Help with LLF tool (My Biggest Mistake)

[ianTE]

Hi this is my first post and with most peoples first its a Hi or Help!
So I have used The Low Level Format tool from HDDGURU a couple of times
on differnet drives with great success as I did late last night.
It was on a 400g SATA drive split into 2 partions, after formating Windows still
showed the partions and copied everything off of a 320g SATA and went to sleep.
To keep it short you can see my problem even though Windows showed the files there
upon reboot I had a RAW drive. Of course being an eger bever I LLF the 320g and reinstalled Wndows on it before I had made my nice suprise.
Now I am off to google thankyou in advance any help that comes my way
Cheers

[BlackST]

Can't recover anything from a fully llf'd drive. No way.

[ianTE]

Thanks for the response.
I realise that and I didnt actually LLF data, I LLF then transferred (cut and paste in Windows)
data accross to that drive before it was repartitioned/format.

I have run Active partition recovery it can see the partitions and files. Tried to recover a partition it partially worked the partiton is back with the correct partiton size including used size.

So I may have some luck

[wiseleo]

Image the drive and work with the image.

Attempting to do recovery operations on a "live" drive will likely cost you that data when you make your next mistake. Active@ products will happily take an image and let you work with the image. I use Active@ Undelete personally for easy recoveries.

[ianTE]

Thankyou wiseleo I have recoverd one partiton with Active@ Partion recover now recovering the files with Active@ undelete its seems to be working. I dont have enough space to image the drive but will recover to a different drive then recover partiton 2 and repeat.

I still dont understand after the LLF why did Windows still see the two partitions and then let me copy to that (RAW) drive. My mistake was using Windows so its my fault

[BlackST]

I didn't know the exact sequence of the events.

[shahij]

I faced a quantum fireball hdd before couple of year. 2 or 3 partitions were present and there were files also. i used "zero fill drive" for low level format. but no result, the same situation, data and partitions were intact after low level format... at the last i threw the hdd or may be in stock still now.(i m not sure)...

So from the specified problem, I think, there might have few FW problem to the HDD. proper diagnose can show the problem... From my experience, LOW LEVEL FORMAT is not working with ur hdd in user mode anymore.

Expecting you situations...