Foulup: Recover Previous NTFS Partition in Vista?

Sainty · Post by **Sainty** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 12:41 am

Okay, I've fouled up.

I was installing Windows XP in anticipation of my upgrade to Vista 64 and then I made one of the most boneheaded mistakes to date in regards to computers. My previous SATA RAID array was the same size as my IDE hardrive (used for backups). After going through the blue prompt screens for installing Windows XP I decided I was going to reformat the RAID array. Well, not paying attention, I accidentally deleted (unmounted, is that the proper term?) the actual IDE hardrive partition that was holding all my files with the backup.

After realizing that I had removed the partition I didn't follow up and format that drive. Nothing should be lost I'm thinking, as all I did was get rid of the partition and not overwrite the previous data. Next I actually setup the proper partition on the SATA RAID and installed XP and then Vista without any issue.

Upon re-entering Vista however, the hardrive that has all my precious files on it shows up under the "Computer" window. Double clicking it just prompts you to "You need to format this drive before you can use it". Obviously I don't want to format over my files, but rather recover them.

Is there a way to remount a partition using Windows or some other diagnostic tool from a 3rd party? Nothing is deleted that I know of, but I need to find a way to make Vista see it as a proper volume again.

Any ideas or suggestions?

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:07 am

I hope for you that software like Get Data Back will do the trick.
I have recovered some data with such tools, as long as you don't overwrite the disk, the data should be there, in theory.

Sainty · Post by **Sainty** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:18 am

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll put it on the shortlist of things to try. I disconnected the hardrive until further notice such that no further (if any) sectors will be written over. I didn't format, so in theory, the data should all be there is my *hope*.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:56 am

Hello,

I think that Get Data Back for NTFS will probably be able to do what you need it to. It takes a while, because it has to find all the portions of the files, and rebuild them into a directory structure -- you can use it before you buy it, and if it works, then pay to register it and recover the data.