What is Best Programme to Repair Corrupted Drive

Hi,

My computer failed to boot and I thought my hard drive had gone.

I have now installed a new hard drive and I am up and running with Vista Home Premium on my new drive.

I have connected up my old drive and Vista can see all three partitions on the old drive, but does not record any information on my old C: drive. I have recovered all of my data from my old drive except the C: drive. When I try to acces that Vista tells me I need to format the drive.

There is no physical problem with the disk and the information to read the C: partition is obviously corrupted making the C: drive/partition unreadable.

What is the best software to use to a) repair the damaged files, so that Vista can read the disk and let me recover the data, or b) recover the data so that I can format the partition, and what is the best option?

Any help would be appreciated.

Axel

 

You need to run Vista's chkdsk command on the old C drive. In Vista's Start > Search box type cmd > OK. At the prompt type chkdsk X: /r, substituting the old C drive's new drive letter for X.

Hopefully that will correct the filesystem errors on the partition. Let us know how it goes.

 

Tried that and got the message:

"access denied you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode"

I do not have a clue what this means. I am logged on as the system administrator.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

Axel

 

In the search box, type cmd but DO NOT press Enter, DO NOT click OK or anything else.... After you type it, you should see "cmd" listed at the top of the start menu on the left side; mouse up there and right click on it, then select "Run as Administrator". Then follow the steps listed above by Earthling in post #2.
:-D

 

Also, there are programs that can 'undelete' the partition, or you can try using a data recovery program... here's some partition apps:
http://majorgeeks.com/BootIt_Next_Generation_d646.html (create a boot CD, use 'Maintenance Mode' by not installing it when prompted, select 'Partition Work' and use the 'Undelete' option)
http://majorgeeks.com/CPM_Cute_Partition_Manager_d5369.html (this is a bootable program)
http://majorgeeks.com/EASEUS_Partition_Master_Home_Edition_d5967.html (this runs from within Windows and is very easy to use)
http://majorgeeks.com/Partition_Find_&_Mount_d5740.html (this works EXCELLENT to mount corrupt partitions; read my post here)
If none of these work, or aren't your cup of tea, check the Major Geeks Data Recovery Section.

GOOD LUCK!!!

(You really should try Partition Find & Mount; it works! But read my thread I linked to first, it explains how to use it w/o confusion )

 

Hi,

Thanks for that. I now have chkdsk/r running and it has gone as far as step 4 of 5 and is replacing bad clusters. I appears to have hung at "20% complete 138018 of 181104 files procrssed"

I have left it running overnight, about 6 hours. and it has moved forward very little. Should I stop it and try some of the other tools suggested or leave it running?

Axel

 

If it hasn't completed after six hours I think you have to assume that the partition's filing system is irretrievably damaged. Time to start looking at dlb's suggestions I think.

 

Yes I have now stopped chkdsk after about 12 hours!

I have now installed and run Easeus. This programme shows my old C: drive and can I explore the drive and see all of my folders and files. What I cannot see is a way to recover what I need or copy the folders somewhere else. Any advice would be appreciated.

Axel

 

I wonder if you could rebuild the MBR and then gain access again via a UBCD app?

This method help me nurse along 2 HDD in RAID0 for 2-3 weeks, get the DATA and then allow them to slowly die. At first I couldn't get access, rebuilt MBR and was fine, but there was "transcription degradation" (DATA corruption) over time so I knew I had to get the DATA off.

It was either MBRTool or MBRWork that allowed me to do this and may be a worthy consideration.

 

Yes I will take a look at that. So far I have tried the following:

Easeus Find my old C:drive partition no problem, give me the size used space etc, I cannot get that in Vista, and lets me see all of the folders and files. I have created unallocated space larger than the size of the partition I need to copy and tried "copy partition" but it gets to 5% progress then hangs.

Partition Find & Mount Again finds the partition no problem, mounts it (K and lets me see all folders and files, but when I try to drag and drop a file I get message "K: drive is not in an accessible location" or something similar. I also tried to create an image of the partition, but got continual "code 23 errors" so I gave up on that.

It is very frustrating that with both these programmes I can see my drive and all of my data and browse through all of the folders, but I cannot copy a single file to another location.

Any other advice on these programmes or something more suitable would be appreciated.

Axel

 

Try a boot disk. I find the Ubuntu live CD pretty useful with problem systems. I'm not too optimistic though, as it's clear the file system is pretty seriously borked.