Harddrive data recovery

[westin]

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.

That's reassuring...

[C:\Saw]

Try spinrite

www.grc.com

(hmmm....someone say something about a bay of pirates?)

[brokencrow]

Have you tried the Live CD yet?

I ran into a very similar recovery a month or two ago.
The chkdsk /r command failed and from a bootable ERD
cd, the NTFS partition had a similar 'raw' format, 0 bytes
used, 0 bytes free. Booted to an Insert cd with a usb
drive, mounted both the hdd and sda and recovered
everything. It was about a 3 hour job, but well worth
it.

Funny how the drive was mountable in Linux and all
but invisible booting to a Windows/ERD cd.

[Drscratchnsniff]

Ok i am back to working on this issue.. I got sidetracked getting the fresh install set up so the owner would atleast have a Computer again.

Have you tried the Live CD yet?

I ran into a very similar recovery a month or two ago.
The chkdsk /r command failed and from a bootable ERD
cd, the NTFS partition had a similar 'raw' format, 0 bytes
used, 0 bytes free. Booted to an Insert cd with a usb
drive, mounted both the hdd and sda and recovered
everything. It was about a 3 hour job, but well worth
it.

Funny how the drive was mountable in Linux and all
but invisible booting to a Windows/ERD cd.

I have tried one live cd with out much luck, although it was a linux (Gparted)
disk, and i have NO linux skills...The kernel has always confused me.
I am going to have to do a little research before i can try your suggestion. I have never "mounted" a HDD. The only mounting i have done has been iso's or Bin/Cue files.. Do i need to make an image of the drive to mount?
Sorry if these are n00bish questions but i am flying high over my ski's with this issue!

[keezel]

Try an Ubuntu or Knoppix live disc. Pretty straightforward and they tend to automatically mount the drive if it's already plugged in.

[nihil]

Hmmm,

I have only found freezing the drive useful if it has a physical (spinup) problem. For straight data corruption it really doesn't do anything IMO.

http://www.roadkil.net/

roadkil's "unstoppable copier" is about the best data recovery tool I am aware of, as it just reads the file in its raw, damaged or corrupted condition and attempts to reassemble the files that it finds.

Get yourself a couple of six-packs as it does take rather a long time

Good luck!

[brokencrow]

I have tried one live cd with out much luck, although it was a linux (Gparted) disk...

I think Gparted is too specialized (partitioning) for what you want. Like
keezel points out, Knoppix or Ubuntu would be good choices.

...and i have NO linux skills...The kernel has always confused me.

That can be tough. It's pretty much "command line" (shell). You only
need to know the 'mount' and 'mc' commands to do a simple recovery,
along with some kind of usb drive. The first harddrive is going to show
as /dev/hda/ while a usb drive shows up as /dev/sda (generally!). Boot
up to the live cd with the usb drive plugged in and all the drives it sees
will be listed in the /etc/fstab file. The 'fdisk' command will list partitions
on the hdd.

I have never "mounted" a HDD. The only mounting i have done has been iso's or Bin/Cue files.. Do i need to make an image of the drive to mount?

No, you don't make an image. Windows automatically mounts drives,
Linux does not necessarily do so. So you do it manually in Linux. Some
of the newer distros are better about automounting drives. Here's a
site for Linux commands:

http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl.htm

[Drscratchnsniff]

I will be trying some more linux live cd's this weekend for sure..
I took a break from the drive to keep myself from throwing it out the window.
I'll keep you posted!
Thanks for all the help!

[keezel]

I will be trying some more linux live cd's this weekend for sure..
I took a break from the drive to keep myself from throwing it out the window.
I'll keep you posted!
Thanks for all the help!

Lol I've been there. Probably we all have.

Just to reassure your nerves, Knoppix and Ubuntu both come with a decent GUI that makes it far easier to work with. I could be tried for heresy for saying this, but it creates an environment fairly similar to what you're used to in Windows.

On the bright side, you're learning a lot in a short span of time. Most people pay for that.

Download Knoppix here: Knoppix

Download Ubuntu here: Ubuntu

Either link should download a roughly 750 MB file (takes quite awhile). You would then burn this "image" to a disc using Nero or UltraISO or something. I'm pretty sure the latter has a free trial.

Your next step is to put the disc in the computer, power it off, power it back on, and right as the first black screen comes on, look for a menu option like "Press F10 to view boot options" and have the computer boot from the CD. Alternatively you can press F2 or delete at startup to get into the BIOS and make sure it doesn't boot to the HDD before it boots to a CD.

Feel free to ask any questions and try not to get too terribly stressed out!

[C:\Saw]

Try burning puppy linux

www.puppylinux.org


It's only 94 mb

Includes gparted and all you need to mount and view/copy from your disks