I've achieved a level of fail almost unheard of for an IT guy.
I rebuilt my home computer a little while ago. Backed all my files up onto a spare drive I had knocking around. Kept meaning to transfer the files across. All my photos, all my mp3s, all my doccos, it was all there.

A little while after that my Sky box hard drive packed up, so I repaired it with a spare one I had kicking about. I think you can see where this is going by now.

Today I discovered that the drive I repaired my Sky box with is the one with my life on it. It has now been reformatted to Sky's file system and I don't know of any recovery software that can pull it back.

I don't even know where my old CD backups from the previous rebuild have gone. At least then I'd have something back. All gone.
( Kroney, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:14, 3 replies, latest was 15 years ago)

Ooooffff!
Bad shit mate.

NOTE TO EVERYONE - BACKUP and CHECK otherwise all your photos, videos, donkeyporn will get deleted at some point
( sporters I’m sincerely gratitude to you, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:15, Reply)

Wow, thanks for that.

( Lisette von Falcon, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:16, Reply)

Seriously K
Loads of people will just assume their photos will be fine
( sporters I’m sincerely gratitude to you, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:21, Reply)

Absolutely gutted, mate.

( Kroney, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:17, Reply)

That's a bit of a sod to say the least.
Maybe Labs can shine some light on near-forensic recovery techniques that could get some stuff back from the abyss?
(BrianHequator was stretching owls, on, or around, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:17, Reply)

Good idea that man

( sporters I’m sincerely gratitude to you, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:21, Reply)

I speak as one who had to reconstruct partition tables on an ext2 drive way back.
Reading kernel source (on another, still-working box) to figure out where master block copies were likely held was a little taxing ...
(BrianHequator was stretching owls, on, or around, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:24, Reply)

The real problem here is that recovery software is built for particular file systems.
Most will work on your standard Windows architecture, some will work for Linux, but I haven't found a single one that can read Sky's file system.
( Kroney, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:24, Reply)

What was it formatted as before the Dirty Digger's gear barfed over it?

(BrianHequator was stretching owls, on, or around, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:27, Reply)

I just chucked it in.
It was NTFS before, now it's whatever arcane system the Great Shaitan uses.
( Kroney, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:29, Reply)

Looks like it'll have been stomped on by FAT32 then ...
... judging by the limited snippets of the web I can see behind the office firewall. Not pretty at all, sadly.
(BrianHequator was stretching owls, on, or around, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:40, Reply)

FAT32 is still readable by Windows, I think.
Perhaps you could get the computer to boot from the optical drive and bung an Ubuntu disc in, and have a look around the contents and see what is there?
(The Luggage is haunted..., Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:44, Reply)

Yes FAT32 is still readable by Windows
It's still the most 'accessible' file system.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:46, Reply)

Goodo.
Then what's to stop him using a smaller drive as a boot drive, and then rigging up the main one as a slave, and running recovery software on it?

From what I remember, stuff marked for deletion under Windows isn't actually deleted, it just lops a letter off the end of the file name.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:49, Reply)

The problem is he's likely overwritten the MFT of the NTFS partition
Which keeps a 'list' of where parts of each file are stored. If that's not recoverable, the data is lost in unallocated clusters.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:51, Reply)

Ah, that could be problematic.

(The Luggage is haunted..., Tue 7 Jun 2011, 14:00, Reply)

Not sure on near-forensic techniques/software
As I use professional stuff. Your best bet is with recovering the NTFS partition system as a whole, as digging in the unallocated clusters won't get as much back. Maybe Partition Magic might work?
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:42, Reply)

I'll download some freeware tonight and have a bash.
I didn't realise that Sky use some form of FAT32, that gives me a bit of hope.
( Kroney, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 14:28, Reply)

Ooof!
That's pretty bad. Whatever happened to triple backup? Oh, and perhaps you should check out a piece of software called Recuva that has worked well for me in the past.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:22, Reply)

I'm guessing it is now Series 2 of TOWIE
in HD
( sporters I’m sincerely gratitude to you, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:23, Reply)

I've no idea what you're on about.
So I'll sit here and just say "Wibble".

/Edit

Why did I look that up? Bloody hell.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:36, Reply)

hahahah!

( sporters I’m sincerely gratitude to you, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:58, Reply)

Complacency happened.

( Kroney, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:24, Reply)

Complacency and hubris.
"I work in IT, what's the worst that can happen... ah."
(The Luggage is haunted..., Tue 7 Jun 2011, 13:26, Reply)