Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > Hard Disks > [Solved] How can I recover my directory structure/file names???!

[Solved] How can I recover my directory structure/file names???!

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - [Solved] How can I recover my directory structure/file names???!

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pixeltarian   10-06-2009 at 09:25:40 AM

ok, I cannot find out what i did wrong without wrecking another hard drive. I can only give you these facts:



1. the drive was fine. it was NTFS formatted. external usb storage drive
2. I was on a mac, using ipartition. there's a feature that lets you see a visual pie chart of your drive. it wanted me to click something to see the ntfs drive in that fashion. I (HUUGE MISTAKE) didn't read what it was asking me, but assumed it was relatively harmless.
3. poof goes my partition data. ipartition has no partition table recovery feature.

so it's a healthy drive with an epically stupid error performed by yours truly.

I run a non profit studio, as in I record people for free. I do not have the money to have a service recover the directory structure. I can get to the files, but it would take a lifetime to relink pro tools sessions to the .wav files used in those sessions. nearly impossible.

if anyone can be of any assistance whatsoever - you would be doing me and a few very poor musicians a HUGE favor. I haven't told the musician's yet, because I was hoping I could fix it first. if I can't I'm afraid that it will put a giant dent in the progress of this little dream I have. I can't exactly entice people to come record, albeit for free, on so-so gear and I "might" loose 30 hours of your time because I didn't back up your session.

From now on though... "if it doesn't exist in 3 places, it doesn't exist" - words to live by


thank you so much for your help and advice.


P.S. I can use osx leopard 10.5.8, windows XP, or windows 7 for fixing attempts


Message edited by pixeltarian on 10-06-2009 at 09:40:28 AM
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Best answer from Paperdoc
Start with evongugg's recommendation. IF you get your Partitiion structure back and all your files, etc, stop there and thank him / her! BUT if your Partitions are recovered but somehow the files are not all there, you can try Getdataback NTFS. You have to pay for it, but it has a good "free trial" option on their website. You can download and run the free trial and it will show you exactly what the disk and its files will look like IF you let it do the recovery for you. If you don't like it, you exit out and nothing is touched. But if you believe it will do the whole job for you, you pay their price and it does the work, leaving you with all your files plus an authorized copy of the software you just bought and installed.
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Bronze Storage badge evongugg   10-06-2009 at 03:26:32 PM

We have all made stupid mistakes. Me too.

Use partition recovery software, like this:

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

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Bronze Storage badge Paperdoc   10-06-2009 at 03:50:33 PM
Best answer

Start with evongugg's recommendation. IF you get your Partitiion structure back and all your files, etc, stop there and thank him / her! BUT if your Partitions are recovered but somehow the files are not all there, you can try Getdataback NTFS. You have to pay for it, but it has a good "free trial" option on their website. You can download and run the free trial and it will show you exactly what the disk and its files will look like IF you let it do the recovery for you. If you don't like it, you exit out and nothing is touched. But if you believe it will do the whole job for you, you pay their price and it does the work, leaving you with all your files plus an authorized copy of the software you just bought and installed.

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pixeltarian   10-06-2009 at 05:00:30 PM

thanks for the help. i'm trying acronis disk director 10. the partition recovery has been scanning for like 5 hours now. it's not done yet. we'll see if it works. otherwise I found out that getdataback finds the directory structure. it can't recover it, but I can transfer the files and maintain the folders if I restore the files to a new drive.

thanks for all the help thus far. I will post an update if i get it fixed.

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pixeltarian   10-16-2009 at 06:05:27 AM

i did it! regular old hard drive recovery worked. i had to use a windows program though (getdataback) the mac equivalents (datarescue II, diskwarrior) did not recover my directory structure, just a bunch of files which would be a nightmare to weed through...

thanks so much for the help! it's such a good feeling to get lost data back! woo hoo!

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