WD HDD recovery after formatting with Mac

[bigal]

Hi,
I am new to this forum! I have a WD 1T HDD, which partitioned 40Gb NTFS and two more bigger part. I was trying to install mac OS on 40Gb and reformatted that partition as a EXT4 journal enabled! I came back to windows 7 and realized that mac removed all the files from the whole HDD instead of the 40G partition.
Obviously, I need to recover those partitions and other files in my windows 7. I have access to that MAC dvd and fedora 13 live CD. any suggestions?
Thanks in advance...

[networks]

Try scanning with R-Studio just recovered a similar job as yours with it.

[poehere]

R Studio should work fine for you on this one. But you will need to buy this it is not free software.

[bigal]

OK, great suggestion guys, however that software couldn't find my files!
Just gave me very old files not those which I had 2 weeks ago
I got the paid version of the software. I read the help document for the software and everything seems OK but still no luck! any suggestion now?

[einstein9]

u SHOULD see @ least few from the files ur looking for
narrow ur scan to old FS.

good luck

[bigal]

u SHOULD see @ least few from the files ur looking for
narrow ur scan to old FS.

good luck

How do I narrow the scan to old File System?

[networks]

Post a screen shot of the r-studio scan so we can see the info it found the partitions the ones in green etc

[shahij]

I will go step by step.
According to your information -
First 40GB NTFS is intact with Windows 7 Installed.
Later more 2 partitions were merged in 1 partition which was formatted as EXT4. (Previously was 2 NTFS Volume In working condition)
Am I right? Correct me or explain more precisely to advice you to go ahead.

* I hope you are using the drive as secondary drive with another pc to recover data.

[bigal]

There you go..

Attachments

[networks]

have you looked through all the partitions marked green one at a time for the data ?

[bigal]

I swear I did.

[networks]

if you can't find the data then most likely with all the changes you made to the partitions etc the space has been overwritten and thus not recoverable.

[bigal]

One thing that I just remembered: when I was trying to install Mac, I changed my SATA control from IDE to AHCI, then I formatted this hard drive. Does it make any difference?

[networks]

Is the computer a MAC ? you formatted it from the MAC ? yes anything you do to change the drive such as formatting it changing from IDE to AHCI changes the partition tables etc. In short you have made quite a mess of the drive with all the changes and that diminishes chances of recovery greatly. I don't need to tell you a backup would prevent all of this so maybe next time a backup will be completed.

[bigal]

I totally agree about the backup. That was the most stupid mistake that an IT student could make! anyways...
As I mentioned I am a IT student and I wanted to have some experience with Mac and its configs... I know a bit of Linux and I am able to get my things done. However, I made a mistake this time. I tried to install mac on my pc which was a HACKED DVD and I had to change the SATA controller to AHCI instead of IDE.
I had a small (40G) partition on this damaged HDD and I tried to install my Mac there, but instead Mac disk utility formatted the whole disk. which I had some family pictures on it I really want to get them back and recover those files. Are able to think of other ways at all?
Thanks

[networks]

try recuva its a great program for pictures and its free. getbackdata ntfs also is another tool not free but has a demo like r-studio as you may discover these commercial programs are not all the same and can produce different results on the same recovery. r-studio is one of the better ones but so many exist on the market. if the space the pictures existing was indeed destructively formatted then they are gone for good but recuva may be able to find the MTF and tell you if the space has been overwritten already

[bigal]

Great! I am going to give them a shot.

[poehere]

You can try winhex it is not free but you can search by file type only. If you only want photos you can search by jpeg and see what you find on this one. There might be a possibility of raw recovery for your photos on this one. That is another option if you are only looking for photos on this one.