Windows 7 HELP! How do I recover a deleted partition?

[Mathis]

I tried using Partition Table Doctor Recovery tool, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

The program looked to work at first; it recognized my data and "recovered" it, until I noticed that all my documents are there, but there are no "text" when I open them. My music files are recognized, but look to be corrupted. My PDF files do not work...

Am I out of luck?

Link Removed due to 404 Error Link Removed due to 404 Error

[RANT]

I know I know, I'm the sucker for deleting my external hard drive partition.

I feel really stupid, but.. two weeks ago, my "main" hard drive and laptop were stolen. Theifs I tell you. My "main" hard drive, as I call it, is where I download stuff to, before I copy it to my computer. Its also my weekly back-up hard drive.

Well, thankfully I'm brilliant (so I thought). I have another external hard drive I keep stored in a safe, in the basement. I had a lot of my data collected over the years stored on this hard drive just in case their was a fire, or... hugghhh someone stills my stuff.

Yeappe right? Even though I didn't have everything backed up on my "basement" hard drive, I at least didn't loose 6+ years of data.

So life moves on, I buy a new laptop.. and BANG, the most stupidest thing happens. I accidentally deleted my external hard drive partition. Can you believe it? EVERYTHING is gone.

[/RANT]

 

[Trouble]

I have personally used a product called GetDataBack from Runtime Software, to recover data from formatted drives and deleted partitions, with a great deal of success. It's not cheap but I believe they have a free demo, which I think will let you recover a couple of files or a certain amount of data in Megs, I don't remember, the point is you can test it to see if it works. It comes in two flavors one for NTFS and another for FAT so make sure you test the correct version. It has saved my bacon a lot of times and I've been able to help friends and family rescue their files from apparent oblivion. YMMV
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

 

[Saltgrass]

Did you actually delete the partition, or reformat it? Trouble has had personel experience with this, so his suggestion is probably best, but I noticed Partition Wizard seems to have a "recover partition" choice.

Let us know if something works for you.

 

[Mathis]

I deleted the partition.

Also, stupid me, I tried recovering the data to the same hard drive that I deleted. Partition Table Doctor doesn't give a warning about this. Could this have hurt me??

 

[Trouble]

While I am not familar at all with that particular product, according to their website
"Partition Table Doctor is safe
Partition Table Doctor is only to recover your partitions through modifying partition table or boot sector, which means the software will never attempt to write to data area of the drive you are want to recover"
That's what they say, so assuming that their statement is accurate your data should still be there.

 

[Mathis]

Well, I just finished trying it with GetDataBack (Trial version), and I get the same results; it shows all the files, but when I go to view something, a text document or picture for example, the associated application opens but the original content does not come up... for example: Word opens, but its a blank document.

Its 4:30AM and I can't sleep now.