You might give this a go.
"Robbie Hatley" wrote:
> Ok, this question is both simple and complicated, so
> I'll give both a short form and long form.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Short form:
> If you're pressed for time, my question in a nutshell is:
> I have a folder with 12GB of files that got moved from
> a partition on a hard disk to a different partition,
> and then accidentally destroyed, and backups are waaaay
> out of date. I believe the data is all still there on
> the original partition, right? What freeware data
> recovery software would you recommend to recover it?
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Long form:
> If you're up for a lengthy (but maybe amusing and
> informative) story, read on......
> Greetings, group. A few days ago, I ran into the
> following problem: I have a large hard disk (200GB,
> or 186GiB if you prefer). I had it partitioned with
> no primary partitions, just one huge extended partition
> taking up the whole disk (except for a small sliver at
> the very beginning). The disk was roughly half full,
> and directory and file access were becoming increasingly
> slow.
> So I took the following steps to try to solve the problem:
> 1. I ran Norton Speed Disk to defrag files, cut the
> deadwood from the MFT, and move the files to the
> bottom of the partition.
> 2. I ran Partition Magic to shrink the original partition
> to 150GB and create a 50GB second partition, so that
> no one MFT would have to hold info on all the files.
> 3. I then moved a large folder (with about 12GB of files)
> from the first partition to the second.
> Sounds straightforward, right? WRONG! I immediately
> noticed that whenever I wrote to files in one partition,
> it corrupted files in the other partition. Almost as if
> they were sharing overlapping physcial cylinder, head,
> sector coordinates. (As it turns out, THEY WERE.)
> So I checked the "EnableBigLba" setting in
> HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters
> Should have been set to 1, but to my horror it was set
> to 0! Then I remembered: I'd done a clean re-install
> of Win2K on my main (boot) hard disk some months ago,
> and the default setting for EnableBigLba is 0, not 1.
> So I set it to 1 and restarted my computer. Guess what?
> the big folder I'd moved (with 12GB of files) is MISSING.
> It no longer exists on EITHER partition. And the backup
> version of that folder on my backup hard disk is woefully
> out of date (2005), and missing half the files.
> I'm pretty sure the data from the "moved" folder is mostly
> still there on the original partition. What would you
> folks recommend as a way to recover it? (Especially a
> FREE way to recover it, as I'm currently out of work and
> out of money, and can't afford $867285 -- or even $20,
> actually -- on data recovery software.)
> Stuff I learned from that:
> 1. Back up data more frequently than every 3 years.
> 2. ALWAYS check for "BigLbaEnabled = 1" before using
> a hard disk larger than 137GB. And check it again
> after any reinstallation of Windows.
> --
> Cheers,
> Robbie Hatley
> lonewolf aatt well dott com
> www dott well dott com slant user slant lonewolf slant
