formatting disaster...

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

Well you can probably guess what's coming... formatted my hard drive and lost loads of stuff i wanted. Wasn't really all my fault tho.. i formatted the right disk and all and it didnt have any stuff i wanted on it but my other hard drive then decided to delete most of itself...

I think i might know what happend.. its a 200 gig drive and xp doesnt like hdds larger than about 160 gig or so, so i think i might be that. The thing is i really really need them back. the files arnt really deleted as such, they are still there but they dont work, like if its a prog it opens an ms dos or somthing window and then closes, pictures cant be opend etc...

So does anyone know how to retrieve these or is there no hope?

[to give u an idea of the scale of the prob, i lost all of my 3ds max files and rederings (thats like 3d art stuff). the old ones are backed up but the new projects, which are huge and have taken me days and days to do each, have been lost, so i reeeaally want them back]

[gryphon]

File Recovery

Not shure if it'll do but it might want to try it out. :)

Download page.

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

Whenever I try this my computer restarts...

[edit]

It's just this second happend again... Lost about half of my music files and a load of other stuff.. dunno what else, ill check later. It happend right after I installed service pack 1a from windows.com.

[Andrew]

Maybe a virus?

(if you just lost some music files for no reason)

[Nyarlathotep]

It happend right after I installed service pack 1a from windows.com.

Windows.com ?? Is this right, or you just guessed that was the site ? If it's indeed windows.com, you may want to try microsoft.com...

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

Windows.com ?? Is this right, or you just guessed that was the site ? If it's indeed windows.com, you may want to try microsoft.com...

Lol. Yeah I just assumed there was a windows.com... I'm pretty sure it was legit - just checkd, windows.com just takes u to microsoft.com so it's ok anyway.

Update for you though... (this is really wierd..) I started up and it ran chkdsk.exe again and this time it said it was recovering the files that got lost 'Recovering Orphaned File blahblah.jpg into directory folder (3521873)' or whatever, it did that for like 40mins, then when it finally started up alot of the stuff that was lost came back but some of the pictures that reappeard had the right filename and its in the right directory but it's the *wrong* picture lol. Like half my renderings are now digital photos.... So i think ill have to go on a hhd-wide search for my files and put them back in the right place. Problem is some of them have been all messed up (lines and crap all over them). Also iv'e lost some more stuff... and alot of them still dont work.... *sigh*... wtf is going on.

[Nyarlathotep]

To follow up on Andrew's suggestion, did you check for virus' ?

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

To follow up on Andrew's suggestion, did you check for virus' ?

Yeah it might be that actually, thanks andrew.

I just tried a virus scan and my computer crashed and restarted, know of any virus that does this?

[ordos45]

XDLDR24.EXE does.  I tried scanning the file itself with AVG and it crashed and restarted the computer.  If you have it, it'll be in System32.  But its probably another one with that feature.

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

Sorry I havent kept you all informed (you must be very worried).

The problem just turned out to be overheating so i'm gunna get meself a nice new thermaltake thingy majig. Thanks for the help anyway

[gryphon]

(you must be very worried)

shame on you .. . ;)

how did you find out it was due to overheating ?

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

Oh cuz i vaccumed around in my case and stuck a big fat fan in there and it stopped crashing.

Also i stuck my fingers in there and burned myself lol...

[Kiyouta]

If ur hard drive was formatted NTFS before u 'formatted' it again, forget it... you'll never get those files back. If it was FAT32 on the other hand...