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Deleted partitions on Windows 7 Setup

Posted: 06 Nov 2014, 13:09
by bpaiva
Hi all,

I need help please, i have a internal 3.5inch HDD western digital 500GB with Windows XP installed in NTFS file system, my employe forgot backup the files, and when i see he have put the Windows 7 setup DVD, deleted the partitions, and when i saw the Windows copying files in setup (only 3%) i ask him for the backup, when he said that don´t do it, i turn off machine.

I remove the disk, and put him in other machine in secondary disk, and i see the Windows 7 partitions created, the system reserved and other partition with the rest of size of disk.

So download testdisk, do analyze and deeper Search but the only partitions found is actual Windows 7 partitions layout...

Testdisk alert for 240 heads should be 255, i change to 255 geometry options the analyze and deep Search come with same results, found a partition but when i list files says "can´t open filesystem, filesystem is damaged"

HELP please, my client will kill me....

Re: Deleted partitions on Windows 7 Setup

Posted: 07 Nov 2014, 08:24
by DorianWD
Hi there,

I am really sorry to hear about your issue.
If the information is of high importance I would suggest that you don't try anything further so that you don't make any changes on the data written on the drive and contact a data recovery company instead. This could be pricy, but is your best shot in this case. Here you can find the partner companies of Western Digital: http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.a ... egion=emea

I hope you will get your data back.

Regards,
Dorian_WD

Re: Deleted partitions on Windows 7 Setup

Posted: 07 Nov 2014, 08:43
by Fiona
3.5 inch disks, the geometry is as usually 255 heads.
Since Vista microsoft partitions are aligned on megabyte boundaries and not Intel-standard on cylinder boundaries anymore.
That's why testdisk can display this message if you have chosen partition table type Intel.
In case, the message can be ignored.
If a partition was created with a different size and file system, recovery might be possible.
Info:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Rec ... _partition

If your employee formatted your partition identical, your file system, your bootsector and its backup are overridden.
You'll need datarecovery software to read your underlying data.
PhotoRec reads underlying data but it doesn't recover file names and folders.
Info:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step