Accidentally deleted my backup drive

[turing.test]

I was reinstalling Windows Vista today (fresh install) , and during the drive selection I inadvertently clicked "delete" while the secondary drive was selected instead of the primary. This is my only backup drive. It is, of course, now not recognized as a drive. I tried booting up Ubuntu and using Gparted to fix the problem, but the only option it gives me is creating a new partition. I don't have another drive big enough to which I can extract the data.

Any suggestions?

 

[Lexluethar]

There are a few free recovery programs out there listed in the sticky area of windows.

 

[turing.test]

Thanks for the response. I found a file recovery program in the sticky's, but the problem is that I have more data on my backup drive than I have space on my primary drive. Is there any way to repair the backup drive so that Windows detects it? No data was deleted, only the partition sector.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

No, sorry. It only costs about 45 bucks on newegg to get a 320Gb drive though. Depending on how important this data is to you, even a terabyte drive retails for under a hundred.

 

[turing.test]

I used the file recovery program from the Windows sticky and it found 16000+ files, but when I save them to my primary drive, they show up as files named: cluster10164859.* and all of them are corrupted. None will open. Windows apparently knows what kind of files they are -- the extentions are still there -- but nothing will open properly. Why is it that when a boot sector or MBR gets damaged, it can be fixed easily, but not a secondary drive? Is there no utility for fixing this?

 

[turing.test]

Another weird issue is that the vast majority of recovered files seem to be .xls, but I don't use Excel at all. I don't think I've even used it once on this install...

 

[S0ULphIRE]

You might want to try a different recovery program. Some recover files by folder hierarchy, which makes finding the files you need easier.
Unfortunately some files ARE corrupt and/or have their original titles erased/removed.

 

[joelm3103]

You can try Recuva. Worked pretty well for me and it's free.