Hard Drive Recovery

[sskFlyer]

Yesterday, I have suffered the horrible event of having my hard drive suffer from an irrecoverable (physical) failure. I contacted tech support, who confirmed that I was under warranty and have a new hard drive on its way to me.
However, that doesn't help me with the data loss situation. I can assure you that I've heard all the backup speeches, and so I don't need those here....LOL
Anyway, although much data is backuped, there is some critical data that unfortunately wasn't.
So, do any of ya'll have any advice, suggestions, comments, or counsel regarding how I can recover this data?
Thanks,
Samuel Kordik (sskflyer)

[Amanda]

I really like PC Inspector File Recovery. Great (and easy) for recovering lost files.

[Tina]

Samuel, I have no advice but I feel your pain. I had to do the same thing after a nasty virus just a couple weeks ago! oy! Good luck!

[Troy]

Can I get some more info about the type of crash?
Have you tried booting to a floppy to access the drive, or is it completely physically failed? Are the heads crashed?
You can send the HD to a specialist for data recovery if it's been scratched. Otherwise I need some more info.

Good luck! I feel your pain!

[sskFlyer]

Well, it doesn't seem to be completely crashed...
I had just rebooted my Win2K system when, at the end of the boot cycle (after it had gone through BIOS boot, the black/white screen, and the Windows 2000 boot screen), it displayed a bsod for a stop error because it couldn't "access the boot device" I tried rebooting, with no luck, then booted off of my Win 2K CD and used the recovery console to poke around, to no luck. CHKDSK wouldn't run for some reason, and when I tried accessing the hd, it gave an "error during inpage operation."
The next step I took was to install a clean copy of Windows on to a different physical drive unit and boot off of that. This new version of Windows recognized my bad hard disk and it's two partitions but I was unable to read any of the data, since I still got an inpage operation error.
The final step I took was to create and then boot off of a diskette with the PowerMax diagnostic tool from Maxtor. This ran a series of tests, confirmed that the drive itself (not the file system) had failed, gave me a 6-digit error code, and told me to call Maxtor. I did so, and they confirmed that it is an irrecoverable error and then set it up to send me a replacement drive.
So now the only thing I want to do is recover the data off of it...

[Troy]

Well unfortunatly bud, your only option is to send that drive to a data recovery company to see if they can salvage the data from your drive. Usually if the pc board on the hard drive gets zapped by a static discharge or corrupt by a virus that targets your hard drive bios, if that is the case, a data recovery company can recover almost all of your data. If the read heads of the drive accually crash on the disk, you may lose all the data on that platter. Best thing to do is to make sure you back up your critical data on a regualy basis so that "when" not "if" your hard drive crashes, you dont lose everything.

[ForensicIT]

Hi there,
Sounds like your information is still there but your OS does not allow you to access it. If your information is really critical, you can send it to my company and we can recover the lost information. If you are interested, please email me at didier@bright-side.net for more info. We have the necessary forensic software to recover your data. It is far superior than the general "file recovery" software that is available from the chain stores. Thank you

[Emma]

Hello, forensic. Is it Didier? Nice to have you! We love our tech support members around here: welcome to DSP!

[tshirt]

Hi there,
Sounds like your information is still there but your OS does not allow you to access it. If your information is really critical, you can send it to my company and we can recover the lost information. If you are interested, please email me at didier@bright-side.net for more info. We have the necessary forensic software to recover your data. It is far superior than the general "file recovery" software that is available from the chain stores. Thank you

How much ( high/low ) for my Maxtor 160G HD with 80G of data on it. Windows OS

I was thinking of sending to http://www.gillware.com/

[ForensicIT]

Hi there,
Can you tell me more about what the HD is doing? Is it a case where you accidentally deleted information, the OS is not reading the Drive, or has the drive crashed? Our rates depend on the severity of the lost data. The only other major additional cost would be the media we recover the info too, in your case, probably another HD (depending on your tech abilities,we can provide a HD directly or set it up externally to connect through your USB port for data transfer). We use the leading Computer Forensic Software used by gov't and law enforcement agencies and all our work is guaranteed. I hope this helps and good luck - didier@bright-side.net
www.ForensicsIT.com

[Janet]

So sorry to hear of your trouble! Absolutely not a good day for you.

I asked DH about this since he's helped recover data for quite a few people. He agrees with Troy. Get it to your local shop and see if they can recover an image off the disc.

[sskFlyer]

For everyone's edification, the original post was in June. I took the advice of those here and of those elsewhere, and being a computer geek, I got the requitiste software and analyzed the disk at a low-level.
The original data wasn't all there...the disks had actually been physically damaged. I recovered much and was able to rebuild much, but still lost a number of files (especially since it was fragmented).
It was under warranty, so Maxtor replaced it free of charge.
Thanks for the advice, and um, ads.
Samuel Kordik