So that's not a data recovery? Or a drive repair? Sheesh, I need to
make things sound more complicated. I could charge more money.
Yes you do, it would also help protect your professional credibility, I would have thought. You should never promise that you can do something without being pretty much certain, and discussing the options with the customer.

Consider these scenarios:

1. Customer formats hard drive.
2. Customer deletes important files by accident.

chkdsk will do absolutely bugger all to recover the data (but I have plenty of tools that will sort the problem)

3. The drive is deteriorating and suffering physical damage but will still spin.

chkdsk will most likely make matters worse, and destroy more data, assuming that it manages to run at all.

Also, how do you recover data from a drive with a head crash, or with a dead control card?....................errr NOT with chkdsk. You need a spin-up table and a clean room, or at least a (reasonably) clean room with a good electronics engineer to make the HDD work again.

Those scenarios are data recovery.

As for "drive repairs", well that is pretty simple. There is software that will attempt to fix the drive if it has magnetic anomalies and Windows thinks that it is corrupt...........chkdsk won't do that, it will either do nothing or screw up..

Otherwise we are back to a physical repair situation; although I would never trust the drive again.

Chkdsk is a tool designed and intended to repair problems with the Windows file and operating systems. It is certainly not a magic bullet, and should be used with caution. It is for Windows screw ups, not for hardware problems, and will not resolve many Windows OS problems (MBR, Table File etc.?)

LinenOise,

That is what I mean about discussing things with your customer. Just give them a few specialist data recovery companies' numbers........... when they get the quotes they will STFU and ask you to "have a go".