[Octan]

I did something very st00pid yesterday. I was planning to back up my documents and reformat my computer as a general maintenance thing I do every so often. But somehow in the midst of it all the drive that had the backups (I have two hard disks, arranged into various partitions) got its partition deleted. The data, I'm pretty sure, it perfectly fine; it's just inaccessible.

I've noticed you recommend PC that Inspector thing, but when I went there it made it sound like you can't actually restore the data with the free version; you can just look at the stuff and you need the full-cost version to actually make the files accessible again. I'm on a different computer right now so I can't try it yet; if any of you can testify that I'm right about PCI, could you tell me what will work? Please hurry; all my documents are on there and I don't seem to have a backup anywhere.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and does anyone know if this thing is a hoax? 'Cause I'll try anything that isn't.

Edited by Octan, 18 May 2005 - 08:59 AM.

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The best free utility I know of for recovering partitions is testdisk. You can download it from the link below :

http://www.softpedia.../TestDisk.shtml

It contains a dos version (for dos, win9x) and windows version for XP/2000.
Make sure you read all the documentation first though & if your drive is partitioned into multiple partitions, you'll prabably need to know the size of each one in order to select them correctly.

Be warned that the more things you do to try & recover it and that fail, will make your chances of recovering the data less. So you want to get it right first time.

Good luck

[Samm]

The best free utility I know of for recovering partitions is testdisk. You can download it from the link below :

http://www.softpedia.../TestDisk.shtml

It contains a dos version (for dos, win9x) and windows version for XP/2000.
Make sure you read all the documentation first though & if your drive is partitioned into multiple partitions, you'll prabably need to know the size of each one in order to select them correctly.

Be warned that the more things you do to try & recover it and that fail, will make your chances of recovering the data less. So you want to get it right first time.

Good luck

[Octan]

Well, as it turned out, PC Inspector worked perfectly. Thanks though.

I guess this case is closed.

[Samm]

Hi Luke007
I'm not that familar with PTD personally but testdisk does everything that PTD does by the sounds of it, plus testdisk isn't shareware & hence not a demo version, so full functionality etc.

Out of interest, what is the restriction placed on the demo version of PTD? I'm currently hunting for ones that I can instruct other people on how to use easily in these situations where I don't have access to the drive myself. So it's always useful to know whats available.