Hello everyone,

I'm looking for advice on how I go about getting data back on a drive that had been accidentally put through a wipe for about 2/3 seconds.

I can live with re-installing windows but I'd very much like to get some of the files back. I unplugged the power as soon as I realized what had happened.

What are my options? I have an external Hard-drive at my disposal and Hirens Boot CD. The Bios still recognizes the hard-drive itself but it won't boot from it.

My worry is that the file allocation tables could have possibly been initially wiped.

Any help is appreciated.

Aside from the usual advice to work on a clone, I would examine the drive with a disc editor in read-only mode and determine where the wipe pattern ends. Then zero-fill all sectors up to this point. This will prevent these bogus data from confusing your data recovery software.

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Thanks for the replies.

How do I go about cloning the drive? I have Hiren 12 but I'm currently downloading 15.2. I can't seem to find the option in 12.

If I clone the data to an external hard drive will it be possible to recover it in mini xp? I tried running straight from the cd but the Hard drive didn't show up. It does however show in the bios and in Test Disk.

I'll do that now! Just going to format my external hard drive so I can make the clone.

Okay I used CloneZilla to try and make a clone but when I press Enter to start the process this comes up:

I think you provided not enough information.

1. What operation system was used during partitioning of that drive?
2. How many partitions was there?
3. What type of file systems they were formatted? (FAT32 or NTFS?)
4. With help from any disk viewer, what do you see in LBA sector 0?
5. In sector 63?
6. In sector 2048?

And of course, what wiping software do you used?

PS:
I doubt, that CLONEZILLA will be able to clone HDD without any partitioning information in MBR.
The only way seem to be sector by sector copying, which is very long.
But truly safe, if you don't know, what you are doing. If Clonezilla has that option, use it before attempting to modifying the drive data.

if you clone your erased hdd you can get data safety. if only secure delete for 2 or 3 secs, you get al important files only could you lost any not O.S. file.

be lucky!

I would like to ask - did your HDD have one or more partitions? And File System, These info can give more accurate info.

But if it's really 2/3 seconds, then you will get back most of the data.

use this one for cloning (easy to use) - do sector by sector copy http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/home-edition/

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SHAHI
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He said he can live without reinstalling Windows, therefore I think it's safe to assume it's NTFS.

If it was really 2-3 second then more then likely all you have lost is the partition table and the boot sector. Just run a free trial of pretty much any data recovery software and you should be good to go.