual machine to install Icaros on a pendrive. I even distribute a little, easy to configure VM for VMware to do that in the 'other resources' section of Icaros download page.

[ncafferkey]

Note that you shouldn’t need full data recovery software, just something to restore the MBR. It can be done with a Windows DVD, e.g. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-master-boot-record-mbr-windows

[paolone]

Note that you shouldn’t need full data recovery software, just something to restore the MBR. It can be done with a Windows DVD, e.g. https://www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-master-boot-record-mbr-windows

I guess his Windows partition should be included in the partition table first, to fix the MBR. But his partition table has been modified/overwritten by InstallAROS, so he should restore the older situation first.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

TestDisk is the only software on Windows that allows rewriting old partitions, done several times

[Yanosh]

@paolone
For this task I use a spare computer. At least almost every time... but not that day... I was too lazy to setup that spare computer. I forgot to tell InstallAROS to use the usb because I had to retry many times the installation of IcAROS on that usb key. Every time the unit number was wrong. I don't know if Directory Opus 5 can show the unit number like I can do with Wanderer (icon/information), so I had to start a newshell, quit Directory Opus and start Wanderer to show the unit number of that usb key. ...and then, I forgot to set the usb as target for the installation. 

This weekend I'll try some other tool to rescue my hard disk. My "swiss knife" for this tasks is the Ultimate Boot CD. Anyway... yesterday I tried again with Testdisk and the result was the same as before... but I choose "continue" instead of quitting the program... so 2 partition were found: one primary partition and an extended one of about 40 gb each.  I don't remember the size of the partitions before all of this happened... Testdisk was able to restore the backup of the boot sector, so I tried to boot from that hd and it didn't boot. AROS can't read the partitions, so I tried the file manager of Parted Magic but it can't read anything. What can I do? I made a backup of my boot partition with the builtin option of Windows 7, and it should be safe on the other hard disk. Is there a chance to recover the partitions information from it?

[Yanosh]

Hi to all. Today I did a little step forward in the process to recover all the partition. Now I have the hidden system partition created by Windows 7 and the boot partition with windows 7 itself. I can't still boot from this hd. I can access files with the filemanager included with Parted Magic. Anyway, it seem that the partitions overlaps in some way. The data partition is still missing and it's the most important one. Here are some photos of Testdisk... please, help me if you know what to do now.

http://i66.tinypic.com/a0z0uw.jpg

These are the partition recovered. I can access the filesystem but it seems there is some sort of problem somewhere. How can I fix this?

http://i65.tinypic.com/al6wli.jpg

This is what Parted Magic show about the recovered partitions.

http://i67.tinypic.com/14vs4kn.jpg

These are the two partition I found early and obviously are not the right ones.

http://i68.tinypic.com/104kk89.jpg

The first 3 partitions are the hidden Windows partion, the Windows partition and one that can't be recovered. The last one I think it's totally wrong, because between that and the Windows partition there is a "hole"... an unpartitioned space that I'm sure it should be not there... and I can't access that partiton.

So, What can I do now?