I've got myself into something of a pickle.

I was using Paragon Harddisk Manager Pro, I loaded it up hoping to create two partions on a thumb drive and through not giving it my full attention and appear to have lost the data on an extended partion on my main fixed disk.

I decided to format what I thought was the thumb drive logical drive letter and start afresh only it wasn't!

I can't believe I did this, it something I have never done before.
I saw that the format was about to start and HDM gives you a few seconds delay to cancel. I did that it displayed a hard disk controller error

The erased partiton is fully accessable and just has the Sytem Volume Information folder visible as used by XP's Sytem Restore tools (only I don't have it enabled for this particular partition).

So my question is what software would you guys recommend to help me recover these files? There is plenty to choose from but I'd like to ask for peoples personal recommendations based on experience of successful data recovery.

I'll be sure to creat an image file of this partiton before attempting any type of data recovery.

I've had some success with GetDataBack NTFS in the past but would really like to hear what recommended any alternatives that are considered better.

Thankyou for any help, I really need this data back. Thankfully I have backups of most of the imprtant files on this drive but there is some stuff on there I don't have up to date copies of.

search the board drive corrupt

For an automated process, try TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download)

But if there's data you couldn't retrieve, I suggest you could try manual recovery, i.e: if you want to get back some FLV files, get an image of the partition (work with it on a GNU/Linux LiveCD or another computer), and first identify header offset and the end of file offset; in this case, check out of 0x464c56 ('F', 'L' and 'V', respectively) and 0x74 for EOF. You can bring back some with Windd or dd, depending on your OS of choice, when you'd have the offsets.

Also, you could make a WHS script if you're using WinHex; using Block1, Block2, CopyIntoNewFile directives and some iterations, you should be able to get some files back.

Partition Magic gives you the option to undo any partions it creates before it does the final write. I know that is small comfort now.

There are low level partitioning apps that let you look at the partition data and alter it. All a partition is comprised of is data in a header file. I can't remember the name of the app off hand but I may be able to find it if you need it. It all depends on what your partition program has done, and if, as you say, you formatted some of it by mistake, that doesn't look too good. If you caught it in time, you may be able to repair the partition header, or maybe the problem is in the mbr.

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/

Think this should help you

Darren

Thanks to all that replied with advice. Thankfully I was able to fully recover the partition, the partiton header must have been damaged in some way as suggested.

The only inconvenient although essential step was having to copy all the recovered data to a different disk before copying it back again after formatting the damaged partition.

This took some time as there was over 30GB of data tranfer between partions on the same drive. I'm just thankful that I was able to get it all back.
I have never had a better reason to create an up to date back until now.

Glad you got your data back. You can buy a cheap USB drive for quick backups. I have a 500 gig USB drive that cost me about $100. Or, use zip or rar archiving to break your files into smaller units and write them to DVD's. In bulk, DVD's are about a $1 a disk.