No file system.

[Resident_Lurker]

So, to make a long story short I tried to put SuSE 9.1 on this computer and I messed up.

I have 20GB of data that is still intact and needs to be recovered (read: simply copied over to the other partition, it has to be possible). I've been looking for freeware all day long.

Most programs say that the partition has no file system.



One program, GetDataBack, was able to read all the directories and files etc. But when I had it copy the data, the files and folders were there, but they all had a file size of 0 bytes.

I need your expert suggestions, please.

 

[ExCyber]

Do you happen to know what filesystem Suse formatted it as?

 

[Resident_Lurker]

Actually, what's good is I don't believe it formatted over the NTFS partition. I think I might have seen something about Reiser. But that might have been mandrake (see, long story).

This picture might explain something. Crazy stuff here.

The more I look at this the more messed up it looks.

In Windows, the drive was formatted into two partitions. A ~130 gb and a ~30 gb.

 

[Malakai]

I had a similar problem when I received a hard drive from some computer auction lots. Anyway, there were a few directories and files that were listed, but they were all 0 bytes. I think that the files have been destroyed, but the file and directory lists were still intact, because I could never get the files to read or copy, and could never even access those zero byte directories.

The easiest way to get your space back would just be to just boot the pc up with a windows xp bootable cd, delete all partitions, and then there will be a thing saying "unallocated space," which should be the total space of the hard drive. Then select that as your windows xp partition, and it should format it, and set your partition back up correctly.

Of course, if you wanted to save your data, if the data is still there and truly intact, you probably wouldn't wanna go this route.

 

[Resident_Lurker]

The drive was only a data drive, so the computer is still thankfully operable.

I'm trying to get back what I can, but if it's been destroyed then obviously there's not much to do. Nothing too valueable on the drive, but it's still a major inconvenience.

I went into Mandrake's setup to use its partition manager, and the drive was showing a few linux partitions and then something called EZ-Drive at the beginning. I got rid of the linux partitions, but I don't understand what EZ-Drive is. According to google it's a drive setup utility, but I've never heard of such a thing.

 

[it290]

When using GetDataBack, you might sometimes get files and directories with funky names like {0947EF-KDJF24}, which are your actual files, only they no longer have their filenames associated with them. Are you getting any of those?