Accidental Format (Quick) of 3TB HD using Disk Director 11 Home, data recovery software?
Due to tiredness I lost my backups drive contents due to an accidental (quick?) format using DD11Home. I was in the process of reinstalling windows 7 at the time, so I've lost 90% of my data - it was all on the backup drive (in Acronis backups).
Is there a data recovery tool you can recommend that would work well for recovering .tib files from a 3TB GBT (? sorry can't remember, but its not MBR, its the new one) NFTS drive? I haven't touched the drive since my loss, but so far the tools I've tried haven't given me any luck. The 'tib' files they recovered are not readable by Acronis software, and looked too small.
Tried
* MagicCute Data Recovery
* TestDisk's PhotoRec_Win
Thanks,
LL
It can be extremely difficult or impossible to recover TIB files using data recovery software. Most recovery software works much better if the files are small (the smaller the better) and are on contiguous sectors. Backup images don't fall into this category. Some recovery software will look for file signatures (TIB files may not even be recognized), while others use the MFT (if intact) to try and locate them. Personally, I've never had any success recovering backup image files (even those just deleted accidentally) using recovery software.
For backups, it's especially important to keep multiple copies of valuable images on different physical drives and to not have both drives normally connected at the same time.
Thanks for the reply, Mudcrab.
Good(?) to know that my lack of success is not unusual. I've pretty much decided to write the data off after all my tries. The only ones that found any trace of the tib files were the first two I tried, and they were not 'complete' files. Your explanation explains why. I think I'll put on my to buy list a separate backup drive (external) that I'll use to periodically copy a latest backup to, that way if something like this happens again, I'll (as you suggest) have a backup of my backup.
Fortunately, the most critical data (business related), was not lost. Just a good portion of my personal files - most of which, in the cold light of day, it won't kill me to lose. The most painful loss was my pictures, some of which I can retake, some which I can not due to the individuals no longer being alive.
Thanks again.
LL
If you need the drive, but have room for a large backup, take a sector-by-sector backup and keep it. You could restore it later and see if any current recovery software works better.
Have you tried Minitool Partition Recovery, or one of their other products? I've used the Partition Recovery to get back partitions I've accidentally format/changed using ADD11. Just remember, the more you mess with it (with other products) & the longer you wait after the "accident" happened... the less likely you are to recover it. Note: Their product - Power Data Recovery 6 is shareware and has a 1gig limit, until you purchase/register it. I have successfully used several of their FREE products for data recovery; on XP & Windows 7 (both 32 & 64 bit versions).
If you are willing to try professional services, which cost, you could always try Drive Savers. I've used them in the past before and they are great, but costly.
And as it was asked in the past, no, I don't work for them, I don't have any stock in them, or anything else. I recommend them as they are the leading company for this market. If they go out of business, I will lose nothing, not even sleep.