Windows Recover data from a RAW HDD

I just reformatted my computer today after Windows went a bit wrong.

Let me start with before I reformatted.

I used a program called Lock Folder XP to lock my D partition. reformatted C drive (which is on its own hard drive) and reinstalled windows.

Now D drive is not accessible, I get this message:

partitions E and F are still working, partition E is on the same hard drive as D, so I'm sure its not a physical problem.

I did a scandisk, D couldn't be checked because of a "Corrupt Master boot Record (MBR) and Partition Table".

I am pretty convinced that its the program that has blocked me from accessing the partition, I have contacted their support but I'm not expecting a reply straight away so am asking you guys for some help and advice. The file system is RAW if thats any use.

*Did a search and found this thread, but not really any help.

 

Cant you just reinstall lock folder? or will that not read it either?

 

I've tried that. Before I reformatted I made a backup of my program files directory and tried using the previous file, but that didn't wokrk.

A bit more searching and I've come up with only one thing about recovering data from RAW file systems, but its in blinking German and I can't make any sense of it in a translator.

http://www.german-sales.com/raw_file_recovery.htm

EDIT: Just looked at Disk Investigator, and it comes up with "Hidden sectors: 163846935", I think my data is still there, but I cannot access it. Gonna try running Knoppix Live to see what happens.

 

Sounds like the partition is genuinely corrupted, did you try fixmbr or chkdsk/r yet? Knoppix might be able to see it if it's just program related, but if the disk is genuinely f**ked up, then you might have to use some recovery tools.

 

Done checkdisk, says its a corrupt master boot record, disk management detects the partition as healthy and as the right size. And fixmbr, gotta try that out.

Used some recovery tools, thats done nowt.

 

After about 10 recovery programs, I finally came accross one that managed to recover some of my files - about 75% of them. However some are corrupt, took 8 hours to recover.

It was interesting to see that I managed to retrieve files I deleted ages ago when this hard drive was the syststem drive, and the only drive. It has been reformatted twice since and the data is still there!

 

OnTrack Easy Recovery Pro is a very good program for recovering data. I used it on my 100Gb drive a while ago. The partition table had become corrupt and Windows wouldn't recognise any partitions. Although there was no recognisable file structure, it did recover the vast majority of the files I needed including hundreds of project log photos, which I still have.

 

Ontrack didn#t recover as much as the program I used - "Recover My Files" works a lot better. But I guess its all down to how the drive it corrupt and how the program responds to it. Managed to recover about 90% of files, with about 29% of these files being corrupt. But I'm happy, reformatted the partion, and everything is merry again! Now I've got some extra space on the partition!