How should i proceed given the following circumstances?

[Wedge1]

Greetings,

I am a recent purchaser of Zero Assumption Recovery. I caught the weekend sale while searching for a solution to the problem as follows:

I have an external USB drive previously formatted in FAT32 that could not be recognized as a drive letter when connection to Windows Vista or Windows XP Home, both in NTFS file system format. Question #1: Shouldn't it be recognized?

I thought it should, but it didn't. So here is what I did:

I used GetDataBack FAT32 and extracted all data from that external drive to the internal drive of a system running Windows XP Home Edition (format NTFS). It looked as if everything was extracted perfectly. All pictures and all music were present. Then I formatted the external drive to NTFS and copied the rescued files from my internal drive to the external hard drive. Take note that this was all done for a friend in need. But when I gave him the drive, he searched through the rescued files and informed me that he is unable to find critical MS Word documents. These are documents he needs for his wife as it contains research work.

His external USB drive is now formatted in NTFS - a format performed after rescuing data from the previous FAT32 file system. I need to recover the MS Word documents if possible. I feel responsible for this although I admit I am confused as to why the Word documents were not recovered in the original scan using GetDataBack FAT32.

I have two sets of data from which to work: I have the copy of the rescued files still residing on my computer’s internal hard drive. These files sit on my drive, supposedly containing the entire contents of that original FAT32 partition. But no sign of a single MS Word document is there, much less the 20 or so that he says were on the drive when he gave it to me. One of these folders, however, contains many restore point data, which has me wondering if I can somehow restore the single volume partition to its original state.

The second set of data is the external drive itself. I have this drive back in my possession. But it is now formatted to NTFS. I used the Disc Management feature in Windows XP when performing this operation. Bear in mind that I would not have formatted had I known that certain MS Word documents were apparently not salvaged in the recovery using GetDataBack.

My biggest question is Question #2: how should I proceed?

An additional question I have is the same one I asked at the beginning of this post: Question #1 again: Shouldn't my NTFS Windows XP Home edition have recognized his FAT32 external hard drive when I connected it at the start? If yes, does this indicate that maybe something else was wrong with the drive and that it is possible his MS Word documents were corrupt/unattainable from the beginning? I'm not looking for an alibi, but I somehow feel that the documents may have been hidden, encrypted, or something else that would have prevented recovery from the very start. I am just trying to make some sense of this. But either way, I need to recover those MS Word documents if they are present and attainable.

Thank you for reading and I hope that this is clear and understandable. I am sincerely needing guidance here, and I now own ZAR so it will be my recovery tool going forward.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Drive was not recognized when the first run was attempted.

Physically, the drive was connected and recognized properly. Otherwise, you are unable to perform any recovery.

At the level of filesystem/driver logic, the drive did not appear to contain any kind of a filesystem (volume) the system could recognize. In such a case, the system will not assign any drive letter to it. Possible reasons include: damaged partition table, or damaged boot sector. In most cases of a boot sector damage, the drive letter will still be assigned, but when you attempt to access the drive the message will pop up like "Drive is not formatted, format now?" ("RAW filesystem" condition). This also happens if there is a conflicting data between boot sector and a partition table.

This points to the problem with the partition table but does not answer the question "what else might be damaged".

Now what?
Now just run the recovery.

Click here for a reference set of unformat instructions (http://www.z-a-recovery.com/unformat-tutorial.htm)
The fact that the filesystem was formatted to NTFS complicates things but is not that bad in itself.
If you copied something onto the drive since the reformat, that makes chances much worse. That would be the bad thing, to the point that if the drive is now NTFS and filled at capacity, no recovery of "past layer data" is possible
If you copied many files, ZAR will get confused about which of the filesystems to recover (as the drive will appear containing both FAT and NTFS volumes; depending on the number of files ZAR thinks it can recover, it choses the filesystem which yields more files). To resolve this, you may need to go into "Advanced configuration", and set "force filesystem type" to FAT.
The files you copied to the good drive cannot be used in recovery. If they do not contain the required files, thats it.

[Wedge1]

If I do not succeed with the external hard drive, I can try his original system drive from which the files were copied originally. He copied the "My Documents" contents to the USB exteral, then he performed a format with the OEM discs (Dell) on the system drive, and I'm certain that is where the FAT32 came from when he installed the external drive in the beginnig.

Is there a chance of restoring files from the original drive, even after doing an OEM format and install of Windows (those OEM discs do all this with very little user intervention, as you might already know). I'm just wondering if this is also a "high-level" type of format where some of the "My Document" files might still be recovered.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

General rule is: you try recovery from any media which could contain the files you need. The rest is probabilistic. Typlical OEM install will perform a regular format, i.e. all data of the previous installation will be deleted. After that, some significant portion of the data will be overwritten by a new Windows installation. You should still try recovering from the original drive.

[Wedge1]

It looks like I'll need to get the original system drive because I have tried 3 scans of the external hard drive with no luck in retrieving anything from the previous FAT32 file state. I would venture a guess that my copying files back onto this external drive after formatting it NTFS is what has prevented recovery from the old file format.

I'll see what I can achieve with the original system drive and report my results.

Btw, thank you for your software at a discounted price. I have sort of given free advertisement for it at a popular "Hot Deals" forum found here (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=2078100&enterthread=y).

[Alexey V. Gubin]

my copying files back onto this external drive after formatting it NTFS is what has prevented recovery from the old file format.

Certainly.

With the same filesystem (i.e. NTFS volume formatted to NTFS) and a small number of files written, the "one for one" rule of thumb applies: for each file written on to the volume after format, you lose one file that was on the volume before format. This is not exactly so, but good for general approximation.

For dissimilar filesystems (FAT->NTFS format), this is more complex.

However, if you write many files, you lose all (nearly all) the original data. If you fill the volume near its capacity, then nothing of the original data survives. This applies to all filesystems/combinations.