From computer disaster to full recovery!

[Dennis]

A story with a happy ending!

• Like a good little boy, I kept the Win XP Pro OS and all program files on my C: Drive.
• And I kept all our data on another drive, our Data drive, the D: Drive.
• And just in case, the D: Drive gets backed up, daily, to an external USB2 HDD.

• My system had not been re-built in 3 years so I decided to do a fresh install.
• The system drives are in removable caddies.
• So, I unplugged the C: Drive and mounted a spare drive in its place.

• I then commenced a fresh install of Win XP Pro.
• I took the option to delete the partition on what I though was the new C: Drive.
• Only it was the partition on our D: Drive, our Data Drive.

Whoops!

• I removed the freshly installed C: Drive and inserted the old C: Drive.
• The system could not recognise or see the D: Drive now with no partition.
• Ouch!

• I downloaded GetDataBack and lo and behold it found everything on the D: Drive without the partition.
• I installed a fresh 1TB HDD and restored all the data (6170 Folders, 1,360,066 Files, 335Gb) from the D: Drive.
• I also purchased a copy of Acronis to replace my ancient back up software which was a bit dodgy over the network.

Next jobs:

• Create a clean image of the freshly installed Win XP Pro on the new C: Drive so that in case of a disaster, I don’t have to spend 2 days loading stuff from CDs/DVDs, Download Folders or Internet Sites.
• Read old fashioned DOS style menus much more carefully before selecting “L” to remove partitions!

Cheers

Dennis

PS – In Brisbane, our study was a hot, humid 35° C during the restore!

[sheeny (Al)]

Nice recovery, Dennis. You have to be happy with that!

If only it worked all the time...

Al.

[xstream (John)]

Nice work Dennis!

It's always good when you can have a smile on your face at the end of the day.

[RB (Andrew)]

That's good news Dennis.

Your D Drive image looks sharp, well composed and has very little noise.
Excellent work, as usual !!

Send it in to 'Space'-weather.

[Dennis]

Thanks guys – I’m living proof that a little knowledge can be dangerous! Next time, I’ll remove all non-essential drives before doing a fresh install!

All up, it has taken 3 or 4 days to get back to where I started from. I’ve still got to load stuff such as .net Framework 3.5 and Java Virtual machine and various Drivers on my fresh install of Win XP Pro before I then image it as a nice, clean baseline.

Cheers

Dennis

[Octane (Humayun)]

Dennis,

GetDataBack and Easy Recovery Pro have saved my skin many, many times.

Glad to hear you got sorted.

Regards,
Humayun