Recover files

ceantuco · 06-10-2011, 01:42 PM

Hi Guys,

I have an external 250gb hard drive where I had copied all my documents, pictures, etc etc. I wanted to reinstall windows xp on internal hard drive but I made a mistake and deleted the partition on the 250gb external hard drive. Is there a way to recover those files? I didn't format the 250gb hard drive. If yes, which software do you guys recommend?

@Moderator: If this needs to be posted on another forum please let me know.
Thanks

pljvaldez · 06-10-2011, 02:47 PM

Try running testdisk on the drive.

John VV · 06-10-2011, 02:55 PM

photorec ?
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
extundelete-0.2.0.tar.bz2
http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/

take it someplace and pay $1000/gig

if ONLY the partation table was removed and the drive was NOT wrote to then
"SystemRescueCd"
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
might be able to recover the table

ceantuco · 06-14-2011, 10:14 AM

ok, I ran photorec and I was able to recover all my files. is there any way to run photorec and keep the original files names? I have a whole bunch of files name like 0458945.jpg etc etc
thanks

pljvaldez · 06-14-2011, 12:06 PM

You can try running testdisk to restore the partition table. If that works, the directory structure is restored and the files will have their names again.

There are a few scripts out there that can help try to rename files by reading embedded metadata. The photorec site has a few of them here.

ceantuco · 06-15-2011, 12:27 PM

Thank you for the info.

anomie · 06-15-2011, 01:42 PM

@ceantuco: if you'll accept unsolicited advice this time, please mark the thread "solved", and consider punching the "helpful" button for those who helped. This is one of those threads where a couple strangers saved you a chunk of time and/or $$.