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Lost Partition Information after 'Recover Files'

Posted: 09 Sep 2012, 22:15
by daverozelle
I recently wanted to do a clean install of Windows so I swapped my boot drive to a secondary postion and added a new boot drive. Installed Windows on the new boot drive and started to move off my important files and items from the old C drive. So this is what I have:

Drive 0: C:\ (single partition - new install/boot drive)
Drive 1: Part 1: e:\ (old boot drive with old windows)
Drive 1: Part 2: f:\ (documents partition)
Drive 2: X:\ (drive for storage)

Once I was installed and working, I formatted e:\ so that I could create a new drive for program installation separate from c:\ -- WOOPS! I forgot to grab a few files from the old windows install! My bookmarks from Firefox and a few Saved Games files. No problem really, nothing has been written to the drive yet so I figured to try a few recovery programs. I remembered TestDisk first, but after loading it up and looking at the drives, I didn't think this was the right program for what I was trying to recover. I remember Recuva and install it to my new C:\ and run a deep scan... wait two hours... skim through 500k files found and find about 25-30 files that are excellent recovery items, and recover them to a folder on my x:\ BAM! I realize something has changed because a few of my taskbar icons change to unknown image instead of logo.

I open My Computer and I now have an UNFORMATTED E:\ and a tiny 12gb F:\ labeled 'Factory_Image'

I have lost almost 350GB of data stored on my original F:\

Looking at the F:\ drive I have 'Recovery' folder that is empty. I have a 'Local Disk D_3102012101' folder that is also empty. I'm not sure where these came from. All I know is this change in disk letters, partitions happened after I ran TestDisk and before I completed Scanning with Recuva.

I guess I did something while in TestDisk that I didn't realize... help?