5

I had a 2TB disk added to my PC. The disk had 1.5TB of my data.

When I booted my system, chkdsk said it found errors, and started working on the disk. It deleted 100k's of orphan id's and deleted just as many (I don't remember the exact wording of the message).

When my PC loaded at the end (Vista) to my surprise (and horror), almost ALL of my data was gone from the disk.

It now has only a small portion of the data, almost 1.4TB of data is now missing.

Is there a way I can undelete the data?

Appreciate any help.

Improve this question

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
7

According to Microsoft:

Chkdsk corrects disk errors only if you specify the /f command-line option. Chkdsk must be able to lock the drive to correct errors. Because repairs usually change a disk's file allocation table and sometimes cause a loss of data, chkdsk sends a confirmation message similar to the following:

10 lost allocation units found in 3 chains.
Convert lost chains to files?

If you press Y, Windows saves each lost chain in the root directory as a file with a name in the format Filennnn.chk. When chkdsk finishes, you can check these files to see if they contain any data you need. If you press N, Windows fixes the disk, but it does not save the contents of the lost allocation units.

The above is for XP but I expect it also applies to Vista.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks, however, the chkdsk started automatically, and I did not manually started it. Do I need to rerun it with the /f option now? *I think not. should I run some undelete programs?
    – Saariko
    Sep 15, 2011 at 13:02
  • 1
    If you don't have C:\Filennnn.chk files, I suggest trying a file recovery tool. You may later want to reconsider your decisions about making backups.
    – RedGrittyBrick
    Sep 15, 2011 at 14:24
0

You have to go to folder options and deselect "Hide protected operating system files".

Then you will see a hidden system folder FOUND.000 in the root folder.

Inside that are the recovered file fragments. Open with hex editor or whatever and try to put the fragments back together.

Improve this answer
-2

I ended up purchasing a commercial software that gave me access back to my files.

Improve this answer
1
  • 3
    Please tell us what software and how you did it. This is not an answer.
    – Paul Matthews
    Aug 26, 2015 at 3:39

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .