All partitions deleted when reinstalling XP

Here's the problem. A friend of mine was reinstalling XP Professional on his desktop and he inadvertently ended up erasing/deleting all his partitions. So that he ended with a system that contained windows and none of his previously installed applications or data files. Is there a way to recover all of his files from his internal disk drive or are they gone forever? (Note: Fortunately, he does use an online backup service)


Thanks


Gary

 

I know you can backup your data with a certain software if he did a quick format. I don't know it though. Google is your friend

 

If he deleted the partitions then it would be very difficult. He might find some odds and ends himself with file recovery software but past that I wouldn't hold out much hope without going to a data recovery company.
It looks like using the online backup service was a good move!

 

It's probably still there, on his disk.
Make sure he does not spoil it by writing anything on the disk.

Yep,do a google search for testdisk.
There are other, more user friendly programs that can assist him in recovering the partition table, but test disk is free.

 

Whoa! Reading again: did he install Windows after having erased the partitions?

If that is the case, it's gonna be harder - in fact if overwritten, impossible - to recovery the data, even if the partition structure is fully recovered.
How many partitions did he have? And how big? Where did he keep his data, in the first or in the last ones?

 

If he wiped out the partitions and the windows install then created one LARGE partition spanning the whole drive, the chances of recovery are slim. However, if he created a new C: partition the same size as the old one and the remaining space is still unpartitioned, he may very well be able to recover the partition(s) using some of the myriad partitioning tools. Some are able to do such a recovery WITHOUT reformatting the partition as long as you know the original partition type.

Gary

 

Your basically screwed unless you take it to a real professional. They do have software that recovers lost files from unwritten free space, but most of them suck and usually bring back just parts of the files or corrupted.

 

If you just delete the partitions and don't write to the disk it's recoverable.

Once you reformat and install windoz it's gone.
A pro at a recovery lab could probably dig out some of the data, but it's beyond super expensive.
Last time I was in this position (6+yrs ago) it was $1000/GB and I had 200 GB.
Fortunatly I had a backup that wasn't all that old, but I clearly lost some data.

Since he's backed up his data, just reinstall all the software and recover the data from backup.