Community Newsletter: Q&A: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive?
- 10/10/08 3:51 PM
Files recovery
by riffat1956 - 10/4/08 4:05 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi I had all my files deleted by a tech support person for the company i work for accidentaly and I used the software from getdata.com and it recovered almost 80% of my files. Good thing is you can use the software and recover the files and see what will be recovered before you buy the software however you cannot save the files recovered until you pay for the software. I think what I paid was around 70$. Good luck.
Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive?
by jcote859 - 10/4/08 4:10 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The same thing happened to my son's computer and I have a HD case that you plug into a USB port. I was using this case for another HD to back up my computer. I just put the old HD in that to see if I could save anything from it and I was able to save his pictures and other data.
Ways to recover data
by bugster25 - 10/4/08 4:27 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have Iolo Technologies System Mechanic 7 Professional, which has a Search and Recover function included. I have used this before with great success, although I've never tried it slaving a hard drive. I believe it was 29.95 at my local Staples. As a matter of fact, SM7 has been great in all it's applications.
Hope this can be helpful.
Its easy
by danlangan - 10/15/08 7:30 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data by bugster25I found if you install another hard drive with a clean copy of windows then install the bad hard drive as a slave, you will be able to transfer the data to the new hard drive. You can get most of the data out. The system will start on the new hard drive so you can look at and transfer data. One thing put a good anti-virus and spy program on the new hard drive before you start transferring. I recommend the AVG free and Spybot which can be found on www.CNET.com. Its easy costs about $60 (if you have a copy of windows) or about $160 if you don’t to do the whole thing.
Tech notes:
There is a small plug in the back of your hard to make it a slave or the master.
I also recommend windows XP if you need to buy one.
Dan Langan
Recovering hard drive files
by Betty Carson - 10/4/08 4:28 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have been successful in retrieving data from "dead" hard drives with a USB ATA/SATA device that plugs into the hard drive (you have to unhook the cable to the hard drive and take it out). The device costs about $25.00 and plugs into the USB port to the hard drive to access the hard drive. You should be able to copy the files through another computer and copy to a flash drive. I got my USB device from NewEgg.com. Hope this helps.
Name of the Device
by darrylx - 10/13/08 8:32 AM In reply to: Recovering hard drive files by Betty CarsonWhat should I ask or search for at the store? A USB ATA device?
USB recovery device
by pw33308 - 12/19/08 8:30 AM In reply to: Recovering hard drive files by Betty CarsonHi,
What is the name of the device you bought for recovering file for your bad hard drive?
Tks pw33308@aol.com
Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive?
by dmiller541 - 10/4/08 4:35 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Yes, she's a college student and can't afford hefty professional recovery labs. So if the data on the drive are so important to her and her education maybe it's time for her Father to step in and send it to a recovery lab for her.
It sounds like you ought to get it in the hands of a professional before you do more damage trying to be cheap. Doing anything with it that takes 3 days could not be improving your chances of success.
Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive?
by vattan2005 - 10/11/08 1:11 PM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by dmiller541Well, I am on the road, but when I get back home in a few days, I can identify the AWESOME freeware I used last time I had a hard dive crash on me to successfully restore files and post it.
However, I not only have witnessed this sad phenomenon where others have wasted countless hours or days and brain cells all for the lack of doing simple, painless backups, but also have experienced it myself. I have also been extremely regretful when the words of the proverb, "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure" haunted me for days and weeks after the episode. I now make 2 backups of everything on to DVDs and external hard drives (as WORM media can also fail without just cause). A lesson learnt? You better believe it! Back up, back up, back up!
50 ways to leave your lover ...
by Gerdd - 10/4/08 4:43 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
... and even more ways a hard drive could be corrupted. We currently only know two things about your daughter's drive - maybe three:
One, the operating system (Windows?) doesn't recognize enough of the disk structures to assign a drive letter. Two, it didn't make any unhealthy noises, but we can't assume that the platters are still spinning - unless, three, the use of your recovery tools is an indication that, sector by sector, portions of the disk are still readable.
Case distinction:
If the drive hardware is unable to read data off the platters - or even to spin them, then only the recovery labs can get anything off - maybe - by taking the drive apart and mounting your platters into another drive with working components. Very expensive and success will be qualified at best.
If the drive hardware can still read sectors - maybe not all of them - it is theoretically possible to piece the readable sectors together to rebuild the files that they belong to. When I say "theoretically" I mean that it can be extremely tedious to do this, involving lots of trial and error, and with some files it may not be successful at all. Back in the days of Windows 98 and FAT file systems I used to do this from time to time, writing small programs to scan the readable sectors for usable data, Today's Windows XP or Vista and the now prevailing NTFS file systems make this harder; on the other hand there are some tools around that can help. The file recovery programs you mention probably are that kind (I don't know these specifically).
I once used such an image file recovery program on a 2GB memory card from a friend's camera. It went on for about seven hours, but came back with just under 200 photos that otherwise would have been lost - from their first visit to a game park in Africa. The lesson I learned from that was that recovery can be a very slow process, but that is no indication that it is not working. So try those programs again and let them get on with it - on an old machine that you don't need for anything else for the duration. Another lesson I learned was that a few days later, when I wanted to repeat the effort to show my friend how it works the card wouldn't respond at all anymore, and never again did. This means that you don't have an unlimited number of tries, and you may want to perform a sector by sector backup of your drive before you try too hard to "scrape" data off it.
To sum it up: With Murphy's bad luck your drive is dead. But with a bit better luck only a few sectors are unreadable, some of which may be crucial for Windows to find things on your drive. In that case it is possible that you can recover some of your data - albeit with an effort. A good set of utility programs for this would help - some results can be achieved with a degree of slow (!) automation, and some more may be found by even more tedious manual activities - such as scanning all sectors for a text string that I expect to find in certain documents that I am particularly interested in; I may then get lucky piecing these documents together from the sectors surrounding the ones identified by the search. Sectors on our hard drives aren't allocated strictly sequentially, but there is a good chance that the sectors of a file are close together. You may also find several versions of a file, say the last three or four versions you saved.
Lastly, there is a chance that there is nothing physically wrong with the drive but a crucial sector was overwritten and the partitioning or the housekeeping section of your partition needs tweaking. In that case someone knowledgeable can - with the aid of a disk editor - patch things up and restore all back to health. Which would be an ideal moment to make that backup everyone will tell you you should have had in the first place.
this is the best i know of
by alslocks - 10/4/08 4:43 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
easy recovery data recovery by ontrack
with a good price
Try these .....
by ramusson - 10/4/08 4:44 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If your disk had more than 1 partition, try out " Partition Table Doctor ". This will recover the partitions and and whatever files are recoverable.
The second choice is " Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS ".
I prefer the first and have had some very good results.
All the best.
Hard Drive Recovery
by waytron - 10/4/08 4:44 AM In reply to: Ways to recover data from a corrupt hard drive? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
WARNING
First, you should know that any attempts to recover data from a damaged or failing hard drive may lead to further damage making it impossible to recover data even by a professional. So, if the data is EXTREMLY important to you, DO NOT ATTEMP TO RECOVER THE DATA YOURSELF or with any of the following methods. Take is to a data recovery specialist and I don’t mean one of those geeks, squads, nerds or dogs, but rather someone who specializes in hard drive data recovery. I have sent a few clients to Disk Doctors which is a national chain but there are many other good ones out there. Keep in mind that it will cost you and could run $500 or more depending on the damage and how much data you need recovered, but if the data is irreplaceable, it may be well worth the price.
Having said that, if you have conceded to the fact that the data may be lost and you have no intentions of paying several hundred to maybe a thousand or more to recover the data then there are some things that you can try and you may just luck out and recover everything. I am assuming that you have the ability to connect the old drive to a working computer either by installing it inside as a slave drive or by using an external USB enclosure or adapter. You will also need enough free space on a working drive to save the recovered data to.
There are many types of hard drive failures and the exact method that may work depends on what is actually wrong with the drive. If the drive is mechanically Ok and is simply corrupted then a data recovery program can be just what the doctor ordered. I have tried many over the years and have had the best luck with SpinRite and GetDataBack. Depending on the size of the drive and how damaged it is, these programs will take many hours or even days to run. In some cases, simply running Chkdsk /r from your Windows CD Recovery Consol or Windows Error Checking from Windows can fix some problems, but it could also make things worse.
FREEZING THE DRIVE
You may get some recommendations regarding placing the hard drive in a sealed bag and leaving it in the freezer for several hours. This can work for some types of problems but I would only perform this as a last resort and only after trying positional changes first.
POSITIONAL CHANGE
I have often found that placing the drive in different positions can help. I have had drives that would read only when upside down or placed on their side.
OVERHEATING
If you get the drive to read, but starts to overheat while recovering the data, it can be very helpful to cool it down. I use a special hard drive cooler but I guess you could use an ice pack or fan (USE CAUTION) as long as you are extremely careful not to introduce any moisture, condensation or water which can destroy the drive. Do not apply anything to the circuit board side of the drive and do not block the air hole. Be extremely careful not to bump or drop the hard drive, especially while it is running.
GETTING PAST COPY ERRORS
If you get the drive working but start running into errors while copying the data, you might want to try a free program call "Unstoppable Copy" which will continue copying files even when it encounters a bad file. This can be real helpful especially for copying large picture or music folders that have a few corrupted files in them.
The moral of the story is, hard drives FAIL. They are one of the few moving parts in a computer and should be treated like the tires on a car. They spin, they wear out and they WILL fail at some point and it is just a matter of when. They should to be replaced on a routine basis and when they do fail, you better have a backup spare. If you don’t want to deal with creating and maintaining your own backups, then consider using an online backup such as Carbonite.com or Mozy.com.
Good Luck!
Dana
Wayland Computer
charred chip!
by vapaphase - 10/11/08 11:44 PM In reply to: Hard Drive Recovery by waytrongood reply,but might i also add that theres a possibilty of the circuit or a component of it having burnt.if thats the case,examine the circuit under the hard drive for any charred components.when this happens the hard drive fails to power on,hence being undetectable to any OS or program.
this might seem a lost cause,but all you have to do is replace the circuit board.the data is safe 95% of the time.a computer workshop should be able to help u replace the chip and transfer the data on to dvds.if u wish to keep the new circuit it might cost u big,but for the transfer itself it cost me 20$(yes it happened to my 40 GB seagate IDE)
cheers boss!
Recovering Hard Drive Data
by pattytom - 11/17/08 8:32 AM In reply to: Hard Drive Recovery by waytronMy Maxtor 200GB hard Drive was "fried" due to using the wrong power source. When the correct power source was attached it will not power up. Is there any way to recover this data... Unfortunately Maxtor's recovery price is way out of my range so any help would be appreciated. I was very good at backing up my data to the Maxtor... now what.. my backup is gone! as well as my OLD Computer where the original data was...
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