Hello,

I am in the process of recovering data from my old Acer Aspire notebook to my new DESKTOP rig. I believe I've GONE wrong somewhere so I will explain what has happened first in detail.

Recently, the hard drive in the notebook stopped functioning normally. I knew it was only going to get worse, so I pulled as much data off as possible before the Windows INSTALL became corrupted. The important data is safe, however there were still some files I wanted to copy off the drive. Eventually Windows refused to start, complaining that it could not access the hard drive.

After some searching I found a program that runs under Linux - ddrescue - which was able to pull most of the data off the drive. I didn't have an external drive available to use, so I connected a new Seagate 2TB drive (which was for the new build) and created an NTFS PARTITION through Ubuntu. I set up ddrescue to place recovered data in an .img file on that partition. The partition on the Seagate drive holding these files was readable in Linux, though I regret not testing whether it's readable in Windows.

Now here's where I think I went wrong - I eventually gathered the remaining parts for the new computer and built it. I installed Windows 7 on a new partition on the Seagate drive. I tried to make sure that the installer did not touch the existing partition, however since installing Windows 7 the existing partition is unreadable in both Windows and Linux.

I've heard about using Testdisk to recover the partition, however when I ran it and analysed the disk there were two entries for the one partition with all the old data.



The partition is listed under in 'Computer' as Local Disk (D:) and opening it brings up the dialog box asking if I would like to format it. In Disk Management, the drive is listed as RAW.

Anyways, in short, I think the Windows installer has done something to either the partition itself or the partition table and I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on how I can access the partition again.

ThanksIts stating RAW because Windows doesnt understand it. More here: http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/The link above has a disclaimer. In effect, is says that you may loose forever any or all data on the disc. The author does not offer any way to recover from a fatgal error using the methods he offers.

If the data has monetary value, a data recovery service my be the only option.
Due to this:

Quote

Now here's where I think I went wrong - I eventually gathered the remaining parts for the new computer and built it. I installed Windows 7 on a new partition on the Seagate drive. I tried to make sure that the installer did not touch the existing partition, however since installing Windows 7 the existing partition is unreadable in both Windows and Linux.

Its stating RAW because Windows doesnt understand it. More here: http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/

I have a strong feeling that data has already been overwritten. But I agree with Geek that if you have critical data on this drive and can afford the costly recovery your best bet is a data recovery center. However the methods shared in that link if they work for you you can get some or all data back.

For the fact that Windows 7 doesnt recognize this space on the HDD though there is a good chance that it could have stepped on top of the old data.