Upgrading from Vista to XP - talk me through the misery!

So you actually installed XP on to the external drive? Doh!!!!! You will have overwritten quite a large portion of the partition tables with data. Some might still be recoverable though. Sorry to hear this Chris.

 

I used XP as the boot disc, because Windows refused to allow the downgrade.

So the laptop wasn't fired up in Windows, hence I had no idea what drive it was pointing to!

 

Sounds like you needed to change the HDD options in teh BIOS in order for it to show from the XP disk. Probably turning on SATA compatibility mode, or maybe ACHI off?

Either way, you'll want to boot back in and try some data recovery, or take the drive to somone to get the data back off. If you've done an NTFS (Quick) format only then it should be accessible, but if like Deako says you've actually installed XP on there you may well have overwritten the data which would make it substantially trickier.

We use Easeus Data recovery in work quite often, and it's quite good. Seems that the free version will only recover 1gb though:

http://www.easeus.com/download.htm

there is a Free partition recovery download on there though, not tried that. Not sure how confident you are doing any of that though, so maybe a trip to PC World (as much as i hate to recommend them!)

 

I plumped for Easeus (+ upgrade > 1 GB) yesterday, still scanning on the machine, done 24 hours so far, but it's found no files in the last few hours which I think means it's just running through the remainder of the blank areas of the disc.

Where is the partition option? The reason I plumped for it was it mentioned it could recover original file names and locations.

 

From the link above, scroll down a bit and there's a download for Easeus Partition Recovery Software (http://download.cnet.com/EASEUS-Partition-Recovery/3000-2248_4-75279786.html). Never used it so cant vouch.

If you've bought the full version, you should be able to do a fairly hardcore scan of the drive for deleted files...which it sounds like you're already doing.

Best of luck!

 

Windows wont allow a downgrade if you were trying to install XP from within Vista. Sounds like the XP CD wasnt booted off to me, if you boot from the XP disc, you have the option to completely destroy the disk partition that Vista is installed on and start from scratch. Ive not known XP have issues with any standard laptop and any requirement for addition HDD drivers in the many millions of installs ive done.

 

Chris' laptop isnt that new. And i usually use one of our images. We mainly use OSD at work now.

 

I bought it at the end of 2008, with Vista on it and loads of clutter and crap that slows down Internet Explorer. I can't tell you how much I hate this machine, but I know if I buy another one, it'll come with the same crap, the same PC World cross-marketing bullpoop that this machine is laden with. I wish I understood how to strip a computer down, lighten it, make it faster, like I do with cars.

Ranting aside, the disc rescue I'm doing seems to be finding a lot of files, but with a drawback. It is finding old folders and constructing them with their proper names, with files placed inside the folders, but certainly the jpegs and pdfs are corrupt. I don't have Excel or Word on the machine at the minute, so I don't know whether they work, and I won't dare fire up a video file until the recovery has completed.

It is also throwing all RAW files it can find into sequentially numbered folders, with sequentially numbered filenames. These seem to be recovering well, although it is recovering jpegs multiple times over which is annoying for a sort through.

I can't figure out how it can recover files in one format and not recover them with original names.

Question is, is there a chance of running a fix on the corrupt files with the original names in the right folders, because if I can it will save me masses of time.

 

Usually its a very labour intensive process Chris. I feel your pain. Luckily, last time i had anything similar occur was back in 2000 when a virus wiped my boot sectors of the hard drives in my PC.

 

I know it's labour intensive, but that doesn't answer the Q!

There is disconnect in the machine recovering working files with new filenames and corrupt files with old filenames. It can clearly read the files and make them good.

Does this ring alarm bells to anyone?

 

Thinking back to the last time i did a major recovery using Easeus. The recovery brought back a load of folders containing file types. Ie it put all the JPG files into one folder, all MPEG files into another etc. Whether the files worked or not was hit and miss, but i put that down to the sectors being partially overwritten by new data.

One thing, you're not recovering the files to the same drive are you? It does warn you not to if i remember rightly.

 

It does actually Chris. You will need to sort through them.

 

This is the question:

 

The whole XP thing is on the backburner for now, having had my fingers seriously burned trying to free my latop from the prison sentence that is Vista. I am not interested in Windows 7 btw.

I'm now focused on recovering data, and the quicker and more efficiently I can do it the better. Then I might consider XP again, but it will take months to get my data back where I had it.

 

130 down the swanny on a 3TB external drive to handle it all