Hard drive partition recovery

[Wolfala]

Did a Windows 7 reinstall and one of my 3 other data drives lost its mind and can't remember that its a NTFS drive - and W7 wants to reformat it. Its been a few years, how can I recover the partition?

[Cthulhu]

Are you able to run CHKDSK on it? Or does it simply not show up at all?

[Bizman]

Your first goal should be to rescue your data. Only after that you can try to fix the problem.

There's a bunch of programs you can use for the rescue. Here's a trio I have more or less used and they all are free! If the missing NTFS tag is the only problem, PC Inspector might do the trick:http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1. If all goes well you can find and restore the entire folder structure with one checkbox. The GUI is a little "German Engineer"ish, but some trial and error will get you through. Multiple scans won't do any harm unless the drive is rapidly going bad. You can also try EaseUS Data recovery: http://www.easeus.com/ or Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva.

They all work from within Windows, so there's no need to make bootable CD's or sticks. Bear in mind, though, that you'd need some media to put the restored data. An external hard disk bigger than the problematic partition works fine, or another built-in hard disk. You'd need lots of space, because depending on your settings the rescue can find multiple and even deleted versions of your lost files.

Happy hunting!

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Did a Windows 7 reinstall and one of my 3 other data drives lost its mind and can't remember that its a NTFS drive - and W7 wants to reformat it. Its been a few years, how can I recover the partition?

Do you have backups? If yes just reformat the drive. Data recovery is not 100% certain. If you want to go the way of recovery, two rules of thumb:

1) Under no circumstances perform any operations on the drive to be recovered. Do not use it, period.
2) You need to have a second empty hard drive where you save the recovered data to, you can't recover to the same drive.

I have had good success with R-studio NTFS in the past. It costs a few bucks but it's worth it. http://www.r-studio.com/

Another tool that may help you is Spinrite of Gibson research corporation. After you do data recovery, this tool may return your drive back in operation if it appears damaged. But use it only _after_ data recovery attempts. https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm some user testimonials report that spinrite was able to fix their damaged drives back to operation even with data intact.

[Cthulhu]

Do you have backups? If yes just reformat the drive. Data recovery is not 100% certain. If you want to go the way of recovery, two rules of thumb:

1) Under no circumstances perform any operations on the drive to be recovered. Do not use it, period.
2) You need to have a second empty hard drive where you save the recovered data to, you can't recover to the same drive.

I have had good success with R-studio NTFS in the past. It costs a few bucks but it's worth it. http://www.r-studio.com/

Another tool that may help you is Spinrite of Gibson research corporation. After you do data recovery, this tool may return your drive back in operation if it appears damaged. But use it only _after_ data recovery attempts. https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm some user testimonials report that spinrite was able to fix their damaged drives back to operation even with data intact.

Spinrite is an impressive tool. I've used it many times in the past with good results. It does have issues with the BIOS on some motherboards though. Usually because Steve Gibson has so many other "irons in the fire" and doesn't upgrade it routinely.

[Wolfala]

It will show up as a physical drive but it does not recognize it doesn't NTFS partition on it. I have not tried CHKDSK yet. I basically said diddly it for 24 hours and will come back at it later tonight to recover the data

[Wolfala]

Do you have backups? If yes just reformat the drive. Data recovery is not 100% certain. If you want to go the way of recovery, two rules of thumb:

1) Under no circumstances perform any operations on the drive to be recovered. Do not use it, period.
2) You need to have a second empty hard drive where you save the recovered data to, you can't recover to the same drive.

I have had good success with R-studio NTFS in the past. It costs a few bucks but it's worth it. http://www.r-studio.com/

Another tool that may help you is Spinrite of Gibson research corporation. After you do data recovery, this tool may return your drive back in operation if it appears damaged. But use it only _after_ data recovery attempts. https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm some user testimonials report that spinrite was able to fix their damaged drives back to operation even with data intact.

I tried Spinrite and nearly had a stroke with the UI. Asked for a refund after waiting 3 hours and just being baffled by the UI, and i'm a nostalgic DOS fan. Onto R-Studio - seems to be a more polished product.

[Cthulhu]

I tried Spinrite and nearly had a stroke with the UI. Asked for a refund after waiting 3 hours and just being baffled by the UI, and i'm a nostalgic DOS fan. Onto R-Studio - seems to be a more polished product.

You're just spoiled.   
Spinrite's written in Assembler and is crazy fast. It can take hours to process a drive because it literally scans every bit about 20 times. The bigger the drive the longer it takes. I've seen it correct for mechanical hysteresis due to drive wear/head misalignment and recover drives that were supposedly DOA. Steve Gibson may be old school, but he's an old school genius.

[Wolfala]

Not doubting that, and I might buy it back from him again, but right now - I need the data and I don't need to be guessing how to get it - and I was guessing and it completely wasted my time. But I watched the video before buying it.

RAID 1 here I come.

[Bizman]

No luck with the three freebies I suggested? Just curious, because I occasionally use them in my job.

[Cthulhu]

RAID 1 here I come.

Yeah, drives are so cheap now it's almost crazy not to RAID. I run mirrored drives on my server, and back up my other machines to it daily.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Yeah, drives are so cheap now it's almost crazy not to RAID. I run mirrored drives on my server, and back up my other machines to it daily.

A raid array is not a backup though. If you have anything valuable you should always take regular backups to a separate drive or preferably tape/bd. If it's really valuable the backups should be kept in a separate building so that a house fire won't destroy the backups with the computer.

[Bizman]

A raid array is not a backup though. If you have anything valuable you should always take regular backups to a separate drive or preferably tape/bd. If it's really valuable the backups should be kept in a separate building so that a house fire won't destroy the backups with the computer.

Exactly. I had a customer whose PC was RAID 1 equipped. Both of the hard disks were beyond repair. One was totally dead, the other one claimed to be another model than what read on the sticker. All data lost, at least within reasonable cost.

[Cthulhu]

A raid array is not a backup though. If you have anything valuable you should always take regular backups to a separate drive or preferably tape/bd. If it's really valuable the backups should be kept in a separate building so that a house fire won't destroy the backups with the computer.

I guess I should have described my setup more thoroughly.  My server is backed up to two separate external drives which alternately go in my fire-resistant safe. Short of having Iron Mountain show up daily to haul my stuff off to some data "safe house", that's good enough for my family pictures and movies.

Now the recording of me vulching SHawk, that's safely tucked away in an abandoned salt mine 40 miles deep. 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I guess I should have described my setup more thoroughly.  My server is backed up to two separate external drives which alternately go in my fire-resistant safe. Short of having Iron Mountain show up daily to haul my stuff off to some data "safe house", that's good enough for my family pictures and movies.

Now the recording of me vulching SHawk, that's safely tucked away in an abandoned salt mine 40 miles deep. 

I was talking more of the OP who seems to have no backups at this time.