Recovery from deleted .rdb datafiles

[ArlenR]

I have experienced a catastrophic disk failure from which I'm trying to recover, and would be extremely grateful for any help you can provide.

 

My main C drive, on a Windows XP Pro machine, crashed and is no longer accessible. It had been previously backed up by Retrospect 6.5 onto a network drive.

 

I booted the disabled computer from another internal drive that was a 1-year-old clone of the C drive. However, when Windows loaded, a long-dormant version of Retrospect on that drive auto-started and tried to do a recycle backup to the network drive. I stopped it, but not before it deleted the C drive backup set and catalog on the network drive.

 

The backup set contained 7 days of data: the original day of a recycle backup, plus 6 days of normal (incremental) backups. Only 3 files of the backup set remain on the network drive. I believe they are the last 3 of the set, from their names and dates. They are named:

 

CXOOOO95.rdb, CX000096.rdb, CX000097.rdb.

 

I am now trying to recover the deleted backup set on the network drive. A file recovery utility reports finding many (but not all) of the deleted members of the set in very recoverable condition. But the file names confuse me.

 

Recoverable files from the original backup folder are named CX000001-CX000029.rdb, with creation dates from the first date of the backup (Sept. 13). Note that there is no file "CX000000.rdb" found at all.

 

The utility also finds a group of files that appear to be part of the same set from their creation date/times, but have different file names and strangely, their folder location is given as "System Volume Information\_restore{long-number-string}". They are named in descending numerical order as the date stamp times increase:

A0072015.rdb-A0071951.rdb. (Except that A0071986-A0071982 are missing)

 

Are the files labeled A007**** part of the same set as those named CX0000**? (They appear to be, from the date/time stamps.) Have they been renamed from CX0000**? If I undelete them all, should the A007**** files be renamed?

 

If they are undeleted, can any data be recovered from a large group of backup datafiles where some of the set are missing? In particular, is the absence of the first member of the set, CX000000.rdb, a big problem?

 

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

 

Arlen

[Mayoff]

I have never seen data recovery SOFTWARE successfully recover a Retrospect backup file correctly. In fact, using software data recovery tools will sometimes make it harder for a professional recovery service to recover your files.

 

You need to contact a data recovery service like Drive Savers to get your files back