Somehow my partitions got shattered

thergonomic

Distinguished
Feb 2, 2011
6
0
18,510
https://imageshack.com/i/pmjuCJUHj

As seen in the link above the partitions on one of my hard disk drives have somehow been "shattered" so that the parts of the partiton that have no data written on them have become Unallocated partitions. What I did was that I formated the whole drive, partitioned the whole disk into a NTFS partition, move all the data from two smaller hard disk drives into the freshly partitioned one. After that I formated the two smaller ones becaause I was going to use them for another project.
Then I restarted the computer and found out that the fresh HDD had somehow been "shattered". I used a program (Active@ File Recovery) and found out that the data still exists and I could even open image and text files. he problem is that I would need a 3+TB HDD to burn the image or employ an expert, but and as a student with a shoestring that doesn't feel like a good option.

Has anybody seen anything similar and how did you resiolve he issue?
 
Solution
You perhaps have better software as you should never recover files back to the same drive you are recovering from.
HDD's do not erase files when you delete them, they merely mark the space as 'available to use'. Any writing to the drive can potentially overwrite a file you want to recover.

popatim

Titan
Moderator
Where are you 'recovering' the data from? The large hdd or the smaller drives?
I would recover from the smaller ones, placing the files onto the large one (after you fully format the large one).

Also, If you are at school, the IT dept there might be able to help you out as well with a little temporary space or backup drive.

Lastly, be sure to find a way to back up that data if its important. All drives fail, many without warning or possible data recovery.
 

thergonomic

Distinguished
Feb 2, 2011
6
0
18,510

I tried to recover the data from the drive in question, but my software demanded that I had a larger HDD to recover to. I'll try to bug somebody at my IT department for a 3+ TB drive in two weeks when everybody returns from summer vacation.
 

popatim

Titan
Moderator
You perhaps have better software as you should never recover files back to the same drive you are recovering from.
HDD's do not erase files when you delete them, they merely mark the space as 'available to use'. Any writing to the drive can potentially overwrite a file you want to recover.
 
Solution