sorry for the bold title. i got hit with a really nasty virus or spyware thing that none of my software that fixes them could detect or fix. it was years since I had my machine was built (by me by the way
) so i decided it was due for a reinstall of the OS. so i backed up all my stuff from the main internal drive (40 gig forget the maker tho) and put it all on my 300 gig western digital that i put in a aftermarket enclosure case hooked to a usb port on the back.
i inserted the XP cd and rebooted when it was half done it gave me errors and did not finish. so i went back and started over and it showed what i THOUGHT were partions and not drives. so i clicked on both of them and had them formated. finish the 2nd try with no problems and soon I have a fresh install of XP.
I go to access the external drive that had the backed up stuff like all my downloaded applications like quicktime, my virus software etc and saw that the only thing on the external was a folder called WINDOWS. i thought i was seeing things so i unplugged the drive and went back to windows explorer and there was only 2 drives one was the main 40 gig, and the other was a 160 gig that contained some files but all my media (pictures, mp3s, videos, movies etc) were on the external so i could take it to a friends house or hook to a laptop in the future.
I plugged back in the external and the windows folder was there and nothing else. I promptly deleted the windows folder. so here I have a PC with 3 HDs and a fresh install of XP and nothing else. but all was not lost, i contacted a buddy of mine about my situation.
he told me there are programs you can get that can UN format HDs and other devices that store info (USB flash drives and memory cards too). he refered me to one that he used in the past and said he got like 95-98% of his stuff back. he sad as long as i did not put any more stuff on it (other than that windows folder) I would be able to get most of it back. well i tried his method and downloaded it and it took a few hours (300 gig HD remember
) and it found like all of my folders that contained my stuff. i had to save them to a drive other than the external or risk damaging the recoverd data. after i spread 130 gigs of stuff onto 2 drives i was able to then transfer them back to the external. and now i got all my stuff back.
SHORT VERSION: formated wrong drive while reinstalling windows, found a program that recovers formated drives. ran software, got almost 100% of my stuff back and is now happy.
if any of you guys EVER do what I did I saved the FULL version of the software that I used for future (hopefully NEVER) use. so if you ever need a data recovery software that WORKS shoot me a PM and I will hook ya up
