Morbius
March 6th, 2007, 11:43 PM
And here we are! I thought it would never happen to me, but I "accidentally" (perhaps "stupidly" would be a better word...) deleted a folder that contained some 30 GB of data (by doing SHIFT-DEL, so the files are not in the recycle bin any longer).
Background.
My PC (Windows XP SP2) has 2 physical drives (both NTFS formatted, no compressed or encrypted files):
* C: (system) total size: 10 GB, free: 4 GB
* D: (data) total size: 80 GB, free: 40 GB (including the erased files, meaning that the "real" available space is not less than 10 GB)
I have immediately stopped any write activity on the D drive, and I have installed 2 "classic" file recovery utilities (on the C drive, of course!) which are recommended elsewhere on the excellent CTH forum: FreeUndelete and Restoration. After scanning my D drive, both applications find all the deleted files and tell me that my chances to recover all the lost data are excellent. As a matter of fact, I have already recovered 1 GB of data (by copying it to the C drive using FreeUndelete).
Now, since both utilities do restoration work "by copying" to another drive, the problem I am facing is that I have 30 GB to restore from the D drive, but only 4 GB available on C. Also, I do not have any other removable storage device (such as external HDD or DVD writer).
So, I am looking for a solution whereby I could restore all the data by only making data transfers between C and D. For instance, I imagine that I could restore large chunks of data (but less than 4 GB in size) from D to C, and then, free the space that was just used by those data chunks on the D drive in order to transfer back the same data (now recovered) from C to the same space it used on D before recovery (am I clear?). I would then be able to recover all the lost data, chunk by chunk. Of course, using such a method, it is crucial to make sure that, when I transfer back recovered data from C to D, I do not overwrite onto any lost data that has not been recovered yet. And this is precisely what I don't know how to do. Perhaps there are tools for this, but I am far from being an expert.
In addition, I am looking for a solution using free software only, as I am not ready to invest in recovery utilities.
Could someone suggest a method and/or tools I could use?
My apologies for making this post so long (and my thanks for reading it), but I wanted to give as many details as possible (I hope I have been clear enough...) since this is a little tricky.
Background.
My PC (Windows XP SP2) has 2 physical drives (both NTFS formatted, no compressed or encrypted files):
* C: (system) total size: 10 GB, free: 4 GB
* D: (data) total size: 80 GB, free: 40 GB (including the erased files, meaning that the "real" available space is not less than 10 GB)
I have immediately stopped any write activity on the D drive, and I have installed 2 "classic" file recovery utilities (on the C drive, of course!) which are recommended elsewhere on the excellent CTH forum: FreeUndelete and Restoration. After scanning my D drive, both applications find all the deleted files and tell me that my chances to recover all the lost data are excellent. As a matter of fact, I have already recovered 1 GB of data (by copying it to the C drive using FreeUndelete).
Now, since both utilities do restoration work "by copying" to another drive, the problem I am facing is that I have 30 GB to restore from the D drive, but only 4 GB available on C. Also, I do not have any other removable storage device (such as external HDD or DVD writer).
So, I am looking for a solution whereby I could restore all the data by only making data transfers between C and D. For instance, I imagine that I could restore large chunks of data (but less than 4 GB in size) from D to C, and then, free the space that was just used by those data chunks on the D drive in order to transfer back the same data (now recovered) from C to the same space it used on D before recovery (am I clear?). I would then be able to recover all the lost data, chunk by chunk. Of course, using such a method, it is crucial to make sure that, when I transfer back recovered data from C to D, I do not overwrite onto any lost data that has not been recovered yet. And this is precisely what I don't know how to do. Perhaps there are tools for this, but I am far from being an expert.
In addition, I am looking for a solution using free software only, as I am not ready to invest in recovery utilities.
Could someone suggest a method and/or tools I could use?
My apologies for making this post so long (and my thanks for reading it), but I wanted to give as many details as possible (I hope I have been clear enough...) since this is a little tricky.