Getdataback to Get Data Back
Bob Nitrio pinged me the other night that I paved over my ISO repository in my zeal to test out Bitlocker and at the time I was running Longhorn. He suggested GetDataBack from http://www.runtime.org/ to get my ISO's back.
As you can see in the image below it was indeed going to be able to do just that. All I had done was to repartition and reformat. That doesn't destroy data at all as you can see.
When you do an Oh #%@# the best thing you can do is to stop and ensure that you do no more damage to a disk. As you can see it was easily able to see everything and would have gotten that drive back in about 2 and 1/2 hours. I ended up deciding to not worry about it as I've already received all of the media in the mail to replace it and there were old betas on that drive that I didn't want or need back and it was just faster to use the MagicISO program to rip ISO's from the dvd's I've received.
But. Let this be a lesson.. IF I had wanted to get it back, disk recovery utilities would have done exactly that. The key is to not write data OVER THE TOP. Formatting, no prob. Reparitioning over the top ... no prob. Writing over the top of data... and we start to have a big problem and possibly lose or damage data. But the next time you do a big wince.. a REALLY big wince.... stop. You may be able to get that data back.
Read the complete post at http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2007/12/18/getdataback-to-get-data-back.aspx