Data recovery services for a ntfs partition on my laptop hard disk drive (CD, hard drive)

[timlee]

1. My problem:

My laptop Lenovo T400 has two OSes: Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. There are two ntfs partitions shared between the two OSes: one for Windows 7 installation ,and the other for personal data files.

Earlier today, when I was in Windows 7, I installed some software (LibreOffice, MathType, MikTex) and edited some documents with MS Office, and then restarted the computer into Ubuntu. The ntfs data partition shared between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 was not able to automatically mounted, which is unlike usual, while The ntfs Windows installation partition was mounted automatically just like usual.

Then I restarted the computer back into Windows 7, and found the ntfs data partition had been completely emptied, except leaving only one Windows system file "bootsqm.dat" and one Windows system directory "System Volume Information". The time shown by Windows 7 has also been adjusted to be 4 hours in advance than the actual time. The ntfs Windows installation partition was still fine.

When I restarted the computer again into Ubuntu, the two things same as in the previous paragraph also happened.

I am not sure when the data loss happened exactly. It could be before my first rebooting from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 12.04.

I am not sure what cause the data loss either. It could be some malicious software I installed while I was under Windows 7, or some mis-operation that I was not aware of.

2. Solutions?

I wonder if there are some software, professionals and/or companies that are very good at data recovery?

I found there are some lists of recommended software which is even free, for example Five free portable recovery tools | TechRepublic

But I have tried some before, and didn't find there is a free one that actually works. Also I am not sure if using some of the software will make situation even worse for data recovery.

I also searched "data recovery Baltimore" in Google for my local services. The top three are ads for three companies

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There are even more companies in the search results, following the top 3 ads

I am not sure which one is reliable and actually experts who have different ways to try. So I would like to here your opinion and recommendations. Thanks!

[TurcoLoco]

It might be a sign of potential disk (hardware) issue but I'd lean towards a filesystem corruption.
Not with Linux but with Windows 7 I suspect. Bootsqm.dat typically gets created when some sort of a disk check was scheduled (whether it ran or not is uncertain) but the mere fact that that is all you could see on that partition hints at the possibility that Windows 7 went Mustang on that partition and deleted the file system index/NTFS Log where the partition looks empty but the actual data might still be there.

What free software to use? See this list of Free Utilities that you can use. I have used #1 and #5 on hard drives and #9 for CD media with success in the past. I strongly urge you to download any one to a removable drive and run it from there as well.

[NJBest]

I swear by this software but it's not free. They are also a big data recover service provider.

http://www.krollontrack.com/data-rec...tware/windows/

However, DriveSavers is the one you want if you're going to get professional service done.

Data Recovery by DriveSavers | All Drives, RAID, SSD & iPhones

[bs13690]

OnTrack software has worked for me. I've used it at my job to recover data. For data retrieval that could not be accomplished with software we have used both OnTrack and DriveSavers. I don't know the difference between the two vendors, but they have a very, very high recovery rate.

They recovered data from one of our employee's drives that was fished out of the Hudson after Sully decided to take the passengers for a swim.

[marchorius]

The problem you are having is most likely related to file system. However on this page you can find ways if you decide to it in DIY fashion ([url=http://datasolutionslabs.com/2012/12/31/diy-data-recovery/]DIY: data recovery | Data Solutions Labs[/url]). You can also try with some free data recovery software [url]http://logical-data-recovery.winsite.com/[/url].

Hope it helps