Data recovery

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Hagu13

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Thanks again to all who helped with my IDE problem yesterday. I've got the machine alive again but still need to get the data back.

The story so far:
My daughters machine had a 40Gb IDE drive and a DVDRW IDE on the same channel.
I removed the DVD and added a formatted 120GB IDE with the intention of cloning the small drive onto the big one.
PC wouldn't boot. Tried different permutations of drives and jumpers with no success
Plugged in the DVDRW again and booted successfully to Windows XP CD, and Ubuntu 8.10 live CD

Both HDDs show 4113MB partition with the rest of the drive unpartitioned space.
I have installed XP onto the 120GB HDD and run it successfully, so all the hardware seems ok.
I have not messed with the 40GB HDD as I need to get the files from "my documents"

So the status now is:
40GB HDD with 4113MB partition plus the rest unpartitioned space
This can be seen with the XP install CD and Ubuntu live CD. In Ubuntu it doesn't show up in places/computer but can be seen with fdisk.
The Ubuntu install has internet access.

How do I get the docs from My Documents browsable so I can copy them off, either in XP recovery console or Ubuntu?
I'm pretty useless with anything non-gui so I'm going to need spoonfeeding

TIA
 
If you can still boot from the 40GB and your OS is OK - get a flash and copy the documents over.

Otherwise, have you tried putting the drives onto two different cables?
 
HI Ruan
No, the 40GB will not boot at all. It shows only a 4113MB partition and the rest of the drive is unpartitioned space. Seems the partition table has gotten corrupted somehow. I know the data is still there, but I don't know how to recover it.
The machine only has one IDE channel, but I have 3 different cables, one of them new. If I plug another drive into this cable on this PC everything works fine.
 
Hagu13 said:
HI Ruan
No, the 40GB will not boot at all. It shows only a 4113MB partition and the rest of the drive is unpartitioned space. Seems the partition table has gotten corrupted somehow. I know the data is still there, but I don't know how to recover it.
The machine only has one IDE channel, but I have 3 different cables, one of them new. If I plug another drive into this cable on this PC everything works fine.
Click to expand...

Was the 40GB originally one partition before you started the trouble? What was the used space on the drive, presumably a lot more that 4113MB?
 
HI Riscbroker

Yes, 1 partition, XP SP3 installled. I think the drive was about 2/3 full.
I'm only interested in getting my docs back, not making the XP install work again.

I've played some more. Ubuntu's Gparted sees the drive but cannot help me without deleting the data.
 
So the drive originally had about 28GB on and now shows about 4GB. What happened to the rest of the data if all you did was clone the drive to the larger drive?
 
Didn't clone anything- never got that far.
Machine was running with DVD as IDE master, 40GB as IDE slave. Jumpers on cable select.
Opened box, moved 40GB to master, added formatted 120GB to slave and machine wouldn't boot.
After swopping drives around, playing with jumpers, trying 1 drive at a time and even going back to original config- still no boot
Then put XP CD into DVD drive and it booted to CD- found both HDDs to be in the same state: 4113MB partition, rest of drive unpartitioned space.
Then put Ubuntu live CD intro DVD drive, confirmed both HDDs as above.

I have since installed XP onto the 120Gb and it works fine, so it's not a hardware failure.

Nod, getdataback will show you that your data exists but will not give it back until you pay :-(
 
Hagu13 said:
Didn't clone anything- never got that far.
Machine was running with DVD as IDE master, 40GB as IDE slave. Jumpers on cable select.
Opened box, moved 40GB to master, added formatted 120GB to slave and machine wouldn't boot.
After swopping drives around, playing with jumpers, trying 1 drive at a time and even going back to original config- still no boot
Then put XP CD into DVD drive and it booted to CD- found both HDDs to be in the same state: 4113MB partition, rest of drive unpartitioned space.
Then put Ubuntu live CD intro DVD drive, confirmed both HDDs as above.

I have since installed XP onto the 120Gb and it works fine, so it's not a hardware failure.

Nod, getdataback will show you that your data exists but will not give it back until you pay :-(
Click to expand...

I really cannot understand how a newly formatted drive and a different drive with about 28GB of stuff on it both magically got the same amount of data on them.

But try here:

http://www.FindandMount.com

I've solved some trouble with this
 
I'd suggest plug everything in the way it was, check your jumpers again, as well as your BIOS settings. Also try different power connectors with the two drives. See if the drive parameters match what your BIOS auto-detected. As a last resort, see what happens if you manually input the parameters (as they are labelled on the drive) and then try to boot (if your BIOS allows it).
 
Thanks everyone for the suggestions (including the PM I got)

I'm trying Easeus partition manager at the moment (has a recovery wizard) It seems to be finding the stuff, it's free, but it's a time consuming process. If no success I'll try Find and Mount before playing around with the pay stuff. Will post feedback.
 
Hagu13 said:
Thanks everyone for the suggestions (including the PM I got)

I'm trying Easeus partition manager at the moment (has a recovery wizard) It seems to be finding the stuff, it's free, but it's a time consuming process. If no success I'll try Find and Mount before playing around with the pay stuff. Will post feedback.
Click to expand...

Good luck! Hope you recover the stuff before your daughter finds out
 
SUCCESS!!:D

Easeus recovered everything, including the original file structure. All file and folder names are as before, so all I need to do is copy and paste into the fresh install and the teenager will never know how close she came to losing the photos of her boyfriend:D

Thanks all for the advice along the way, on both threads.
 
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