1 Topic by Cristie (edited by Cristie 2010-01-02 11:31:19)

  • Cristie
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Topic: reformatted harddrive

Greetings all;  I have a real mess here. I wanted to reformat my harddrive, saved backups and information to a 16 GB flash USB drive (it saved 15.62 GB). I wrote other items to a different USB as well.  I used a different, generic  XP program than the one that came with my system to reformat.  I was instructed (by my brother) to format the partition out for C/D drives. C: was in NTFS, and D: in FAT32, which was the recovery drive.

To make a long story short, FAT is now assigned to my USB drives after I reformatted and installed. When I tried to open my backup disk (USB 16 g), it was saved in FAT32 and I received a msg that it could not be accessed.  So, I went into DOS and tried to change it back to NTFS using the online instructions (convert A: /fs:ntfs).

My harddrive no longer recognizes the backup at all.....and says that it is corrupt.  I ran Power Data Recovery 4.6.5 and it indicates there is 15GB saved to the flash drive. I have to buy the program for $80 to convert, and then there is no guarantee that it will convert. It is now saved in RRS format by Power Data Recovery, which has several meanings. (Probably Resume Recovery Status.)

I've been looking online for days trying to get my computer back to the way it was. (Prior to reformat, I even saved Files and Settings using the transfer wizard and saved to USB stick, but it saved in .DAT and again, my computer could not open it).

I understand the partition, and suspect it isn't a bad thing to have it there and despite what my brother told me. And FAT32 isn't a bad storage method, right? 

After I ran his XP CD, I re-ran the one that came with my computer. Since it saved the settings from previous set-up, it saved junk from his CD rather than my previous set up.

My question is, how do I retreive the backup info on the Flash drive, and have the accessory drives read in NTFS rather than in FAT32?  Is there a freeware to rescue the info on the USB flash drive? New drive letters have now been assigned to auxillary drives. And for the life of me, I cannot get audio to work. ALSO, when powering down, "Standby" is no longer an option, and is shadowed.

I am  a nurse and not a computer techy. I could really use some help, if you wouldn't mind.

Thank you so much in advance......Cristie

I'm sorry....it just dawned on me that this site is specific for gnome.

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: reformatted harddrive

All this seems somehow confused to me.

If you performed a backup using some specific software, then you have to use that same software to restore it to the new location.
If you did a simple copy of the files or folders to the usb device (very usual case), then you just need to have access to the device, the partition and the filesystem on it, to copy them back. This copy can be made by the windows explorer or even the copy command at the command prompt of the windows operating system. Furthermore, you could use other operating systems too, i.e. the various Linux "flavours". Linux can boot up even from a special cd disc. I would recommend Knoppix (one of the 5.x.x versions), Ubuntu or Fedora, that boot directly to a graphical desktop quite similar to that of mswindows. These operating systems can access ntfs, fat and fat32, and they permit to copy files from a drive to another.

However, to do this you need to have your operating system installed and running on the computer, and to be sure that your backup devices are in good condition. Did you check that the fat to ntfs conversion was successful?

it was saved in FAT32 and I received a msg that it could not be accessed

I don't think that fat32 was the problem. Any mswindows version since more than 10 years supports both filesystems. FAT32 is supported by perhaps all operating systems. So, a possible reason could be some hardware problem with the device itself or the filesystem (damaged filesystem).

I don't understand the need for the second partition on the hard drive. Is it for restoring the USB device content there? In many computers, manufacturers make a partition (often it is FAT32) that contains a backup copy of the operating system, to restore in the case you need to reinstall the operating system (this is a backup of the operating system, not a data backup). But in this case, the restore action is performed by the BIOS of the computer. If you reformat the entire hard drive, then this backup system is lost.

If the filesystem in the usb devices is damaged, then you need a recovery software. There is a free software named "testdisk", that is able to scan the device and detect possible valid partitions on it (and restore them). This software comes in a live cd, together with "photorec" that is used to recover specific file types.

I don't think that GParted could help somehow in this situation. It is a software to create and modify disk partitions that are already healthy.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***