Partition Recovery

I am an idiot. I wanted to reinstall my laptop (Lenovo T61) and had some sort of brain malfunction and deleted every single partition and not just the system partition.

Every data I got on that laptop is recoverable apart from my iTunes library ..
Idiot too because the backups were on a different partition which I also deleted .. oh and of course also the hidden Windows 7 partition so the internal partition recovery isn't an option either.

Now since Apple refused me to re-download my purchased items (I must have spent a fortune on the store) I am looking for a way to recover that partition.

I did not re-create any partitions but only delete them from within the windows installer.

Now I tried Acronis, DiskInternals but both cannot actually see the disk .. The disk being in a laptop I am not using any funky raid .. so that is already quite odd ..

The only program so far able to see the disk is Active Partition Recovery, but even after a 9 hour scan it couldn't find any old data... which again is odd because I used to have a lot of success with it ...

I am unable to put the disk into a normal PC and try windows based software as this is an FDE disk and the Lenovo bios decrypts the disk on the fly. Some would argue that this is the problem why programs like Acronis cannot see the disk, but the decrypt happens during post (plus the dos tool Active can see it too).

Any other suggestions ?!?

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Comments

veritas_libertas

Gomjaba wrote: »

Now since Apple refused me to re-download my purchased items (I must have spent a fortune on the store) I am looking for a way to recover that partition.

Have you called them? They are usually pretty good about stuff like that.

jibbajabba

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Have you called them? They are usually pretty good about stuff like that.

I did and the monkey refused .. called a second time and he refused too .. I can only assume that is because I received a "second shot" about a year ago .. Maybe its really a one time only thing without any exceptions ...

veritas_libertas

Gomjaba wrote: »

I did and the monkey refused .. called a second time and he refused too .. I can only assume that is because I received a "second shot" about a year ago .. Maybe its really a one time only thing without any exceptions ...

I would try a couple more times. You never know, right? If not I kinda think your toast. Just make sure you burn, or copy them over next time

leefdaddy

Gomjaba wrote: »

I did and the monkey refused .. called a second time and he refused too .. I can only assume that is because I received a "second shot" about a year ago .. Maybe its really a one time only thing without any exceptions ...

If you've already had to do this once... Maybe you should work on backups?

Pash

Hey Gom,

I recently had to recover some data from a hard drive. I used:-

Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files

This managed to get back all the files I needed from an xp machine.

jibbajabba

Pash wrote: »

Hey Gom,

I recently had to recover some data from a hard drive. I used:-

Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files

This managed to get back all the files I needed from an xp machine.

Does this program lets you create a CD ? I don't need it anymore but it would be nice to know anyway.

But I just received an email from Apple and they let me download all the files again (which are A LOT

)

That was my main concern ... I managed to disable the encryption from my laptop bios so the disk is accessible on other PCs. My work PC has a decent backplane so I was able to attach the disk directly and have now access from within Windows ... A few partition recovery programs seem to find all the files but they are all over the place. Not sure why those partition recovery programs don't find the partitions but the files only

But I guess I could get them back now either way ...

Man I think I put my iTunes library in a vm

Hyper-Me

I've used Recuva before with some success. Its pretty good unless the data has been overwritten with other data since. Get a usb converter and plug it into another machine and give it a shot.

jibbajabba

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I've used Recuva before with some success. Its pretty good unless the data has been overwritten with other data since. Get a usb converter and plug it into another machine and give it a shot.

Funny enough I did order this one (will be with me by tomorrow): click

Annoyingly I forgot that I can attach the laptop drive directly to my backplane in my PC but I guess that docking station will be handy one day (although all my HDDs are SAS and only my laptop has SATA but Supermicro backplanes support both).

kenny831

Did you transfer your music to an Ipod/Iphone?

jibbajabba

kenny831 wrote: »

Did you transfer your music to an Ipod/Iphone?

Just a tiny bit which I was able to transfer back to the library. As example, Apple allowed me to re-download 1900 items (I throw up thinking about the money involved) but my iPhone has only about 200 and my iPod touch about 600 ... My whole library include 1900 iTunes items (MP3, Apps and whatno, including legacy stuff for iPhod 5th generation) and my whole CD collection (approx. 150GB worth) - so I somewhat panicked when I deleted the partition.

I have checked the stats on what was played how often .. I barely played 0.5% of the whole library on regular basis I don't really care about the ripped ones, but I cared about the ones I paid hard cash for which may have been lost.

Well I am currently re-downloading the iTunes files to an iSCSI SAN - will never lose it again lol ...

grison william

Gomjaba.......Have you tried Stellar Phoenix Mac Recovery software which is also an awesome application.I think this tool will solve your problem and recover your partition definitely i am sure it will help you out.You can try the demo version first which is free and if you find your recovered partition you can download the full application Good luck dude..