Migration to SSD gone wrong

[UMinh1]

Hi,

This post concerns my laptop which is running Win 7 (64-bit) with one primary HDD with a single primary partition formatted with NTFS running PGP Desktop. I recently attempted to migrate to an SSD for performance reasons, that's when disaster struck.

I was using an Intel SSD X25-M 80GB so I used the official "Intel Data Migration Software" which underneath is really a customized version of Acronis TrueImage. I ran it from within Widnows 7 and followed all the steps in the user guide to clone my existing PGP WDE HDD to the SSD (externally mounted). At some point it requested me to reboot the machine, the cloning process was supposed to continue in a pre-boot loader. After the reboot, my PC just hung at the very first screen that appears when you turn it on (the one where you get the option of interrupting the normal boot e.g., to enter BIOS settings). I waited for a few minutes but nothing happened, I got impatient and rebooted the machine a couple of times but to no avail. By this time, my primary (internal) HDD had been rendered unbootable resulting in MBR 3 errors. After spending several hours with a whole range of disk diagnostics tools, I concluded that MBR is gone and so is the primary partition table. Partition recovery tools do not find any existing partition tables on the disk, I'm guessing this is because the partition table was also encrypted? The disk now appears as RAW unformatted disk in Windows, prompting me to format it every time I connect it.

I've attempted to recover using:

1) PGP Recovery disk 2) From within another computer running PGP Desktop

In all cases, the disk is not being recognized as encrypted. And to windows its a RAW disk that needs formatting.

Is there any hope to recover my data at all? I am now desperate - any tips/comments/suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks!

[Jose_H_Intel1]

Hello UFM, I am really sorry for the issue.

You may consider contacting a data recovery service company such as the ones below or similar ones.

http://software.intel.com/partner/search-detail?companyguid=80ade2e2-0a7d-e111-a1da-001a4b33b648 http://software.intel.com/partner/search-detail?companyguid=80ade2e2-0a7d-e111-a1da-001a4b33b648

http://software.intel.com/partner/search-detail?companyguid=1f3707f6-b3bc-e111-ab57-001a4b33b648 http://software.intel.com/partner/search-detail?companyguid=1f3707f6-b3bc-e111-ab57-001a4b33b648

Other people across the internet have suggested using a data recovery software or different operating system.

I am not familiar with such PGP* software but if it encrypts the drive somehow, it was probably a good idea to disable such encryption first before migrating or cloning the data.

NOTE: These links are being offered for your convenience and should not be viewed as an endorsement by Intel of the content, products, or services offered there.