Need help recovering data from hard drive

My computer had been running slower and slower, until the other night when it came to a standstill. The CPU usage was at 100%. I rebooted into safe mode and ran my Norton Internet Security. Nothing was found. Then I ran defrag. It appeared to have defragged successfully, but when I rebooted the computer, it would not boot to the operating system. It just shows a black screen and says "A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL ALT DEL to restart" Rebooting just returns the same message. I removed the drive and installed it into an external HD housing. Plugging it into another computer via USB I can see the partitions still there, but it says there are no files on the drive. I didn't delete any files, unless defragging did. Could it just be the FAT is corrupt or gone? I tried using the freeware PC Inspector File Recovery, but it found nothing (some people say PC Inspector doesn't really work). What can I do without spending $70, $89 or more on some other recovery program that may or may not work??

:cry

 

I fear that your defraging of the drive may have been a bad idea.
I have always heard that in these instances that writing anything to the drive will render the recovery process useless.
I've been incredibly luck over the last 30 some odd years working with PCs.
I've never had to try to recover files from a damaged drive.
My basic rule is:
Backup ... Often!
There are some programs listed here at MG that are supposed to help you recover your files, but I have no personal experience with any of them
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html

Good luck

 

Yippeee!! Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR) is terrific!

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm

You can download and run a free version which will let you recover up to four folders worth of files. I didn't want to pay for software only to find it wouldn't work, so this was a great option! And best of all it worked!! I recovered the most important of my data, and am debating about just settling for that versus buying the license for the full program so I can get the rest. They are supposedly having a sale this weekend starting tomorrow, so maybe I'll go ahead and buy it.

 

congratulations