Retrieving Data from Partitioned and Formatted DrivesWhen a hard disk, floppy disk, or removable-media drive has been formatted, its file allocation table, which is used by programs such as Norton UnErase or VCOM System Suite's FileUndeleter to determine the location of files, is lost. If a hard drive has been repartitioned with FDISK or another partitioning program (such as Windows 2000/XP's Disk Management), the original file system and partition information is lost (as is the FAT). In such cases, more powerful data-recovery tools must be used to retrieve data. To retrieve data from an accidentally formatted drive, you have two options:
To retrieve data from a drive that has been partitioned, you must use a program that can read disk sectors directly. Norton Unformat and Its LimitationsNorton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks offer Norton Unformat, which can be launched from the bootable CD to unformat an accidentally formatted FAT drive. However, Norton Unformat has significant limitations with today's file systems and drive types, including the following:
For these reasons, Norton Unformat is not the most desirable method for unformatting a drive. You can use the powerful, but completely manual, Norton Disk Editor (DISKEDIT) to unformat a drive or retrieve data from a formatted drive, but other alternatives are simpler. Retrieving Lost Data to Another DriveMany products on the market can retrieve lost data to another drive, even if the data loss was due to accidental formatting or disk partitioning. One of the best and most comprehensive products is the EasyRecovery product line from Ontrack DataRecovery Services, a division of Kroll Ontrack, Inc. The EasyRecovery product line includes the following products:
An earlier version of EasyRecovery Data Recovery Lite can recover up to 50 files and is included as part of VCOM's System Suite (previously sold by Ontrack). When you start EasyRecovery Professional, you can choose from several recovery methods , including these:
In each case, you need to specify another drive to receive the retrieved data. This read-only method preserves the contents of the original drive and enables you to use a different data-recovery method if the first method doesn't recover the desired files. Which options are best for data recovery? Table 11.1 shows the results of various data-loss scenarios and recovery options when EasyRecovery Professional was used to recover data from a 19GB logical drive formatted with the NTFS file system under Windows XP. Table 11.1. Data Recovery Options and Results with EasyRecovery Professional
As Table 11.1 makes clear, as long as the data areas of a drive are not overwritten, complete data recovery is usually possibleeven if the drive has been formatted or repartitioned. Thus, it's critical that you react quickly if you suspect you have partitioned or formatted a drive containing valuable data. The longer you wait to recover data, the less data will be available for recovery. In addition, if you must use a sector-by-sector search for data (a process called RawRecovery by Ontrack), your original folder structure and long filenames will not be saved. You will therefore need to re-create the desired directory structure and rename files after you recover thema very tedious process. Tip If you use EasyRecovery Professional or EasyRecovery DataRecovery to repair damaged Zip or Microsoft Office files, use the Properties menu to select a location for repaired files (the original location or another drive or folder). By default, repaired Outlook files are copied to a different folder, whereas other file types are repaired in place unless you specify a different location. As you can see from this example, dedicated data-recovery programs such as Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional are very powerful. However, they are also very expensive. If you have Norton Utilities or Norton SystemWorks and don't mind taking some time to learn about disk structures, you can perform data recovery with the Norton Disk Editor. |