Restoring a partition

[wesjt2006]

I was recently erasing the free space on the partitions of my external drives, but when cleaning the last one I accidentally clicked "erase" instead of "erase free space".

I immediately realized what I had done and clicked Cancel the very instant the drive began erasing. I am currently using Disk Drill Media Recovery to restore my files, and it's showing that most my files have a good chance of being full recovered, but it appears that the file system (I hope I'm using the right term here) has been completely erased. None of the files are named or arranged as they once were. This isn't just a problem with Disk Drill, as I've used it to recover files before and it put everything back in it's original place with the original names. But now, I have thousands and thousands of files all named "file000001, file000002, file000003," and so on.

Is there any possible way to restore the original order and names of the files? Even if it requires additional software specifically for this purpose. I don't know much about how that data is stored, so I don't know if it's even recoverable. I realize that I totally brought this upon myself for being careless and not backing up my files, but I honestly won't ever be able to sort through and organize all this stuff. Most of the files are unusable unless named and placed correctly - most of them are audio files associated with Logic and Pro Tools sessions, and can't be used unless named and placed correctly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Fishrrman]

"drive began erasing. I am currently using Disk Drill Media Recovery to restore my files, and it's showing that most my files have a good chance of being full recovered, but it appears that the file system (I hope I'm using the right term here) has been completely erased. None of the files are named or arranged as they once were. This isn't just a problem with Disk Drill, as I've used it to recover files before and it put everything back in it's original place with the original names. But now, I have thousands and thousands of files all named "file000001, file000002, file000003," and so on.
Is there any possible way to restore the original order and names of the files?"

You're not going to get back your original file names and folder hierarchies.

That's the reality of "data recovery software".

Think about this for a moment. Where are file names and folder hierarchies created and maintained? In the partition's -directory-, which is what gets obliterated when you "erase" a drive or partition.

The old directory is wiped out and a "fresh" (empty) one is established in its place.

The actual -data- out on the sectors of the partition is left intact -- UNLESS you choose to "zero it out" during the re-initialization. Fortuneately, you didn't do this.

So…. when you use data recovery software, it sees that the directory may be damaged or non-existant. In that case, the data recovery software "bypasses" the directory and "goes right to the platters", scavenging what it finds and then reassembling the pieces back into usable files.

But since there no longer are filenames or folder hierarchies available to "associate" with the recovered data, the recovery software assigns its own ID numbers instead.

That's what's happened in your case.

Just be happy that you got the data files back. The recovery software did what it's supposed to do.

I, too, work with audio files -- I understand well that you can have many, many files which represent snippets of audio, small edits, etc. That's one of the "hazards" of audio recording. And it's exactly for this reason why you MUST keep good backups of your audio projects...

 

[wesjt2006]

Thanks for letting me know. That's what I assumed, but I was hoping I'd be wrong.