Is there any way to recover a partition after writing zeros with WD DL

[jaclaz]

Ya man i cant see any files when pressing P. i thought that PhotoRec is just for pics but im running it now and it see alot more extensions.

man i really wanted to recover the whole partition - file based just not going to do the job.

what more options do i have? il do anything to recover just tell me what do you think.

From what has been reported till now, the filesystem is lacking the $MFT, i.e. it's main file-indexing structure.

I doubt that *anything* can recover *any* more fies than what dmde allowed/allows you to.

BUT the rules of thumb are:

1. NEVER give up (untill anything reasonably feasible has been attempted)
   
2. throw at the stoopid filesystem each and every recovery software you can find (or can think of).
   

Two more good candidates:

SCROUNGENTFS (freeware):

http://thewalter.net/stef/software/scrounge/

FILE SCAVENGER (Commercial - trial available):

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

jaclaz

[energydream2007]

Ya man i cant see any files when pressing P. i thought that PhotoRec is just for pics but im running it now and it see alot more extensions.

man i really wanted to recover the whole partition - file based just not going to do the job.

what more options do i have? il do anything to recover just tell me what do you think.

From what has been reported till now, the filesystem is lacking the $MFT, i.e. it's main file-indexing structure.

I doubt that *anything* can recover *any* more fies than what dmde allowed/allows you to.

BUT the rules of thumb are:

1. NEVER give up (untill anything reasonably feasible has been attempted)
   
2. throw at the stoopid filesystem each and every recovery software you can find (or can think of).
   

Two more good candidates:

SCROUNGENTFS (freeware):

http://thewalter.net/stef/software/scrounge/

FILE SCAVENGER (Commercial - trial available):

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

jaclaz

Tnx man il try them and others & update

update - man PhotoRec did nice job compare to any other file based iv ever tried - recovered 240GB and to sort them by extension iv found a little tool called PhotoRec_Sorter.

its just show me that the data is really there (at least most of the 320GB) witch is good news . so basicly the lack of proper $MFT is whats makes the recovery softs the problem of recover my partition as a whole? man i really wanna get that solved.

any ideas will be appriciated. im trying now Restorer ultimate and later SCROUNGENTFS. FILE SCAVENGER didnt do the job for now.

Update - it seems like ive managed to fix the MFT & Bootsector using TestDisk witch is good but i dont think the MFT is really been fixed. so what is missing?

also im experimenting with VDK - iv installed it and mounted the DD image and tried to run chkdsk but im getting "Windows cannot recover master file table" - iv read that maybe ntfs-3g of partedmagic cd can help - im trying it but i cant find the "fix function" talked by that forum.

right now im running SpinRite from VMWare on the mounted dd image by VDK.

update - from some reason VMware have an error after 21 percent of Spinrite:

"The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system. You will need to power off or reset the virtual machine at this point" and im getting "Devision overflow" error. maybe i need to re-install vmware or something cause iv upgraded my cpu.

Anyway, when im trying to open the partition by TestDisk i still have the "cant open filesystem , filesystem seems damaged" error. and when trying to access the drive by VDK (mounted with dd image) im getting "The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."

what do you think is the next step? im trying to search for a tool that will fix the MFT although TestDisk said it OK.

Edited December 30, 2010 by energydream2007