DVD Help

[Legio]

Last night I mistakenly wiped my hard drive and I *think* backed up some important files on a blank DVD disc. This morning when I woke up, I found the DVD on the floor and it has files on it.



You can see that it has a few gigs filled up with files.
However, when I try to open it it shows up as blank.




Is there any way to view the files on the DVD?

[S-te-Fan]

ur ghetto dvd is fubar

[The Saint]

ur ghetto dvd is fubar

Lmao, I like it.
Your awesome with help for thistechnical stuff. You should work at the PC Advisor magazine.

[Legio]

What does that mean and how do I fix it

[Freddie]

Try viewing it on another PC is about the best I can come up right now. You might also want to try makeing an .iso image of your disk and opening it up in a virtual drive like demon tools.

[Legio]

How do I make an iso of my disc?

[Freddie]

How do I make an iso of my disc?

It's been a while since I last had to do this but MagicISO is still freeware and it easy to use. You will also need Demon Tools which I suggest you install first.

Demon tools is an application that allows you to open up disc images (disc images files can have all sorts of file extensions but are generally referred to a .iso files) which are as the name suggest an image of the disc and demon tools is a virtual DVD/CD drive which when you open up My Computer looks like regular drive the difference is when you right click on it it will say 'mount image' as well as all the other normal options. From their just navigate to where you saved the image to and mount it, a few seconds latter it should open in a new window. I love Demon Tools, I've got a lot of my games saved as image files and although their large and take up a lot of space (6gb per DVD) it makes installing games a lot quicker and safer as you don't have to worry about scratching the disc.

[Legio]

Magic ISO says that I have to register to create an image bigger than 300 mb. The dvd i have has like 2 gigs of stuff on it.

[Freddie]

Magic ISO says that I have to register to create an image bigger than 300 mb. The dvd i have has like 2 gigs of stuff on it.

Try this if that doesn't work search around also don't forget about trying the disc in another PC.

[Legio]

Okay, I think I got as much as I could from the disc. Half of the files were corrupted and the others I restored. I'll try popping it into another computer later on to see if there's anything else.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Last night I mistakenly wiped my hard drive and I *think* backed up some important files on a blank DVD disc. This morning when I woke up, I found the DVD on the floor and it has files on it

How the hell does that happen??

There are a few freeware data recovery tools that you can run on the hard drive itself. Try this one, I have no idea how good it is. I usually use GetDataBack from Runtime Software, but thats a paid application.

[Simetrical]

Yeah, depending on how you wiped it, it might be possible (even easy) to get your data back. If you only changed the partition table, for instance, you should be able to change it back to how it was and everything will reappear intact.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Yeah, depending on how you wiped it, it might be possible (even easy) to get your data back. If you only changed the partition table, for instance, you should be able to change it back to how it was and everything will reappear intact.

Just a clarification, anything that hasnt been already overwritten. When you format a drive, most of the time you arent really "formatting" the drive, unless you do something like a zero fill. If you used the Windows CD to format/wipe/nuke/call it whatever you want, then you performed a high level format.

As with regular deletion, data on a disk is not fully destroyed during a high-level format. Instead, the area on the disk containing the data is merely marked as available (in whatever file system structure the format uses), and retains the old data until it is overwritten. If the formatting is done with a different file system than previously existed in the partition, some data may be overwritten that wouldn't be if the same file system had been used. However, under some file systems (e.g., NTFS, but not FAT), the file indexes (such as $MFTs under NTFS, "inodes" under ext2/3, etc.) may not be written to the same exact locations. And if the partition size is increased, even FAT file systems will overwrite more data at the beginning of that new partition.
From the perspective of preventing the recovery of sensitive data through recovery tools, the data must either be completely overwritten (every sector) with random data before the format, or the format program itself must perform this overwriting, as the DOS FORMAT command did with floppy diskettes, filling every data sector with the byte value F6 in hex.

[Simetrical]

Just a clarification, anything that hasnt been already overwritten. When you format a drive, most of the time you arent really "formatting" the drive, unless you do something like a zero fill. If you used the Windows CD to format/wipe/nuke/call it whatever you want, then you performed a high level format.

It all depends on what you did. If you just repartitioned but didn't install a new filesystem in the space, then you should be able to get all your data back by just changing the partition table back. If you've created a new filesystem in the space, then you're going to need some kind of recovery tool to get your data back, yes.

I guess no one but crazy Linux people using fdisk actually repartition a drive without installing a filesystem, though.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I guess no one but crazy Linux people using fdisk actually repartition a drive without installing a filesystem, though.

Oh you can do that with Windows/DOS commands, but the automated installation tool does both in nearly the same step. I assumed that he booted to a Windows CD and went through the process as thats how most people seem to do it.

Besides that, whats the point of a partition with no filesystem? Kinda hard to store files that way.

[Legio]

Oh you can do that with Windows/DOS commands, but the automated installation tool does both in nearly the same step. I assumed that he booted to a Windows CD and went through the process as thats how most people seem to do it.

Besides that, whats the point of a partition with no filesystem? Kinda hard to store files that way.

No, I didn't use the Windows CD. When I turned on the computer it said that Factory Default Restore was complete. So I looked back in the manual and it said that I press F8 before the Windows logo comes on and then click Repair Computer and then FDR. I'm not sure if I repartitioned or anything.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Basically thats the Windows CD repackaged and branded by whatever company you bought the machine from, and then stored in a separate partition on your hard drive instead of burned to a CD. A lot of companies dont send CDs with their computers now as its cheaper to just use a few hundred megs on the hard drive to store all the data.

[Legio]

I'll take it that there's no hope for the files then.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Sure there is, run the tool I suggested. I have recovered files from formatted drives many times.

[Legio]

How do I install it and use it? I downloaded the trial version and it tells me not to install on the drive I want to recover thing from. Does this mean I install it to D as opposed to C, where all my other programs are at?