Reading *.dat files (HD image failure)

Long story short, my XP install got corrupted somehow and I used some restore discs I made to reconstruct the HD.

Well, everything copied OK, but XP still didn't work. Great time to find out your backups suck, huh? Anyway, all my stuff is on these 6 CD's. I made them using Nero 6, and they're saved as *.dat files. What I'm wondering is if there's any way to extract the contents of these files to recover my stuff. Google didn't help much, and I figured you guys might.
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My PC:
Athlon 64 3000+ on an Asus A8V MB
1GB RAM
GeForce FX6600GT (AGP, 128MB)
40GB IDE HDD
WIndows XP Home (build 2600)

Thanks!

 

I think we need some additional info from you in order to suggest what you should try next.

1) Before you tried to restore from your backup CD's, what exactly happened when you tried to boot? Did you get any error messages? Or just a black screen or what? Did you try booting into Windows safe mode or were you unable to do that also? Did the problem happen without any warning at all? That is, you didn't notice anything funny at all or have any unusual problems until you found that you couldn't boot up?

2) And what happens now that you've tried to restore your drive from your backup CD's? Any error messages at all? Black screen? BSOD ("Blue screen of death")? Any error info from the BIOS POST?

3) What program did you use to create the backup CD's you're trying to restore from? I don't mean what CD burner program did you use, what was the backup program you used to create the data that you burned to the CD's?

Depending on the answer to question number two, you might want to try a clean install of Windows, re-install your programs and just try to recover any saved data from your CD's. Lots of work but unless you have some error messages to clue you in it's difficult to suggest other good alternatives. As far as extracting your data from the CD's, how you go about that will depend on the program you used to create (as opposed to burn) them in the first place, so let us know that and maybe someone here can provide specific suggestions.

 

Before I tried to restore......
The computer was running fine. I was trying to install XP Pro but the disk was corrupted and the install would not complete.

After the restore......
BSOD. I can't remember the specific code but it was one of the STOP errors. Something about stopping the system to protect the data. After a reboot, it would take me as far as the F8 menu, but all options selected gave me the same BSOD.

What I used to backup my data.....
Nero 6. The same thing I used to burn them. There's an option in Nero that lets you directly burn a HD image backup. I am using Nero 6.3.0.3. THe image files are saved as *.DAT files.

I gave up on the restore and reinstalled XP Home. My main goal now is to recover the data off the CD's, which I could do if I had a program to read them.

 

Have you tried using the Nero program to read the .dat files? If you can't do that from within Nero I'd email Nero, describe your problem and ask them what you can use to read/recover your data from the CD's.

Good luck!

 

Ah, success!

I didn't read the dat files, but instead learned a bit about the XP Restore Console and used that. A little BOOTCFG here, a little FIXMBR there, and a sprig of CHKDSK got my system working again!

 

Way to go! Congrats!