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Hardrive Recovery Software


deleyt

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One partition of my hardrive crashed and has become unreadable.

Does anyone know reliable software to get most of my data off the drive. Most of my 3D work and mod-stuff is on it and it would be a shame to lose it.

Thanks in advance.

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I recovered 2 lost partitons with a product I bought, so long as you do not attempt to write anything to those partions you should get everything back okay.

I have a licenced version of Active@ Partition Recovery for Windows 5.0 from here.

But the tool I actually used was from Bill at Bootmaster. If you are looking for one on one e-mail support that will run diagnostics and give you undivided personal attention, bootmaster is the way to go.

If you need either of those let me know.

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Thanks guys.

I'll check out all of them links.

I haven't saved anything on the partition after the crash...simply couldn't if I wanted to.

My system now tells me that that partition isn't formated, so it's probably the bootsector that's wiped out, rather then the entire disk.

Fingers crossed. ;)

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I've heard some good stuff about Winternals aswell.

I haven't checked their prices though. Will take that one into conscideration aswell. Thanks!

Have you tried a chkdsk and from the recovery console fixmbr or fixboot?

When it crashed... is the platters clicking and clanking?

.

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chkdsk /r can often resolve errors. unless its your boot drive, I don't see much need for the fixmbr/fixboot options though (and unless you are experienced, I wouldn't recommend using recovery console options, less you cause even more problems.)

be careful using chkdsk (and other find/fix utilities) as they can write back to the partition overwriting data that you are trying to recover and just causing you headaches.

just curious, is this partition a logical partition? are there other partitions on the same physical disk? knowing those might help in determining what the root problem is and a method of recovery

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chkdsk /r can often resolve errors. unless its your boot drive, I don't see much need for the fixmbr/fixboot options though (and unless you are experienced, I wouldn't recommend using recovery console options, less you cause even more problems.)

be careful using chkdsk (and other find/fix utilities) as they can write back to the partition overwriting data that you are trying to recover and just causing you headaches.

just curious, is this partition a logical partition? are there other partitions on the same physical disk? knowing those might help in determining what the root problem is and a method of recovery

Yes.

It's a fixed disk with 2 partitions. A primary DOS partition (C:) and an extended DOS partition being logical (D:)

No other partitions besides those two on the physical disk.

C: is working fine (at least as far as I can tell as it's properly botting). D: isn't reckognized as being formatted, so my assumption is, is that it's a boot-sector thingy.

I'm not really keen on using the chkdsk-feature. I think it might be a bit too aggresive to my likings and I really don't want to make a mistake I'll later regret.

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chkdsk /f is a filesystem repair vs the more aggresive /r that also scans for physical errors and repairs (sorta) them. I use it almost daily with customers who have problems. Quite often it will recover things enough to allow windows to boot (on boot paritions) or allow access long enough to copy data or image the partition with something like Acronis or Ghost.

Either way, at this point it sounds like you're more likely to fix the thing then make it worse at this point :P

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Thanks for the help guys.

I was able to recover all the files I needed.

There were some files that got lost in the process but those were not of any importance to me.

I can breathe again :)

EDIT: Damn!...I did lose some stuff I was hoping to recover: my GRAW project, Tank Revisited seems to be in shambles :wall:

I was looking forward to picking this project up again next week since I'm still off work, but I think it has been lost forever now :(

Edited by deleyt
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I used GetDataBack (NTFS) from Runtime Software.

I'm trying to format the old disk now but it's crashing my system everytime during formatting.

So I guess this harddisk is ready for the bin. Second time in two years that I've bought a Maxtor harddisk and crashes on me.

I'm really ###### off now, that I've not just lost my GRAW project but also a complete harddrive, only several months old.

No more Maxtor's for me. :o=

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Check on the maxtor site whether its still in the warranty period D, you might be able to get a replacement out of them.

As of December 9th, 2006 warranty services for all Maxtor products are now fully supported through Seagate’s warranty services. To obtain warranty support for your product please proceed to the Seagate Warranty Support page for assistance.

http://www.seagate.com/support/service/

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Thanks! I'll check that out although I wonder if it's worth all the hasttle.

I bought my system in the US through Newegg and sending it back and forth might actually be more expensive than just buying a new one...Seagate this time.

Never had a problem with Seagate before.

It's true about the quality of harddisks these days though. Seems like the race for bigger volumes is at the expense of reliability.

It's my own fault though....I always seem to postpone on making backups....till it's too late...;)

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Thanks! I'll check that out although I wonder if it's worth all the hasttle.

It's worth it D, honest. Skip Newegg and go to the Maxtor site, get an RMA (best if you can confirm with an error message from the drive or even if you can say you hear it clicking). When I did it I had a SMART error code I could quote, which helps. If you don't have an error code and nothing is recorded in windows error event viewer, try the Maxtor Diagnostic tool.

They sent out a new one once they had the old one back, so even though they are cheap now, I have a brand new 80Gb HD sitting either as a spare, or for a new system build somewhere down the line.

Go for it :thumbsup:

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Sheesh, I just had a 200GB Maxtor HD I bought over a year ago konk out on me. It was my slave drive, and I thought my 4 year old 60GB drive would be the culprit, but it was the more recent drive.

Good thing I had things backed up. SMART was even enabled in the BIOS but failed to detect any probs.

I have been buying Western Digital HDs for the last year since I was happy with my Raptors.

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