Have I lost all data on Hard Drive?

I have a bit of a dilemma and was hoping some of you guys could maybe help me out. I am switching a hard drive out on a laptop that I have determined to be faulty. I was able to backup the needed data onto a usb thumb drive, but the usb port is on the back of the computer, so when I lifted the computer to look for something under it, I forgot about the drive and bent it a little. Now, whenever it is put into any computer, it shows up, but the system says it is inaccessible and asks if I would like to format it. That data seems to be lost, so I turned to the old hard drive.

I put the drive into a usb-to-ide external enclosure and tried to access it from another computer, but windows says that the device has malfunctioned and the data cannot be accessed. So, I put it back into the original laptop, and went into the emergency console from the XP boot disk.

I then tried to fix the MBR, thinking that might have something to do with it, because the drive wouldn't boot into XP when placed back in the original laptop. I typed in "fixboot c:" which completed successfully, then typed in "fixmbr" which completed successfully, but when I put "bootcfg /rebuild" it gives an error and won't perform that step. If I look up the directories in the emergency console, it shows modified dates and folder sizes, but instead of the usual "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files", etc, each folder has a jumble of weird symbols like a heart, some letters, an "i" but instead of a dot, it's an apostrophe, among numerous others.

Has all data been lost? Something is obviously still there, but this is beyond me.

Have you tried an adapter from lappy to desktop drives? NOT USB! and try slaving it to a desktop PC.

If you can get the drive to spin and be read, you might try "Unstoppable Copier" by roadkil ;) You would need something to copy onto though, of at least the same capacity as the original drive.

Hi,
It looks like you've lost your data. Last time I met such problem, I almost lost my data when I first connected my CD writer. I got disk boot failure again and again. I tried best possible ways not to format the drive and to recover the OS missing functionality but everything failed and finally I had to format the drive. I thought I’ve lost my data but one of my friends surprised me by recovering the data. He told me he recovered the data with the help of a data recovery software called SalvageRecovery for Windows by SAlvageData Recovery Lab Inc. He purchased it online sometime back.
After the scan was completed, the lost files were in the list and I saved my data. Thanks to my buddy. But, scanning should be done ASAP to maximize the data recovery. What operating system you are using now? If you are using Linux then don’t worry caz it has software for Linux OS also. I wish you may get your data back.

don't lose hope just yet! try a knoppix live cd to see if it recognizes the usb drive or the local hard drive

Slave the 2.5" hdd to another PC and run "chkdsk /r d:" from
a command prompt (or whatever the drive letter happens to
be).

You might also try mounting the harddrive with a live linux cd,
as not_it suggests. That one's rescued beaucoup data for me...

Okie.. I had same problem with my hard drive, when I tried to access hard disk in my other machine with regular os, it was not showing anything but in bartpe with getdataback software I’ve got all my data back in half an hour. Don’t access your hard disk many times in regular os, it might cause data loss. Download the bart pe and getdataback software.

When I contacted data recovery company they strictly told me not to access that hard disk many time if I want my all data back. as u know they charge too much money for recovery thts why I tried myself and I got all my data back. So don’t try to access ur harddisk here and there before you try live cd.

how much is teh data worth...odds are soem of it may eb recoverable, but if the fat is hosed (sounds like it is) the names will all be jumbled...so get the thing up one last tiem slaved to another system(or boot from an NTFS floppy, or a live cd that can read NTFS), grab all the files that may be useful and start going through them witha toothpick(hex editor if they ar binaries, texteditor if they where text files) to try and find the usefull ones.

some tools that may help

FINDNTFS (URL: http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm ) (even has a version that will work form a dos boot.)

Test disk (URL: http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html ) (dos or liunx version, *may* be able to repair the partition table.)

PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x(URL: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm) this may be able to recover files...but will not work if the drive is haveing HW level failures.

hd recovery is a very iffy thing, worst case you can send it to a disk recovery place...but there is no gaurenty that what they give you will be at all usefull.

I am a question on a HDD, I have an old 40GB lieing around which I havent used for about 6 months. If i install it A warning of some sort comes up, : "Warning: continuing may cause data loss" Now I dont want to boot it up and all my HDD take a dive. Can i just boot it up and format it?

Are you hooking it up as the master or slave to another drive? I don't see why you couldn't F-Disk it. BTW you always get some kind of warning when you are formating HD or reinstalling an OS.

Slave and it gives this warning just after POST. Press F1 to continue etc. It gives this warning without attempting to install an OS or format ...

The safest bet is to hook it up by itself as the master and then F-disk it or use some other fixed disk utility. That way you know that no other drives could be affected.

I will do that - thank you