Harddrive data recovery

[Drscratchnsniff]

Hey AO'ers

I am really hopeing that someone here can hlp me out!
I am only so-so at best with computer repairs so bear with me.

I was ask to look at a michine that would not boot.
The OS was XP home running on a P4
I could not get it to boot normal or into safe mode. Booting normal it would make it to the windows screen for a second, and the start the boot proccess over. Booting into safe mode it would just hang at MUP.sys Wether i was right or wrong i don't know, but i assumed it had a bad boot sector.
Rather than breaking out the live cd and backing everythig up i decided to just but a new hard drive and reinstall winXP, then hood the old HD up as slave to transfer files.
After a fresh install (winXP pro sp3) i shut down a installed the old hard drive.
The drive shows up, properties shows NTFS but appears to be raw (0 bytes used 0 bytes free)
I then tried to scandisk the drive several times, but it stops responding after a very short time.
Next step was to try paragon. It showed approx 75 gig used and 78 gig free (seems about right) but paragon could not access the drive either saying invalid format.
There is not much on the drive that i NEED to back up but there are some pictures that the owner really really wants to save.
Any help or advice would be wonderful

[Drscratchnsniff]

Wow i should have proof read that before i posted.
Sorry for all the typos, i posted it in a rush. If you have any questions about my post let me know.
Also sorry for the double post

[morganlefay]

I use this...I bought the standard license 199.00 ...I can recover up to 20 harddrives with that license.

Download the trial and see if you can see the data...it will tell you if you can recover it or not.
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/f...very-software/


I guess it would depend how much the data is worth? and if you will use the tool again.

I find it a handy tool IMHO

You can always try a repair.

good luck

MLF

[westin]

I have posted this here before with mixed reactions. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Try freezing the HDD for 24 hours in a deep freeze. Then try to access the data again. Is the hard drive making a clicking or grinding sound? Or a Click-Whirr? Just curious.

[morganlefay]

I have fixed drives and been able to pull data off them using chkdsk /r

as it sound like the drives spinning up but may have some bad sectors stopping the OS from booting....or the mbr is flucked.



MLF

[Drscratchnsniff]

I have posted this here before with mixed reactions. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Try freezing the HDD for 24 hours in a deep freeze. Then try to access the data again. Is the hard drive making a clicking or grinding sound? Or a Click-Whirr? Just curious.

There are really no sounds from the drive besides the normal faint hum

I have fixed drives and been able to pull data off them using chkdsk /r

as it sound like the drives spinning up but may have some bad sectors stopping the OS from booting....or the mbr is flucked.



MLF

I have tried checkdisk too with no results. It hangs after about 1 min. and when i check my proccesses is is not responding

[Clp727]

Allow check disk to run it's coarse. It could take lot's of time if the Windows XP install is corrupt. If check disks fails it will give you an error.If it isn't responding it's probably because it is doing it's job. The process could take hours depending on the amount of data and the size of the drive...

[keezel]

You could also use DFT (drive fitness test) by Hitachi, which does a HDD integrity scan and if there are bad sectors it can also repair them.

And I also tend to freeze the HDD but I only let it get cold, not freeze. I don't like the idea of moisture freezing up inside the disc onto who knows what. I could see that causing more harm than good.

Also, attempt to use a linux live disc. Sometimes they can read the file system when a windows OS cannot. In this case you could still transfer the pics to a jump drive.

Oh, and if the MBR is screwed, there are some utilities out there (like Seagate's) that will rebuild the MBR.

[Drscratchnsniff]

Allow check disk to run it's coarse. It could take lot's of time if the Windows XP install is corrupt. If check disks fails it will give you an error.If it isn't responding it's probably because it is doing it's job.

I and not disagreeing but just to be sure....If i do a ctrl-alt-delete and look under the applications tab, and see that chkdsk.exe is "not responding" it could still be "doing it's job"?
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I have passed the drive along to friend that is a little better with data recovery than i am although he has given up already...
From what he told me it seems the tables are reporting the capacity of the drive to be larger than what it really is (or something along those lines)
Weather that makes sense to anyone or not is beyond me, this matter was over my head when i started.
Thanks for everyones help!!!
I have not given up yet, and will still be checking this thread for ideas.
If i do figure out the issue i'll post my findings!
As for now, its beer:30

[keezel]

LOL, man....I've only run into that once ever, and I threw literally everything I had at it. I recovered the drive and it worked perfectly after that, but I didn't get a shred of data off of it.