hard drive/data recovery

I have a 160 gig SATA Maxtor hard drive provided by Dell. It is a secondary hard drive and contains data only. It seems to have started going bad. Several files are inaccessible. I have Windows XP Pro and ran chkdsk /r on the bad drive. It freezes at 51% on the third level (I think). I have looked at the long list of drive and data recovery software available on this site. I have tried a few (Zero Assumption, PC Inspector File Recovery, Unstoppable copier). Now I'm looking for advice and/or opinions on any particular software. The files are critical and need to be recovered. I'd say about 5 to 15% of the hard drive is bad or going bad. The computer itself is a Dell Dimension 4700.

PC Inspector File Recovery and Unstoppable Copier were worthless for my purposes. The free version Zero Assumption worked okay. It let me recover two folders. But I just wanted some advice before I spend money.

Thanks to anyone who can provide some words of wisdom.

 

This is a very stick situationy and unfortunately none of the options are plesant. I had a 300GB drive go bad on me and I too tried all of the available software to no avail. I eventually sent mine out for recovery. When I was talking to the tech at the recovery place he told me that you can actually do more harm than good with recovery software if you must have the data on the drive recovered. If you just need to get a few things here and there from the drive then you might be able to get away with it, but if you need the entire drive's contents you're better off just biting the bullet and sending it out. Expect to pay a good amount though. I can refer you to someone if you'd like.

If you are intent on trying software solutions, download the Ultimate Boot CD. There are a number of good utilities on it for things other than just data recovery.

 

I have also lost my data from my hard drive.The data get corrupted. I have used Stellar Phoenix data recovery software. It helps me to recover my data. It is very easy to use and provides complete recovery solution for all operating system.You can check this software by downloading the free demo version from the site
http://www.stellarinfo.com/

 

try looking hirens utility...
the latest one,it has utility for the hard drive!
probably maxtor.