Is it possible to repair a partition instead of just recovering the files?

[BigBaboo]

I apparently accidentally formated my old HD when I placed it in my new Home Server machine. I ran ZAR on the disk and it sees the old files still there.

I'm wondering if its possible to simply repair the partition instead of recovering the files and copying them to another drive. It seemes like that would be quicker.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

ZAR cannot do this. Furthermore, I'm not aware of any program which does the in-place unformat (reliably) on an NTFS volume.

[BigBaboo]

Thanx for the reply. That's unfortunate, that a drive can be so easily corrupted but not repaired. I did go ahead a purchase the software anyway. It is well laid out and easy to use. I was able to recover pretty much everything I needed to. Thanx!

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Good - nice to hear

[Cheena]

Originally Posted by BigBaboo

I apparently accidentally formated my old HD when I placed it in my new Home Server machine. I ran ZAR on the disk and it sees the old files still there.

I'm wondering if its possible to simply repair the partition instead of recovering the files and copying them to another drive. It seemes like that would be quicker.

Yes that would be great if you could do that. I have read that you could if it was formatted in fat and you were using the fsdk unformed command but there is a chance that you might do further damage so I read. And you have to be running windows xp I think correct me alexey if I am wrong.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

On the FAT filesystem, tools like DOS "unformat" program did in fact exist, but

• that required use of "mirror" command prior to the format to actually work
• the "unformat" program was removed starting with Windows 95 (so even if you get yourself DOS 6.22, there is no long name support).