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Please Help Me I am In Terrrible Trouble !!!

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Please help me I have a terrible problem.

I backed up my drive that had a Windows 2000 setup onto an external drive and then setup a fresh Windows XP install.

As I built the XP setup I would do backups to the external drive and save them to the same folder as the Windows 2000 backup.

At one point I had a conflict with some installed programs in the XP setup, so I restored to a previous XP backup, and then re-installed the difficult programs and made a fresh backup.

After success I decided to delete the backup that had the conflicts.

I was running the Acronis Backup and Recovery Standalone Workstation Program from a CD and there seemed to be a way to delete an archive.

I highlighted the archive I wanted to delete and then clicked the delete button. It asked for confirm and I clicked yes.

BUT THEN IT DELETED THE ENTIRE FOLDER WITH ALL OF MY XP BACKUPS AND MY ORIGINAL WINDOWS 2000 BACKUPS WHICH HAD IMPORTANT FILES WHICH I HAVE NO OTHER COPY OF.

I immediately shut down.

This was not a secure deletion. The files were not overwritten.

PLEASE TELL ME THERE IS SOME WAY TO RESTORE THE FOLDER AND ALL THE FILES THAT WERE IN IT.

I AM DEVASTATED !!!!

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Hi,

go and download testdisk, a free recovery software.
You could also use PhotoRec to recovery the files.

Thank you Jürgen for your reply.

Do you think I would improve my chances for recovery if I connected the External Drive via eSATA connection rather than the USB connection. I think that this would reduce Translations by one layer. Or do you think I should stick with the USB connection since it was how the drive was connected during both creation of the files and also the accidental deletion ?

Thank you for your help.

Two other questions which should be easy to answer.
I do not want to turn on the external drive until I am ready to run the recovery program.

Could someone tell me whether the .meta folder that got deleted at the same time holds one file for each backup file I have created or just one file total?

What are the filename extensions of the file / files in the .meta folder?

Thanks.

Not shure,

but if you use Windows Vista or Windows 7 the os will check for the disk and maybe test the disk for boost option..

But you could connect via esata, set the bios to legacy and boot with testdisc/photorec from a dos disc.
Maybe you could use a live linux distro with testdisc / photorec on it.

You could check for ontrack software, i remember that the free edition recovers only one files.
Maybe you this would be enough to restore the backup file.

Thank you Jürgen.
I would be using Windows XP on an IDE disk not Vista or Win 7, so hopefully there would not be any invasive testing.

I looked at the Ontrack Easy Recovery software you mentioned. They seem to mention potential problems with SATA.

I think then maybe trying PhotoRec with the external drive hooked up via USB is safer.

From the web pages of instructions for PhotoRec it says I can set the file filters for Acronis .tib files.
But I still need to find out about the .meta folder.

Can anyone reading this post tell me what ends up in the .meta folder after a backup file is created and what the file extension of that file(s) is (are) ?

Thanks.

Hi,

please use google first (Search for .. .meta acronis).

If you delete the .meta folder you can´t create a incremental or differential backup of the tib backup. Only full backup is possible.
Please read

http://kb.acronis.com/content/4503

Thank you. I googled the terms as you suggested and found
http://kb.acronis.com/content/10617
The second screenshot showed me the filenames.
They are alphanumeric hyphenated strings.
If testdisk can find them, I'll probably be able to use them.
If I have to use PhotoRec, I won't be able to guess at the filenames for these .meta files.
From what the kb articles say it should not affect my use of the backup files for restore assuming I can recover them.
I'll create a new folder for future backups after I recover what I can.
Thanks for all your help, Jürgen.

Use the USB connection, eSata although faster can cause more problems - stick with one tpye of scenario for the moment.

Probably a bit late now, but don't write anything else to that disk, until you've run whichever file recovery program you are going to use.