File Restoration from a Deleted Partition

[Patriarch]

So a very wise worker took it upon themselves to upgrade their system from XP to 7 Pro without me knowing. instead of upgrading they deleted the partition and created a new one for 7, losing everything.

I was able to use some software to get recover the deleted partition, and I am slowly grabbing all 240gb of data off of it.

My question:

The data I am seeing is nothing like what it normally looks like when in folder view. For example, the .pst file is broken up into literally 60 parts, which the largest section being 600mb.

Has anyone ever dealt with recovering a deleted partition, and successful put the data back in its desired position? This is my first time doing this, and I am vexed.

/e the Software I am using is EaseUs Partition Recovery

[xopher]

If they did any writing to that partition after it was deleted, I would not have high hopes for any full recovery of files. Something like a .pst is probably a lost cause because of the way the file is written.

I've had the most success with a software called "recuva".

[SephYuyX]

Tell them tough luck, it's gone, and to next time contact someone who knows what theyre doing.
People wont learn until they learn the hard way.

[Moridam]

none of the data recovery tools i've used were able to preserve directory structures or filenames, i assume that's typically the case in these situations.

at least in my case it wasn't a huge deal, because i was just recovering a bunch of audio files, and the metadata was still intact, so getting everything sorted and named properly was pretty simple. a decent chunk of the files were corrupted/fragmented though, so it's certainly not perfect even in the best case.

[Patriarch]

I managed to get the .pst off the deleted partition

but its in so many pieces.. using .pst repair tool to patch it all back up, taking forever

[Obiron]

Completely different scenario, but at my last job we used GetDataBack from www.runtime.org. It's not freeware, but the company paid for it and it did what we needed. In our scenario, a RAID card in a server had died. The card was replaced, and my boss initialized the drives on the new card, which completely destroyed the RAID structure. This software was able to re-build and recover most of the data. I have had success with Recuva also for non-RAID situations, just wanted to point out a paid software if you need something more powerful.

[rezn0r]

did the pst repair tool end up working? i've done all kinds of random data recovery for people and i've never seen that happen, then again not many of them were probably even worrying about pst files.

[Patriarch]

did the pst repair tool end up working? i've done all kinds of random data recovery for people and i've never seen that happen, then again not many of them were probably even worrying about pst files.

it worked, but its nothing like the original .pst.

I recovered every single email, but in total after recovering the pst from the lost partition it was in 62 pieces.

I gathered every .pst up, ran .pst repair tool and got them all in the same folder. For the time being I just added them all to the outlook folder. I am able to view every email in that massive 9gb .pst cluster, but the labeling on them is wacky.. like file1, file2, file3 etc. In order to dig up an email you want to look for you just have to search for the contents of the email.

So technically it worked, but it looks alot different. But hey, better then losing all the emails i suppose

/e, also thanks for this --->

Completely different scenario, but at my last job we used GetDataBack from www.runtime.org. It's not freeware, but the company paid for it and it did what we needed. In our scenario, a RAID card in a server had died. The card was replaced, and my boss initialized the drives on the new card, which completely destroyed the RAID structure. This software was able to re-build and recover most of the data. I have had success with Recuva also for non-RAID situations, just wanted to point out a paid software if you need something more powerful.