Recover files
 

Hi Guys,

I have an external 250gb hard drive where I had copied all my documents, pictures, etc etc. I wanted to reinstall windows xp on internal hard drive but I made a mistake and deleted the partition on the 250gb external hard drive. Is there a way to recover those files? I didn't format the 250gb hard drive. If yes, which software do you guys recommend?

@Moderator: If this needs to be posted on another forum please let me know.
Thanks

Try running testdisk on the drive.

photorec ?
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
extundelete-0.2.0.tar.bz2
http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/

take it someplace and pay $1000/gig


if ONLY the partation table was removed and the drive was NOT wrote to then
"SystemRescueCd"
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
might be able to recover the table

ok, I ran photorec and I was able to recover all my files. is there any way to run photorec and keep the original files names? I have a whole bunch of files name like 0458945.jpg etc etc
thanks

You can try running testdisk to restore the partition table. If that works, the directory structure is restored and the files will have their names again.

There are a few scripts out there that can help try to rename files by reading embedded metadata. The photorec site has a few of them here.

Thank you for the info.

@ceantuco: if you'll accept unsolicited advice this time, please mark the thread "solved", and consider punching the "helpful" button for those who helped. This is one of those threads where a couple strangers saved you a chunk of time and/or $$. :)