I’m very careful with my data backups. To the point of being paranoid.

Now, I know I’m not paranoid enough.

Yesterday, the RAID array in my main system died. No worries, right? I’ve religiously backed up all my data, and was even able to do a full backup through Retrospect before the drives failed completely.

At Dell’s insistence, I blew away my RAID volume and created a new one, forcing me to reinstall Windows. I’ve you’ve ever installed Windows XP from scratch, you’ll be familiar with the screen that asks you which partition you want to install Windows in.

Here’s the problem: my RAID drives and my backup drive are all nearly the same size. What did I do? You guessed it. Instead of selecting my RAID for Windows installation, I accidentally selected my backup drive.

Two clicks and one near heart attack later and my entire world vanished. Gone. Bye-bye.

Now, I could be mad at Microsoft. I would be justified in criticizing an interface that would allow such a complete and catastrophic data loss with two clicks. I could be mad at Dell at telling me to reset my RAID array (turns out it wasn’t necessary in the first place; the tech was just following a script). Ultimately, though, I have to be mad at myself for not listening to my paranoia when I needed it the most.

Lessons learned here:

• Don’t rely on a single backup. Back super-critical files (your source tree and Outlook PST files especially) to two separate locations.
• Be very, very, very careful during the Windows installation process. Don’t think that Microsoft will provide you with a safety net when you need it the most.
• In the event of total data loss, drink heavily. It helps.

Now that that part of the story is told, this article is really about what to do in the event of a data disaster. I’m glad to say that this story has a good ending in that I was ultimately able to recover my data. It took several hundred dollars, many hours, and a few years off my life expectancy, but I was ultimately able to recover the data.

First, a quick description of my problem: I deleted the partition on my drive. Very simply, this erases the information on the drive that tells your computer where each file starts and stops on the physical drive, along with other information. Erasing the partition does not erase the data; the ones and zeros are still there on the platters. Seems like it would be a simple thing to restore this, right? Wrong. Microsoft gives you no way to do this, and in fact tells you outright in the Windows XP help files that it is simply not possible. They are wrong.

First, if you enter a Google search for ‘restore partition,’ your first dozen or so entries are for the same program: Active@ Partition Recovery. Bottom line, save your time and money and skip APR. I’m sure that the makers of this program are able to get it to work in certain circumstances, but in my case, the program couldn’t even find my lost partition, let alone recover it.

Next, I tried a program called DFSee. Unlike APR above, DFSee has a free evaluation version that is not crippled where it counts, and it actually did a good job of identifying my lost partition. The problem is that DFSee is an app only an assembler programmer could love. And it does not actually make identifying and restoring a drive an easy process, opting instead to output 6 log files that must be poured over in order to generate secondary scripts. In their defense, they say many times in the documentation that recovery is available as a service included with your paid registration of the product. In the end, though, I opted to move on. DFSee is just too techy for anyone without a CS degree.

Then I remembered reading in the latest PC Magazine about data disaster recovery. The article focused on a company called OnTrack. This is a large, professional organization that specializes in data recovery and exudes exactly the white lab-coat and clean-room forensic image you want in your head when you have such a problem.

The good news is that short of sub-atomic obliteration of the physical disc platters, OnTrack can get your data back. Like most things in life, it’s a matter of cost. In my case, my data loss was a relative walk in the park, so I didn’t need their personal assistance which would have run well into the thousands.

Fortunately, they offer an inexpensive do-it-yourself alternative called EasyRecoveryâ„¢ DataRecovery. This allows you to scan your failed drive and determine if you will be able to restore your data using the program. If so, then you plop down either $89 for a version that recovers 25 files at a time, or $199 for a full version that will restore all of your lost data.

This may seem like a lot, but compared to the time, inconvenience, and heartbreak of losing all of your data, the money is worth it.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Recommendations . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.