Restore HDD data from image

Restore HDD data from image "I formatted my HDD by mistake, and need to restore data from it. There is no way to attach an additional HDD to the computer where the mistake happened."
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 349

Total answers/comments: 1

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Guest [Entry]

"I think, you mean to say that you copied the whole drive (after it was accidentally formatted) & saved it on the network and you want to know if your data can be recovered from that copy.

As far as I know, No. As you said, there are softwares that retrieve data from formatted drives. (As far as Windows goes) They do that by reading the FAT table entries that were recently flagged as deleted. Then they try to make out if there was anything useful on the actual hard-drive space. So as you see,they will need the actual FAT table to work on.

Now, copying will only copy data that is present on hard-disk & is NOT marked as deleted. Hence all the FAT table entry will not be present.

Instead I suggest that you try to again boot from your Linux Live CD, try and recover your data from the actual hard-drive.
Or you can try UBCD which is another wonderful recovery bootable CD.

EDIT: Since you have already copied the HDD image to another PC, it is worth trying to retrieve your data from the HDD. You can try TestDisk. Its free & only 1.5 MB."