Harddrive Corruption ... Good Recovery Utility?

[rkr1958]

A coworker of mine had a harddrive crash. The harddrive is a Maxtor 120-GB SATA drive. He's running Windows XP Pro which boots up, using another drive, and he's able to see the other drive in explorer. However, when he clicks to it he get's an I/O error. He tried running the Maxtor check utility but when he boots to DOS the Maxtor utility does not see the corrupted (or bad) drive.

Unfortunately for my coworker (unlike me) he's not backed up any of his critical data from this drive ...

Anyway, I'm posting this on his behalf ...

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[babyboo]

I have had success using GetDataBack

[BJ_M]

EASY RECOVERY DATA RECOVERY
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery/


THE BEST

[networkswiz]

Here's what I did whenever I meet that problem at work:
1) Put the hard drive in a plastic bag then put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
2) Take the HD out of the freezer, then plug it to the IDE cable
3) Use Windows Explorer to copy as much data as possible from the dead HD to your current HD. Obviously, you must have enough space on the running HD to back up the dead one.
4) Redo steps 1-3 until all data is recovered
Remember: DO IT FAST!! Your HD may be gone forever and you don't know when. Good luck!

[mujahid7ia]

Here's what I did whenever I meet that problem at work:
1) Put the hard drive in a plastic bag then put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
2) Take the HD out of the freezer, then plug it to the IDE cable
3) Use Windows Explorer to copy as much data as possible from the dead HD to your current HD. Obviously, you must have enough space on the running HD to back up the dead one.
4) Redo steps 1-3 until all data is recovered
Remember: DO IT FAST!! Your HD may be gone forever and you don't know when. Good luck!

i hear that's supposed to be a good method.

[thecoalman]

Here's what I did whenever I meet that problem at work:
1) Put the hard drive in a plastic bag then put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
2) Take the HD out of the freezer, then plug it to the IDE cable
3) Use Windows Explorer to copy as much data as possible from the dead HD to your current HD. Obviously, you must have enough space on the running HD to back up the dead one.
4) Redo steps 1-3 until all data is recovered
Remember: DO IT FAST!! Your HD may be gone forever and you don't know when. Good luck!

i hear that's supposed to be a good method.

LOL that's funny, does that really work. What's the deal with the freezer, anyone know? I'll have to file that one away in the memory bank AKA brain (hope that drive never fails)

BTW there are companies that can retrieve data from a dead drive if it's really important but your talking mucho $$$$. I've used some of those data recovery aps but they were for deleted files. They all give you free trial version, just can't recover anything with trial version but you can see what it sees. Won't hurt to try. But if it can't access the drive I don't see how that's gonna work.

[rkr1958]

Thanks for the replies ... He's tried all those suggestions except for the Freezer one. He may try that one soon. It appears that the drive is physically good and that it's a corrupted File System. I feel bad for him, the drive contained 1-year or two worth of pictures of his two children. Again, with no backup. I made him feel worse (and he should) for not backing up irreplaceable digital pictures. I personally have two backups of critical data and pictures (one of which I keep at work). Anyway ... I digress ... I'm not sure what's he going to do next.

[thecoalman]

If the drive is good those data recovery aps will work, the data is never really gone until it is overwritten. I've recovered data from a drive that was formatted and had a fresh copy of windows installed. Fortunatley the data wasn't overwritten during the install process. Actually in some cases multiple copies of the data was recovered due to the fact that they were written to disc multiple times. I'm not suggesting you format the drive. What is important is that you don't install or write anything to the drive.

You have to make sure that the recovery tool supports whatever file syatem you are using NTFS or FAT. Install it on a drive other than the one your trying to recover.

[gmatov]

If you or he has Norton Systemworks, try running Disk Doctor. I lost 137 gigs on a drive,only 16 or so accessible, ran DD, and it said it found a drive, would I like to try to recover it. Said yes, it tried, it did, 137 gig partition back to normal

Have you tried pulling the drive from his and installing in yours?

Have you tried fdisk, drives information, to see if the drive is a DOS drive? I have had drives go to hell because they somehow lost their DOS designator, for want of a better term. Why, I don't know. Some I have been able to restore to DOS, others required a format.

Go to Tucows.com and DL all the recovery apps you see, at least the ones that say they will allow recovery, not just to show what might be recoverable if you pay. They do not all work. I have tried the best, and it recovered a bunch of files, but at least half were corrupted beyond repair.

Cheers,

George

[BJ_M]

EASY RECOVERY DATA RECOVERY - still the best .. what was used on the shuttle hard drive and 90% of all recovered hard drives in the 9/11 thing ..