HELP! What can I do!?!?!

**footclan** · 06-28-2005,11:06 PM

Ok, after reading the defragment thread, I decided to defrag my ps2 hdd as I had 1.33 gigs of defragged space wasted with only 4 games on it. Using winhiip, I decided to copy the images off my ps2 HDD to another external HDD. After that, I couldn't find the images on my PC HDD and it said files and folders on it were corrupted! After resetting, now my HDD doesn't appear and it says it's ps2 format

Is there anything I can do to get my files back?!?!

**thereal_zap** · 06-29-2005,12:57 PM

you're outta luck for the most part.

the iso files that winhiip extracted are corrupt? (this should serve as a reminder to check files before going ahead with a complete wipe-down of your ps2 drive)

if that's the case, then your only option (unless winhiip completely wipes your ps2 drive, and i don't know if this is the case) would be that you'd have to have a partition 'map' of your drive before it was re-formatted. and even then you'd really have to understand the apa partition structure to be able to extract the pieces and put them back together. this is not a difficult job, but it it very time consuming. if you don't have the map of your drive before you formatted, then it just becomes that much more difficult to recover. but it is possible if you're able to do a low-level scan of your drive and find the main partition headers and the subsequent sub partition pointers etc.

i recommend to just reinstall your games at this point if this is the case, as the other will take hours from your life. and if you don't know anything about the partition structure, then forget trying to recover altogether, just reinstall.

it's been said before, remember that winhiip will use up any fragmented slots available and even when you have a heavily fragmented disk, you're still not gonna see any real performance issues as the minimum partition size is 128mb. and most of them are a lot bigger than that (depending on the size of your hdd), so chances are your game will only have to seek to a different spot of your hdd a few times in the entire game.

my recommendation is to just leave it alone, check the defrag option in winhiip and enjoy.

sorry for your loss

**footclan** · 06-29-2005,01:20 PM

Originally Posted by footclan

I decided to copy the images off my ps2 HDD to another external HDD. After that, I couldn't find the images on my PC HDD and it said files and folders on it were corrupted! After resetting, now my HDD doesn't appear and it says it's ps2 format

I think you misread it. My ps2 HDD is fine. My other external HDD which I attempted to copy the isos to is now corrupted and is ps2 format. I realize now i should've extracted rather than copy to. But since it did just copy to, I'm wondering if they're is a way to get back all my files that were on my pc. I didn't format the drive, i just copied to, so you'd think they'd still be there right?

**thereal_zap** · 06-29-2005,05:51 PM

that depends. if your MFT was overwritten it'll be pretty hard to recover files and you may have a worst case scenario on your hands. you can try tools like directory snoop or even winhex to check for files as they exist in the MFT. there are a ton of low-level recovery tools for the pc, you'll have to check out features, etc.

there are recovery tools that claim to be able to recover files even without an intact MFT. you may want to give those a try if it is gone.

but before you do that, i would make an image with true image of the disc just so you'll have an intact copy of the drive as it is now.

good luck. cuz i think you may have screwed your drive

EDIT:

a friend of mine suggested a program called GetDataBack wxw.runtime.org. this does a search for files by sector (no need for an MFT). you do have to register to actually recover files, but it's worth a look.

good luck

**footclan** · 06-30-2005,12:05 AM

I can't use directory snoop because my hdd doesn't show up in my computer. What can I do? I've intialized it in disk managment, but now I'm stuck...

**zabolyx** · 06-30-2005,03:46 AM

you are most likely screwed... you might try a Linux LiveCD to see if it can read the PS2 data... but most likely the drive is dead. Reformatted by WinHiip. You cloned your PS2 drive.

to wipe the partition data out... I'm not sure if Windows can handle the PS2 parition data... try Aefdisk. It reads at least 100 differnt partition types and can delete any partition type even if it can't read it.. Use this to fix drives with Boot sector virii and drives with GoBack or similar apps installed to the MBR.

**GadgetFreak** · 06-30-2005,03:49 AM

It sounds like you did a full drive copy, I had thought at first that you might have done a Selected Image copy but this only works if the target drive is already PS2 format. I can't stress this enough people, read the boxes before selecting YES/OK.

Your chances of getting stuff back will be none for the first part of the drive, WinHIIP does a sector copy. How big is your PC drive? Is it much larger than the PS2 drive? If it is then you may be able to recover some of your files from the portion of the drive that was not copied over.
In the past for PC drive corruption I have used a product by Recoversoft called ACR Data Recovery, it will do a sector scan of the drive and find any files that are still there.
I am really sorry that this has happened to you, I hope you have success in getting some of your files back.

**footclan** · 06-30-2005,08:40 AM

Both drives are 160gb. And I guess since I did do a selected image copy, that's why I didn't get any message box asking me if I wanted to confirm what I was doing.

**GadgetFreak** · 06-30-2005,04:10 PM

With Selected Image Copy the destination has to already be PS2 formatted so you cold not have done that to a PC formatted drive. It also then displays a list box just like the add images dialogue.
Full drive copy would have displayed a message box confirming it was OK to overwrite the destination drive, this is the option you must have used to overwrite a PC drive.

In the first post you said you only had 4 images installed with 1.33Gb fragmented, that would mean that you probably only had around 20Gb of the drive used. If this is the case then it is only the first 20Gb of the PC drive that has been overwritten. If you get hold of the software I mentioned in the last post, you should be able to recover the majority of your files. You can DL a version from their web site, it won't actually recover the files until its registered, but you should be able to see if it can find anything.

**footclan** · 07-12-2005,10:09 PM

i've tried scanning my hdd, which takes 12 hours, and then i'm able to see the files that we re lost. However, when i try to recover, it tells me to choose a backup disk, which defaults to a:, which i don't have on my laptop. after changing the path, it gives me an error still. I've tried on my pc, but the usb drivers aren't detected.
any help?

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