Data recovery - so close - please help

Two years ago, my hard drive crashed and I lost some vacation pictures that I had not backed up. I took it to a shop, the guy was able to pull some stuff off of it, but not the pictures (cost me about $50). Of what he could recover, some of the folders were empty and some files corrupted. What is interesting is that the folder that I really wanted is not even on the CD that he made.

I will spare you the details, but the HD is back in my possesion. I feel that I know a lot more now than I knew then, and am ready to try to recover the data myself.

From what I can gather, the partition table is messed up. I cannot get any OS to recognize the drive (Windows, Linux). I am able to run diagnostic programs, which of course show errors on the drive.

Today I tried a couple of programs from Active@ - NTFS Reader and Partition Recovery (DEMO version). I was able to use Partion Recovery to create a temporary partition and actually browse (text only) to the folder i want to recover. The files appear to still be there, and the file sizes make sense as well.

Here is the bummer...the demo does not permanently fix the broken partition. The full program is $30. If i repair the partition, I THINK i can use the NTFS Reader program to get the files (maybe). Or could I use an OS at that point?

I have no idea what I am doing. I am willing to pay $30 IF it works.

Where do I go from here?

PK

 

When you say no OS will recognize the drive, do you mean it doesn't show up in My Computer? Is it listed in the device manager and is just unaccessible? If you go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage.... is the drive listed there? If it is, you can recover the data using PCInspector (free from http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm) or Easy Recovery Pro (NOT free; available from http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com). As for the Active@ program; I've used one of their apps a few ago and it worked great for what I was doing (I think it was data recovery, but I'm not 100% sure, it was 2-3 years ago and my memory isn't.... uh.... what was I talking about???).... Good luck! Keep us posted

hd2k

 

Yes, that is what I mean. The BIOS sees it, Device Manager sees it, and i think Computer management sees it if i recall correctly.

Basically, I just want to be able to be sure that those pics are not corruted before I pay for anything. I am willing to pay if necessary if they are.

PK

 

Does PCInspector work on the NTFS or not? The website impies that it does, but this note on Download.com is rather ambiguous:

"PC Inspector File Recovery is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. Finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged (does not work with the NTFS file system). Recovers files with the original time and date stamp. Supports the saving of recovered files on network drives."

PK

 

YEs, PCInspector works on NTFS. I've used it tons of times and it works great. It's a bit slow, and not the most user friendly program, but it'll get the job done. I haven't it used in awhile since I got Easy Recovery Pro from OnTrack, so if you need help using PCInspector, visit their web site and (from what I remember) they have a help or how-to section.... There's plenty of other tools in the Data Recovery section here at MajorGeeks, and alot of folks swear by GetDataBack. It may be worth looking into. GOOD LUCK!

hd2k

 

SUCCESS!!!!

Last evening I put the bad drive in as a slave in one of my older XP machines. I ran the free program PC Inspector and stumbled through the process. I did not find the program to be particularly easy to use, but once I figured out the best way to do things, I was able to access my files and pull what I thought to be 90% of my lost pictures onto the other HDD access them. It took me about 4 hours total.

This program takes a long time to scan, there is no preview for photos, and every file you pull is renamed "cluster" followed by a long number. It is also odd that all of my pics had the same file size - 1.43 mb. At any rate, I was on Cloud 9 today.

Though I could not recall what pictures, if any, were missing (it has been two years, remember), I would have sworn I got 90% of them.

Well, when I got home today I decided to try VirtualLab Data Recovery and just see what it's like. What a GREAT program! That is the way data recovery software should work. It was MUCH faster and after it rebuilt a temporary file system, I could access my folders and files nearly as they appeared on the drive. I could even preview my pictures!! Then, after you confirm the data is there and worth salvaging, you pay for a space "quota" to pull the data from the bad drive. $40 for 100 mb. I am glad that I was able to get some via the free method, or else 100 mb would not have been enough. It turns out that I only got about 60% the first time. This program took like 30 minutes.

I am pretty sure I got them all now.

So I think next I will try TestDisk, which is another free program recommended. I am curious to see if would have been successful with it. Now that I have my data, I really don't care what happens to this drive.

Which brings me to my next questions: Is this disk repairable and reusable? What do I need to do to it and what kind of scans should I do to make sure that it is trustworthy?

PK

 

I have had drives crash, formated them and they worked great for a year, month, week. I had one that would work great for a week if you 'tapped' it with a screwdriver. But once they crash, don't trust them for anything important!

Glad you got your data off of the problem drive.

E

 

Well, for kicks I tried a free program called TestDisk (the Windows version since I still had the bad drive hooked up as a slave in a Windows machine). Within 10 minutes from start to finish, I had my desired data copied over to the Windows drive. Its a text based, DOS like program, but is fairly easy to navigate and use. I do not know how it did it, but it was pretty amazing.

The only wierd thing is that the root folder listing stopped at the "M"s even though the other programs showed folders beyond that. It was no big deal to me, as my stuff was in "Documents and Settings."

Even though I was able to get all of my pics for free using TestDisk, I do not regret paying the $40 for the Virtual Labs program. I just wanted the data recovery portion of this experience to be OVER I wanted my pictures, and since I could actually SEE them, I jumped at it. It was a good learning experience too.

OK, on to the bad drive. I ran SeaTools. Maxtor is now owned by Seagate, so my search for Maxtor tools led me there. I have used MaxBlast and it did not have the options that SeaTools does. After running a long scan, I found 57 bad sectors, including Sector 0. I ran the repair tool and it says that it fixed all of the bad sectors. Now what do I do? Do I do a zero fill and rescan?

It also said that the Temp was 253 degrees, or had reached that temp at some time, which does not seem likely.

Again, how do I know that this drive is trustworthy? I would probably use it to store my iTunes library, and maybe some video captures, both of which would also backed up on an external. I would just rather not even mess with it if it is going to crash again soon.

PK

 

Quick answer: you don't. If you have the time, you can do a zero wipe, and rescan it as you mentioned above. There's a real good chance that the drive will keep working for some time. There's also a real good chance that the drive will take a dump at the worst possible moment. So, if you decide to keep using it, back up anything of importance to CD/DVD. Hopefully, the drive is under warranty (all hard drives have a minimum 3 year warranty) and you can get a new one thru an RMA at the company's web site.

hd2k

At least you go your pics recovered

 

This drive is over 3 years old, so warranty is out.

I did do the zero wipe and rescanned. Now it scans OK.

After running SMARTUDM to probe the drives SMART feature, it appears that not only is the temp reading 253, but so it just about every other reading. It is very odd.

Apparently something is messed up with the SMART on this drive, too.

Any ideas? Can the SMART go dumb?

pk