All files gone...


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Hey guys. I got a big problem... Somehow all my files from a partition are gone and I can't figure out what happened. I have a dual boot with Win 7 and eOS and today I booted Win to install some stuff on my phone. Everything was fine, till I restarted and tried to boot eOS. At some point I got a "press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery" message. I waited a while, it won't go away, so I hit S and the OS booted fine. That partition (a NTFS partition) was not mounted, as expected, but I couldn't mount it manually either. So I restarted and went back to Win, thinking that somehow I've broken my eOS installation. 

 

In Win, huge surprise. The partition was empty, with only one file on it, bootsqm.dat. I really don't know what THE F*** happened! I did a scan with a recovery software (Ontrack EasyRecovery) and if I scan for deleted files, I get nothing. However, if I choose the "drive formatted" option, it finds lots of files, I'm guessing all of them, but it takes over 19 hours to scan, so I aborted it.

 

How did the partition get formatted?! Or is it really? Is there anything else I can do, besides data recovery? :(

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The creation date of that bootsqm.dat file is pre or post the fatal reboot? 

 

It seems to me that, was it because of something going wrong before or during eOS' boot, whatever happened to that disk made Windows' check disk go berserk and kill the NTFS index, leaving only that checkdisk report file after the work was done.

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bootsqm.dat is a scratch file created by CHKDSK. If that's all that's on the drive then something corrupted the partition.

 

You *may* be able to recover stuff with a utility. I'm not sure what the current winner is in that category. :(

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I'm currently at 15% scan using Recuva... For some reason it's stuck there for about 2 hours now. I did cancel earlier, also at 15%, and many of my stuff was found. I also did some test recoveries to another drive and it's ok, but the original folder structure is almost nonexistent. Some files are renamed, others are in wrong folders, etc. It's a MESS. I started another scan, the one that is going on now, and I'll let it go on over night, hoping it will get over that 15%.

 

I also tried ZAR and Active File Recovery, both crap, they show the files after the scan, they "recover" them, but all of them are corrupted (pics, mp3's, etc.) and unusable. Recuva is the only one that seem to recover every type of files (so far I recovered avi's, mp3's, flv, jpg, wav, zip, pdf, psd).

 

Before I attempted data recovery, I tried using Testdisk to repair the MFT file. No luck, I get a "write error" every time I try to repair.

 

I really don't have any idea what happened, it doesn't seem to be a hard drive failure (I tested the damn thing with some tools, including the WD app), no bad blocks on it, no viruses... 

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I'm currently at 15% scan using Recuva... For some reason it's stuck there for about 2 hours now. I did cancel earlier, also at 15%, and many of my stuff was found. I also did some test recoveries to another drive and it's ok, but the original folder structure is almost nonexistent. Some files are renamed, others are in wrong folders, etc. It's a MESS. I started another scan, the one that is going on now, and I'll let it go on over night, hoping it will get over that 15%.

 

I also tried ZAR and Active File Recovery, both crap, they show the files after the scan, they "recover" them, but all of them are corrupted (pics, mp3's, etc.) and unusable. Recuva is the only one that seem to recover every type of files (so far I recovered avi's, mp3's, flv, jpg, wav, zip, pdf, psd).

 

Before I attempted data recovery, I tried using Testdisk to repair the MFT file. No luck, I get a "write error" every time I try to repair.

 

I really don't have any idea what happened, it doesn't seem to be a hard drive failure (I tested the damn thing with some tools, including the WD app), no bad blocks on it, no viruses... 

 

The best free is Recuva. It will recover the files but not always the files name and never the structure.

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The best free is Recuva. It will recover the files but not always the files name and never the structure.

Yeah, you're right. This app only shows files, no folders, it's just a mess. I finally used Stellar Phoenix, it took about 5 hours to scan every sector, but after that it shows the exact folder tree that I had and it restores EVERY file type. So basically I didn't loose anything for good, but the pain and frustration to recover all was more than enough... 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Why did you not just restore from your backup? While I can see the need for these tools for "users" that don't understand what a backup is ;)

There is nothing on my machine I would send hours doing a scan on to try and recover.. My "files" are backed up - it would only take time required to copy them in a restore.

Just curious - what if your recovery attempts all failed. Do you not have a backup of your "critical" files?

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Why did you not just restore from your backup? While I can see the need for these tools for "users" that don't understand what a backup is ;)

There is nothing on my machine I would send hours doing a scan on to try and recover.. My "files" are backed up - it would only take time required to copy them in a restore.

Just curious - what if your recovery attempts all failed. Do you not have a backup of your "critical" files?

I didn't have a backup for everything, it's almost 2TB of files and I really don't have spare drives... And here they are really expensive, and people buy them only when strictly needed.

Anyway, the thing is done now and I really hope that the drives that I restored the data on will last me till I can buy new ones... 

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You have 2TB of critical stuff? Dude disks die, its not if - all of them will it is just a matter of when.

I would put a priority on making sure your critical stuff is backed up, be it paper copy of pictures and docs if need be. Optical is a cheaper option if need be, DVDs are like 10 cents a piece here. So worse case 2TB / 4.7 GB is about 42.5$ ;)

I would think you could reduce that 2TB of data to something less that of your critical stuff to make sure its backed up - even if you have to leverage multiple online free storage under multiple accounts, etc.

To me what is critical is pictures and movies or documents that you have created. This is critical to have stored in multiple locations that is not sync'd in real time - or you run the risk of say a virus corrupting even your 2nd copy, etc.

Glad you got your stuff back - take the warning as reason to get your backups in order.

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What a coincidence, I had a 2TB ST2000DM001 die on me tonight. Hopefully it didn't have anything critical on there but yeah BudMan and everyone else who says backup critical data are right!

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You have 2TB of critical stuff? Dude disks die, its not if - all of them will it is just a matter of when.

I would put a priority on making sure your critical stuff is backed up, be it paper copy of pictures and docs if need be. Optical is a cheaper option if need be, DVDs are like 10 cents a piece here. So worse case 2TB / 4.7 GB is about 42.5$ ;)

I would think you could reduce that 2TB of data to something less that of your critical stuff to make sure its backed up - even if you have to leverage multiple online free storage under multiple accounts, etc.

To me what is critical is pictures and movies or documents that you have created. This is critical to have stored in multiple locations that is not sync'd in real time - or you run the risk of say a virus corrupting even your 2nd copy, etc.

Glad you got your stuff back - take the warning as reason to get your backups in order.

DVD's are not reliable as a backup medium, I really don't trust them. And yes, I did start to upload stuff to online storage services, because I don't believe in HDD's anymore either. The drive in question, a WD drive, failed after 6 months of use, this is my 6th WD drive that fails way too soon, so I'll never buy anything from them anymore. At least in my experience, they really suck.

 

About my files, there is no crap in that 2TB, like movies or whatever, that I can download back. There are video projects, psd's, etc., not something I could find elsewhere. Anyway, so far I've uploaded about 2/3 of the stuff online, the rest will be uploaded in a day or so. I'm sick of drives failing for no reason, I've never abused PC use, like run it 24/7 or something, so why the hell would I get a failed drive in 6 months??? I have HDD's that are 4 years old and still work fine, but it seems that the trend today is to replace your hard disk way more often.

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DVD's are not reliable? So you're saying a car isn't safe?

 

I had plenty of WD's fail on me as well. I still buy them.

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While I agree DVDs are not great for 20 years of storage if you sit them in the sun, etc..  They are better than nothing and if they are stored correctly and you didn't buy the cheapest 5 cent a piece ones they should be good for a few years..  I only use them as one leg in my DR..  I have copy of my home videos on them, and copy of them at my sons house.  While there is multiple copies on disks here at the house, and online in amazon glacier.. Which is really cheap online storage at 1 cent per GB..

 

If your WD drives are dying every 6 months - they are still under warranty, do you have a heat or power issue?  If you run your drives hot can clearly lower their life.

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What a coincidence, I had a 2TB ST2000DM001 die on me tonight. Hopefully it didn't have anything critical on there but yeah BudMan and everyone else who says backup critical data are right!

Same here also had a seagate 1tb die on me not so long ago.

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DVD's are not reliable as a backup medium, I really don't trust them. And yes, I did start to upload stuff to online storage services, because I don't believe in HDD's anymore either. The drive in question, a WD drive, failed after 6 months of use, this is my 6th WD drive that fails way too soon, so I'll never buy anything from them anymore. At least in my experience, they really suck.

 

About my files, there is no crap in that 2TB, like movies or whatever, that I can download back. There are video projects, psd's, etc., not something I could find elsewhere. Anyway, so far I've uploaded about 2/3 of the stuff online, the rest will be uploaded in a day or so. I'm sick of drives failing for no reason, I've never abused PC use, like run it 24/7 or something, so why the hell would I get a failed drive in 6 months??? I have HDD's that are 4 years old and still work fine, but it seems that the trend today is to replace your hard disk way more often.

 

Carbonite or CrashPlan?

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Maybe something in the air? NSA electromagnetic wave :woot:

 

But don't they want all your data?

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the more important your data, the more backups you should make. no matter what os, hardware, or user it is, its never 100% save. best do a backup on another hdd and store it somewhere outside your own house/flat.

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But don't they want all your data?

 

kowing the hdd contents of a few .. i bet everything not even the nsa would like to see or use that :laugh:

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But don't they want all your data?

NSA runs a garbage service here, they just wait till you throw it away. Take it from your garbage and repair it  :shiftyninja:

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While I agree DVDs are not great for 20 years of storage if you sit them in the sun, etc.. 

 

I have an original U2 The Joshua Tree cd. It is 27 years old this year. It is still working perfectly.

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