How to get Windows data from hard drive tinkered with by Linux?
 

I was trying to get OpenELEC installed on a Compact Flash Card to try out Linux' XBMC on our Media PC.

I downloaded a version of OpenELEC specific to the architecture on the Media PC, and followed the directions.

Step 1 was to install the program to a USB drive. Done.

Step 2 was to boot to the USB drive, starting a small version of Linux that would allow me to format the Compact Flash Card to be a bootable OpenELEC OS with XBMC installed.

Unfortunately, our Media PC will not boot from a USB drive, so I took it to my desktop.

I put the USB drive in and the Compact Flash Card into my development PC, and booted up.

The Linux thing went to work, but appears to have tried to install something onto my primary Hard Drive instead of giving me the option to select the Compact Flash Card.

Note: The Linux thing never did format my primary Hard Drive like it was supposed to. I'm guessing because something was wrong with the architecture on my development PC.

Right now, I have the Hard Drive from my development PC pulled out and Windows 7 has loaded the drivers successfully, I just can't get it to open.

This is a 500 GB drive, no longer shows up in Windows Explorer, and I know NOTHING about Linux.

Is there some way to say, "Take the Linux note off and put me an NTFS note back in there?"

The Linux program never formatted the drive. It did all of its damage in about 15 seconds.

How can I salvage my data on this drive?

Screenshot of Device Manager in Windows 7: http://i.stack.imgur.com/nzmeR.png

I you don't want to use Linux anyway.. you can use recover programs on windows to recover your data..
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kick...urce=directory
you may also try http://www.download.com
the keywords you need are "recover" and "deleted"

I am a windows/Linux user so I can help u in both..just be patient..

First off, if you can make a backup, or at least an image of that drive, do so.

It's hard to say from that screen shot if the partition flag was changed, or if the FS itself was damaged. Can you give what Linux' fdisk says for that drive? You want that partition's ID set to 7 (NTFS). It will look something like this (your start and end will be different):

If that's good, NTFS stores a back up superblock - hopefully that was not damaged as well; and you may have to run CHKDSK on the partition. This is why I say have a backup of the drive: I have had CHKDSK fix a drive successfully in such cases, and in other similar cases have had CHKDSK remove everything.

I'm sorry guys. I was NOT patient.

I got to thinking about what all was on that hard drive in the first place, and it was nothing that could not be replaced.

It is a 500GB drive. Not the biggest, but certainly a lot of stuff to dig through using the command prompt in Linux to save data.

Add to that: This version of Windows has been on there for a little over 2 years, so the Registry has lots of dead spots in it.

I said, "What they hey! 2013 is a new year, let's format the drive!"

No more worries, and no crying over spilled milk.

Hey, if you're gonna format it anyway, why not spend a little time trying to learn recovery techniques, because it will happen. :)

Sorry things didn't work out well. You might have been able to fix that either in windows or linux.

Anyway, it never seems to hurt to do a clean install of windows. It speeds it up and as you say, gets the holes out of the registry.