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christomason
Contributor
Contributor

recover NTFS volume after I installed vshpere 5.5

Being new to ESXi I installed vSphere 5.5 wiping out a windows 2012 server.  I had a 😧 NTFS volume that had some data I would like to get.  Is there a way to get at it now that I installed vSphere 5.5? 

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cykVM
Expert
Expert

Was that 😧 Volume a partition on the same disk Windows 2012 was installed on or was it a 2nd disk?

You may try several recovery products for disks (but I think there will be not much hope.

But if you are not familiar with recovery software products you might destroy more than it helps.

A professional data recovery company might be luckier but this may cost a fortune and is only viable if the data is really importatnt and not recoverable in another way.

Most of the really working software products are also not for free. I have good experiences with Runtime.org's GetDataBack for NTFS, see Data Recovery Software Products and Downloads - Runtime Software Products

The free trial version is limited and be careful what you do with it.

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CoolRam
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Expert

Did you installed the vSphere in the same disk where you kept your Window machine(NTFS). If this is the case than the hope is very less.

If you installed on the other disk than you can recover very easily.

If you find any answer useful. please mark the answer as correct or helpful.
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christomason
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Contributor

No the esxi and the data are on different virtual disks.  I have done nothing with the virtual disk that has the data in hope I can get into it through esxi.

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sannsan
Contributor
Contributor

Try data recovery software if you have confidence to use them to save your pocket or if data is very important then get recovery done through professionals.

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cykVM
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No the esxi and the data are on different virtual disks.  I have done nothing with the virtual disk that has the data in hope I can get into it through esxi.

Now I lost track somehow. You said that you first had Windows 2012 installed (no VMWare etc.) and then wiped the Win 2012 install by installing ESXi.

But the quoted above sounds kind of different, but maybe I did not get your point.

Anyway if the 😧 drive was really on a spearate disk and ESXi install did not touch it, you should be able to unplug the disk and put it in another PC. For data recovery I won't do any pass-through stunts with a raw device mapping or something similar.

Leave the disk as untouched as possible.

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christomason
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I can't remove the drive it is raid array build into the server.  I have 2 arrays setup on the server, when I had windows 2012 on it the first array was the c drive and the second array was the d drive where the data was stored.  when I installed vSphere 5.5 I installed it on the first array the old c drive.  All the data is on the second array which was the old d drive, which has not been touched since I installed ESXi.  What Im asking is there anyway to mount/recover the data on the array via ESXi?

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cykVM
Expert
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Ok, now it's clear. Smiley Wink Sorry, but was really hard to understand your previous posts to get a clear picture of the situation.

I guess the 2 arrays are configured on the same controller and not on 2 separate controllers. I still won't try to map the raw device for data recovery.

So I can't see any safe solution to get this done from within ESXi.

I would consider putting up a Windows installation on a USB device (disk or usb stick) and mount the 2nd array from there.

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