Data recovery

[MacPC]

Hi,

My friend has the old hard drive which contains years of her school works and family photos. Needless to say she doesn't have a backup. The hard drive crashed awhile ago and she's hoping to recover at least some data. So I took a look at this hard drive.

I connected it to my computer as a slave drive. It slows down my system to a claw. Nontheless, my computer reconizes it. When I click on My Computer, it shows up as D drive. When I click on the D drive, after a long wait, it ask if I want to format it, so I say no. When I go to disk management, it shows that the disk is healthy(active.) All these indications lead me to think that the drive is not physically demaged but a logical one, so the question is how can I retrive the data? What is a good data recovery program I can use?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

MacPC

[Raptor]

All these indications lead me to think that the drive is not physically demaged but a logical one

Not reliable. Use diagnostic software that is provided by the HDD manufacturer to make certain the HDD is failing.

You might be able to make an image of the entire HDD with Ghost or another image program if Windows can't read it.

[Rob Pomeroy]

Sounds like this hard drive is nearly dead.  Was it from an XP machine?

I would suggest using a >Knoppix< boot CD, and see if you can then read the hard drive.

[MacPC]

Hi,

I found this program on the net, it's call R-Studio. I managed to recover small files. This seem to work but it's a demo version, it can only recover files <64K, I ordered the full version which is suppose to recover everything. I am just wondering if someone had use R-Studio, if so, how reliable is it?

MacPC.

[Raptor]

Use PC Inspector File Recovery (Click)

[GX1_Man]

Rob gave you the answer already. If that is too complex, have a read here:

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1152393515


If the drive is defective and the files are important you may want to use a professional data recovery service, but they are expensive. The more you use that drive (if it is defective) the fewer chances you have.

[Dusty]

Use PC Inspector File Recovery (Click)

Thanks Raptor, real handy progs..  Have you used the cloner :-?

[MacPC]

Thanks, GX1_man, I will give Ubuntu live CD a try. And Raptor, I did try the Inspector program and a bunch of others I downloaded, the only one that is able to get some data out of it is the R-Studio. If someone else knows something better, please let me know.

MacPC

[GX1_Man]

And when you right click on the drive and choose properties does it show it as RAW? Did this used to be an NTFS file system disk (he asked knowingly)?

[Raptor]

Use PC Inspector File Recovery (Click)

Thanks Raptor, real handy progs..  Have you used the cloner :-?

No, I only used the data recovery program so far. What does the cloner do?

[MacPC]

Well, when I hooked up the damaged drive to my PC as a slave, when I boots it up, after getting into Win2k, it hows up as D drive. When I click on anything like try to open it, or get info from the property, it says the drive is not formatted and ask me if I want to format it, I clicked NO. Basically I can't get any info on this drive. But the good side is that the OS recognises it. The only program can open this is R-Studio. I used the demo and was able to recover few pieces of small file since this is a demo and it won't recover anything larger then 64K. I think I am going to buy the full version and give it a try.  

An ancient Chinese proverb, "Treat a dead horse as if it's a live one." Got nothing to lose, right?

MacPC

[Raptor]

I think PC File inspector can get your files back too, if you learn how to use it. It's not too difficult.

[MacPC]

Oh, trust me. I tried.