My brother was "LEARNING" to do "STUFF" on the computer & he started FORMATTING a partition on the system. I came in & shut the computer down (just powered it off. The computer rebooted W/O the Scandisk the data seems to be there BUT I can not access it. Scandisk gives me erors like part of the file is in an area that does not exist or is inaccessible. How can I get my data back??????

You could beat the crap out of your brother. It won't fix the problem, but I'm sure it will make you feel better.

hello your data is most likely gone. try these links http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm http://www.webattack.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.shtml http://www.sharewarejunction.com/info.asp?ProductID=6825 http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/url.htm

You need to examine the partition table to see what he changed - has he created a new partition, resized an existing one etc? When you say the data "appears to be there", but you cannot access it, please can you explain where the data is, how your partitions or drives were set up and what errors you get when you try and access it, since you mentioned there were problems accessing it. In terms of damage limitation, do you have any backup to restore from? Dave's links should help you out, though nothing would be as therapeutic as response #1 above! If you cannot effectively ban your brother from the system consider using an operating system where you can set access rights up like Win2000. Hope you get it sorted out and that he's learned his lesson from the inevitable physical warning you give him.

Thanx a ton guys. When I say I see it but can not access it I mean I see the file thrugh explorer but if I try & work on them or open them - NO LUCK. SOME MP3 files won't play, zipped archive won't open- Stuff like that I'll try the links out & see [would be difficult to do so with crossed fingures :)] & if all fails nothing would be as therapeutic as response #1 above! No backup guys. I had a 10 GBdisc 3.4 GB on primary partition the rest on two sec partitions.. Kid bro tried formating using explorer.... any other info that may be needed I'll be glad to offer.. ;)

OK best you can do with no backup is to try to copy the data to somewhere else - maybe connect a second hard drive onto the cable and copy the data there, or if you have spare room on another partition copy it there. Check data is usable, then do what your brother started off and reformat the partition and copy it back and test. You may not be successful, but it's worth a try - if the files are corrupted they may not be able to be copied, but if you interrupted the formatting you might just get lucky. Like I said you're going to have to finish the job he started anyway or you'll just have a faulty partition. Personally I'd back up the whole lot to a second large drive or CD's or whatever you can and try and think about damage limitation. Might be worth finding out what your brother knows and explain to him why you can't just go round formatting drives. He can't plead ignorance on this as at some point he'd have seen the "formatting will remove all data on this drive, are you sure you want to proceed?" message. Hope it all goes well :-) Mark

Tried all the links No Luck. Formatted the partition now ( Yeah again!!) Thanx for the help guys ;)