Major loss

[billom]

I lost my entire hard drive on my notebook which wasn't too bad especially since I had a good tested image file. 

My thoughts were to use the recovery software from the notebook vendor and get the drive back to it original image, then I would restore the imaged backup I had.  The reason was the the partition tables had gone bad and I thought that with using the recovery disk, the drive would be repartitioned and formatted and then I could recover from the backup.  The backup image was on a 1TB USB drive that was hooked up to the notebook.

When I booted from the recovery disk, instead of it working on the internal C drive, it decided to work on the attached USB drive and ran FDISK on it and started formating it.  Within seconds I realized what it had done and immediately turned the computer off. 

I ran the demo iRecover on the drive and it found several folders.  One was fairly small so I thought I woudl try to recover it and if all went well, I would make a purchase and recover the backup files.  Sure enough the folder was recovered, however none of the files are usable  (e.g. TXT file are full of binary data, executable won't run, etc.) 

I then thought about trying DiskPatch but there is no way to test it first to see if anything recovered is usable.

To make matters worse - I pretty much did the same stupid thing again, only this time on a smaller 1GB USB flash drive (forgot to unplug it before running the recovery disk again) and it too was wiped out.  Now I have two drive that I need to recover and even though the 1GB Flash drive is smaller it is probably more important at this point than the image backup.  Again, trying iRecover on it, I was unsuccessful in recovering readable verifiable good data.

Maybe I am trying the wrong tool and before I proceed, I thought I would reach out and get your help.  I have no problems in purchasing your software if that will in fact help he recover the data.  I am very open to trying whatever you ask me to do.  Thanks!!!

[Tom]

Tricky...
If the restore disk didn't get much further than formatting everything should still be on the disk(s). If however a restore was initiated, you're screwed. And there's another thing: you said the backup(s) hold backup images, what does that mean? Because, if the disk(s) hold files in the same way that a normally formatted disk would, the recovery should go fine. But if the disk(s) hold some form of archive or image file, you can expect the recovery to get bad results.

So:
1. how far did the restore get?
2. how where the problem disks filled? What was on there and how was it stored there?

Be exact (file system type, volume sizes, whatever you can think of, share it please).

If more questions pop up here, we'll add them.

[billom]

First drive -> 1 GB USB Fat32 Kingston Data Traveler.
Files on this drive are normal files placed on the drive via either copied from Explorer or created with various tools.

The recovery CD: first it FDISK the drive, then formats it, then does a Symantec Ghost recovery.  The FDISK was completed.  Formatting started but was not allowed to complete and the Ghost recovery process was never started.  No writing of any data has been done to the flash drive since.

One thing that may or may not be applicable.  The old file system was Fat32.  I am guessing since the recovery disk thought it was trying to recover to the original hard drive, it started formatting with NTFS.  Again, the format was never allowed to complete.

There are only three files on this drive I really need.  No recovery software has been able to locate these three files.  They are old FlashFiler database files.  They were very likely opened at the time the FDISK was run.

Second drive -> External 1TB USB 2.0 drive.  FAT 32.  Same steps FDISK completed, formatting (assuming as an NTFS drive) started but was not allowed to complete, no recovery files copied onto the drive.

Concerning the image files that are on this drive, they are backup files created by Acronis True Image backup software.  There is a series of 4GB files (approximately 35 to 40 files) all in a single folder.  There are other files on the drive but I can live without any of them.  It is the 4GB Acronis file I am most interested in.

A different question: are you all somehow affiliated with XXX?  http://www.x-x-xxxxx.com/ 
Their software and your iRecover software are identical.

[Joep]

Hello,

First drive -> 1 GB USB Fat32 Kingston Data Traveler.
Files on this drive are normal files placed on the drive via either copied from Explorer or created with various tools.

Formatting and FAT32 isn't good. After the format we only have to rely on directory structures to recover lost files. We can determine filename, size and start cluster. So we will have to assume startcluster + filesize is the entire file. if it's not, in other words the file was fragmented, the recovered file will be corrupt. No other way to reconstruct files other than manual labor. Add to that that FDISK will write a F6h byte pattern on fixed intervals to the disk so that larger files will be corrupt and smaller files may be corrupted.

Second drive -> External 1TB USB 2.0 drive.  FAT 32.  Same steps FDISK completed, formatting (assuming as an NTFS drive) started but was not allowed to complete, no recovery files copied onto the drive.

1 TB FAT32??? Are you sure about that? Recoverability for NTFS is superior to that of FAT(32). This won't help you now, I know. Again, large files have my be corrupt due to FDISK. You may want to try to force FAT32 in advanced options, overrides TAB.

A different question: are you all somehow affiliated with XXX?  http://www.xxx.com/ 
Their software and your iRecover software are identical.

Correct. iRecover however contains some additional features.

[billom]

1 TB FAT32??? Are you sure about that?

Yep.  It is a Pure Drive from AComData and according to their FAQ's is it FAT 32.
http://www.acomdata.com/puredrive.asp

I'll give the suggestions a try.