HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi all,

I understand this is my first post, however I am now in a bit of a pickle.

Firstly, let me point out how stupid I was to have my USB drive in whilst formatting an SD Card. The impacted drive is a DTSE9 Kingston, 16GB. I was using two programs to write the files to what I assumed (I was pretty careful, and made sure the drives were correctly selected (obviously not!)) were the correct drives, the programs were Win32DiskImager and SDFormatter.

I believe the issue happened when writing the image of OpenELEC using Win32DiskImager. I am currently sitting with the files required for OpenELEC on the drive - 21.2MB free of a total of 127MB. There was just under 4GB free before the drive got hit. I have not formatted, deleted or modified anything since I noticed the issue.

So far I have tried EaseUS and Recuva to no success.

Any tips and or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards

If you chose full format in SD Formatter, then the drive is not recoverable.
If you chose quick, then it is possible you may recover something, you could try making a full disk image of the Kingston using DMDE and GetDataBack on that image.

It is possible you have only impacted 127MB of the Kingston, and doing a FULL DISK image, NOT a partition image will help you recover.. as I am guessing your current recovery attempts are being made on the 127MB partition that the imager wrote?

At least if you take a full disk image now, you can work on that, not messing up the drive anymore. Possible a chip-off recovery might get more back, but if the drive is otherwise working fine, this tends not to be the case

Hi,

Yesterday evening, I wasn't in the best of moods after the drive was hit, and my first post was a bit of a shambles.

Anyway, I was loading OpenELEC onto a number of SD Cards which were already preloaded with NOOBS for the Raspberry Pi. To prepare the SD Cards for OpenELEC, I wipe them using a Full (Erase) Format Type, with the Format Size Adjustment to On in SDFormatter. Then to load the .img file onto the card, Win32DiskImager. Stupidly, my 16GB Kingston drive was also in the Laptop.

Working in IT (believe it or not), I am usually pretty careful and would have checked and ensured the selected drives were correct, and in the case of the SD Cards - D:\ was the Card, E:\ was the Kingston Stick. Obviously somewhere along the way E:\ was selected and I'm not sure where it has done it - either SDFormatter or Win32DiskImager. I am not blaming my tools, but maybe the driver letter changed after completion and I reran it? I'm not entirely sure as I was already having issues with the Raspberry Pi's themselves and didn't have too clear of a head at the time.

After quite a sleepless night . . . it's time to pick up and try to recover.

The Kingston drive is now sitting with the OpenELEC image on it - 21.2MB free of a total capacity of 127MB.

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HaQue wrote:If you chose full format in SD Formatter, then the drive is not recoverable.
If you chose quick, then it is possible you may recover something, you could try making a full disk image of the Kingston using DMDE and GetDataBack on that image.

It is possible you have only impacted 127MB of the Kingston, and doing a FULL DISK image, NOT a partition image will help you recover.. as I am guessing your current recovery attempts are being made on the 127MB partition that the imager wrote?

At least if you take a full disk image now, you can work on that, not messing up the drive anymore. Possible a chip-off recovery might get more back, but if the drive is otherwise working fine, this tends not to be the case

HaQue - your first point references a full format in SD Formatter, I am not sure this was done, however since my first post and your response I did also try ZAR. I'm hoping that because it seen some of the previously stored files will make things a little easier.

In Win32DiskImager there aren't any options for selecting either a full or partition image, at least not in the GUI. I will further read the documentation at some point today.

EaseUS, and Recuva did not find anything, and I would assume that yes, it was only searching the 127MB partition. Whereas ZAR was searching the whole drive?

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HaQue, thanks for your input thus far. I will start the methods you have suggested.

So, loaded up DMDE and imaged the drive using the 'Copy Sectors' functionality. Installed GetDataBack and loaded up the image. I was presented with a number of nonsensically named directories with my data in it, specifically the 2GB file that would be most important in recovering - surely being able to view this file is a good thing?

Obviously to retrieve the files I need to purchase the software, however as I'm keen on always finding free alternatives - are there any out on the market?

Apart from the ability to work with .img files, what would be the difference in GetDataBack, TestDisk and some of these listed here: http://files.hddguru.com/download/Softw ... 0Recovery/

IF GDB was able to find the files, then DMDE should as well. DMDE also has file recovery options. The free version will let you save files that are in the current pane.. very useful if you only have a few folders, you can recover all your data by going through each folder. Otherwise, I think it was $20 and you can get a full personal version - tip, install it on the PC you will likely be doing most recoveries from! The licence is transferrable, but I just buy copies for each PC.. I like the Software.. there is I think a $100 option for a portable USB stick version that is also good value.

anyway I think you can get away with free ver..

But GDB is also very good to own, and would not be a waste of money.

have to add - R-Studio is also out there and is probably a bit more advanced, a little cheaper and is very actively developed.

HaQue wrote:IF GDB was able to find the files, then DMDE should as well. DMDE also has file recovery options. The free version will let you save files that are in the current pane.. very useful if you only have a few folders, you can recover all your data by going through each folder. Otherwise, I think it was $20 and you can get a full personal version - tip, install it on the PC you will likely be doing most recoveries from! The licence is transferrable, but I just buy copies for each PC.. I like the Software.. there is I think a $100 option for a portable USB stick version that is also good value.

anyway I think you can get away with free ver..

But GDB is also very good to own, and would not be a waste of money.

have to add - R-Studio is also out there and is probably a bit more advanced, a little cheaper and is very actively developed.

Whilst I am genuinely impressed with both DMDE and GetDataBack so far and I haven't even purchased either. I am running into a further issue and I believe it is probably down to my inexperience with both pieces of software. The issue is that I had files in the root of the drive, and using the image in GDB and DMDE to search for the files has not returned successful. Is this my inexperience, or an after effect of the original issue?