I hardly imagine this thing happened again... I lost all my data. The situation is like this:

I do some system hack and cause some problem that I need to reinstall OS. Find, reinstall success. But somekind of virus lurking around cause my PC not functioning properly. So I plan to format the whole system HDD instead. I have another secondary HDD as backup and storage.

I went into MS-DOS mode to do the format. So as usual the system HDD have 2 drive : C and D while the other one have F and G.

I don't really worry if the MS-DOS read the F and G incorrectly since they are on NTFS format. But the real proble is, why ... it will suddenly swap position with my primary harddisk... Means the F become D and D become F. I insert the command format D: .... and ... OMFG ... I formated my backup data ! I just donno why it will swap drive letter, since in OS everything displayed correctly leh...

And now I am looking for anyway to recover all my data... But most recovery softwares either they are not free, or they are limited to several types of files...

I got alot of data to recover like:

- graphic (jpeg, psd)
- web (php, html, css...)
- server config (ini, httpd, database backup...)
- softwares installations (exe, zip)

as long as anykind of files known................................. on god... Pelase help

:: Undelete Pluse ::

it gets editor choice award ..

by the way, there is situation where your Windows drive letter swap with other letter ... in DOS, it read HDD with disk0 partition 0, disk1 partition 0 .. it might be your OS hdd is connected to the SATA2 slot instead of SATA1 (i mean slot on the mobo, not the speed of the slot)

past thing past, if you only do a quick format + you haven't copy anything into it, you have more than 50% chances to get your data back ...

unfortunately, chances degrade with time and hdd write activities...wish you luck

the system HDD is a PATA while the storage is SATA. After I notice the accident format (not quick format, it total format), I quick unplug the HDD to avoid any data overwrite, try to find any recovery method.

This is my second time in my life data lost accident, last time was my whole HDD got burnt... This time hopefully I still able to salvage some...

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Added on March 15, 2008, 10:32 amThough some critical data that I really hope to salvage are:

- psd (photoshop graphic source files) for some critical projects
- server config for PHP, Apache (it hard to rebuit from scratch...)
- important jpeg (organsation images)
- photoshop presets files (brushes, styles, objects...)
- windows fonts

Softwares installations, images I can simply find it back, just cost me some times, or alot of times... I really should make backup on optical disk next time...

usually, smaller sized files survive when a hdd was quick formatted (i'm able to salvage many <5MB files but >5MB is rare)

in full format situation, i have no idea ... but i guess you could give a shot. try the software first, some of your files should be recoverable

That's quite make me scary ... lol ... most of my PSD are largeeee... I will give it a try when I go back home, of course, I gonna get as many recovery softwares as possible... Thanks.

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