Clan x86

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Armin on December 30, 2009, 12:26:23 AM

Title: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Armin on December 30, 2009, 12:26:23 AM
(10:22:17 PM) Metal Militia: Windows 7 deleted one of my partitions with hundreds of hours of unbacked up work on it
(10:22:24 PM) Metal Militia: do you know how to recover the data?
(10:22:35 PM) Metal Militia: I know I never talk to you, but this is devestating
(10:22:38 PM) Metal Militia: so I'm asking everyone
(10:23:01 PM) Metal Militia: Data Carving seems to be the only solution, but I have no idea how to go about doing it
(10:23:02 PM) Metal Militia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery#Data_carving
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Armin on December 30, 2009, 12:47:40 AM
Problem resolved; I got my data back. I'm off to back everything up.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Blaze on December 30, 2009, 01:04:50 AM
Good luck!  :D
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: warz on December 30, 2009, 01:19:11 AM
That wasnt a very descriptive first post. I'm guessing you're metal militia. Either way, very poorly executed.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Armin on December 30, 2009, 03:14:14 AM
Quote from: warz on December 30, 2009, 01:19:11 AM
That wasnt a very descriptive first post. I'm guessing you're metal militia. Either way, very poorly executed.
Indeed. I was rather distraught and in a hurry. :D
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: rabbit on December 30, 2009, 08:30:33 AM
I'd be kind of annoyed if I lost hundreds of hours of pornwork.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: iago on December 30, 2009, 08:43:26 AM
Wanna post your solution in case others have the same issue?
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Armin on December 30, 2009, 02:10:44 PM
Sure.

Problem: Windows 7 Disk Management apparently fudged the partition table when I shrunk the partition by 9GB. Windows XP install on this new 9GB free space deleted the important partition, leaving me with 180GB unpartitioned space.

Solution: Install TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk), run a quick scan, navigate to the "deleted" partition table, and "write".
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: iago on December 30, 2009, 05:30:22 PM
Nice, good to know :)

For what it's worth, you should never try editing partitions (especially shrinking) without a backup handy. :)
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Newby on December 30, 2009, 06:52:48 PM
You should never do anything risky without backups handy. Hell, I still get scared when I type commands like "cfdisk /dev/hda" even when I know I have no intentions of modifying anything. Opening Disk Utility on Mac OS X still freaks me out, and all I plan to do is usually burn an .iso.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: iago on December 30, 2009, 08:48:47 PM
Heh, true enough -- I get scared when I'm doing *nothing* and don't have a backup handy. I always have that sinking feeling whenever I know I don't have a backup.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Armin on December 30, 2009, 09:02:44 PM
Noted. While we're on the subject of backups, anyone one give suggestions of different backup configurations?
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Joe on December 30, 2009, 10:20:12 PM
Quote from: Newby on December 30, 2009, 06:52:48 PM
You should never do anything risky without backups handy. Hell, I still get scared when I type commands like "cfdisk /dev/hda" even when I know I have no intentions of modifying anything. Opening Disk Utility on Mac OS X still freaks me out, and all I plan to do is usually burn an .iso.

By the way, Disk Utility can now resize partitions, even the one booted from, with enough accuracy to be called a main feature of Snow Leopard. If you know Apple, that's near 100%.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: iago on December 30, 2009, 10:49:47 PM
Quote from: Armin on December 30, 2009, 09:02:44 PM
Noted. While we're on the subject of backups, anyone one give suggestions of different backup configurations?
I have a usb harddrive and a nightly task that copies my home folder to it. Pretty simple, but effective (and free :D).

Of course, if my apartment burns down, I'll be outta luck. I'll probably just commit suicide.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Blaze on December 31, 2009, 02:33:07 AM
It truly is the best option after data loss.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Chavo on December 31, 2009, 12:46:15 PM
Quote from: Armin on December 30, 2009, 09:02:44 PM
Noted. While we're on the subject of backups, anyone one give suggestions of different backup configurations?
I have a dedicated FreeNAS box with a RAID5 volume shared over SMB as my primary backup storage location.  My two primary machines (web server + main machine) have weekly incremental backups (nightly document backups) that are compressed quarterly and deleted after a year.  My test/spare/laptop/media machines are not backed up at all, but they also have zero information on them that I don't have stored elsewhere.  I have an external USB drive that, in theory, I intended to use as an extra offsite backup tool, but all it really holds right now are some very old backups of machines I no longer have and some recovery ISO images.  I wouldn't expect someone to set up something that complex for your basic user, but it works very well (and requires zero remembering to create backups) for my somewhat distributed network and valuable data.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: deadly7 on January 11, 2010, 01:56:26 PM
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/partition-manager-10-0-personal-english-holiday/

Partition Manager 10.0 Free today.. For anyone that is interested.
Title: Re: Devastating Data Loss
Post by: Newby on January 11, 2010, 09:07:00 PM
I've gotta install it? Fuck! :(