Hard drive recovery software

D

Dwarfer

Guest
My lame asus mobo wiped my 2nd hard drive, it has been on USB for 2 years but I decided to put it on IDE inside the PC but it wouldnt see it in bios, it didn't seem to have a menu for it or anything


anyway, when i plugged it back into the USB the drive is unreadable and "needs formatting".

it has all my photos and archive stuff on it. Does anyone know a good free program that will restore my stuff?


Thanks.
 
There are tons of freeware programs out there.

Try not to use your drive in the meantime.

Id just go through the list of freeware programs on downloads.com Ive had success with a fair few of them, most recently this one.
TestDisk & PhotoRec - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

I couldnt say its the best but I had a knackered microSD card in my phone for a good year or so which I continued to use.
It was a 1gb which was read as 200mb. This program pulled all the images from the card after a format. I made the card be viewed as a usb storage device, similar to how your drive will be seen.

I think it only works for your images though. The best data recovery program ive used is Stellar Phoenix. You have to pay for it but if I were you id have a fully operational trial with the help from bittorrent!

There will be more powerfull commercial programs out there but I doubt they work automatically with pretty GUI.
 
This is a coincidence; I happen to be looking for software to pull out some stuff from two SATA 7200 drives suffering from a logical failure (but pretty damn close to a physical one so I'm chucking them after I'm done). I was real close to running Spinrite but realized that it can only copy the recovered data to another block on the same disk. Sounds completely brainless to me but other than that it has some of the most sophisticated methods of file recovery I've ever heard of.

So, does anyone else have a file recovery reccomendation? I don't mind the cost, no matter how expensive (;) at zeus). The stuff's real important and I'm hoping to make this a one-shot, get-it-over-and-done-with affair.

I've learnt my lesson to backup, just let me have my data back please. :O
 
i have only used testdisk either get it from Zeus's link or use testdisk that comes free with the Gparted Live CD

i used testdisk on the Gparted Live CD & it recovered most of the partitions on a drive i accidentally DBANed, after realizing my mistake, i turned off my system & disconnected the drive with data on it that i wanted

i booted the Live CD again & started testdisk again & recovered most of my data

BTW: burn the Live CD .iso image to a CDr with something like Nero on Windows or K3b on Linux
 
The one I linked to runs in DOS. I think DOS is included in the download so its just a matter of copying the to a floppy or rom.

I know DOS might not see the drive either but windows (and persumably DOS) doesnt always tell the truth. Windows might not show any indication of the drive but if you open say, Paragon Partition Manager in windows the drive is often there.

Ive just noticed the filesystems it supports. This a really good program!
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
 
Nicky said:
As it is, the damaged drive only appears in BIOS and cannot be detected in XP Setup or Disk Management. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
just boot the Gparted CD, it doest require DOS Windows, anything
 
Hi,
I am faced with a similar recovery problem. I have a Gateway Pc with Windows XP Home ( 2000 edition) and I believe that my hard drive is faulty and ridden with a virus. My computer will turn on and the screen I get is a huge screen that shows only the close windows icon. I am able to click on the icon and turn the computer off, but that is it.

I can also run in DOS. I saw that Zeus recommended some file recovery downloads that work in DOS. This all happened after I tried to repair XP with the recovery CD. Apparently this was a big mistake. :doh:

I have researched on line and found a product called HDD Regenerator 1.51 on a site called Abstradrome. It claims that this is a fix for faulty hard drives. it almost sounds too good to be true. I also found a product called Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. I am hoping this will help me get back my files and data.

My other problem is that my only working computer is a mac and I am not sure about downloading any of these fixes from the mac. After reading some of the posts, it sounds like I should only download a fix cd from another pc and not a mac. If any one has any information, experience or advice with any of this please let me know. I would like to fix this problem soon and most importantly hopefully recover my data. :confused:
 
Usually, when you lose data from a drive for no apparent reason its due to bad blobks. Bad blocks cannot be repaired. Program like HDD Regenerator just tell your pc not to use those bad blocks and to use some spare blobks on the end of the drive. Your drive should do this automatically making HDD Regenerator almost redundant. Its called the Reallocated Sectors Count. When you have no more spares left your drive is a risky one to use.
 
Thanks for your reply Zeus. That sounds worse than I suspected. :eek: So do you think that I can still recover my files? Do you know if I can download a file recovery program from a mac or do I need to do it from a pc? :ohah:
 
ya sure you can recover your files with stellar phoenix data recovery software which is quit good in hard drive recovery.it almost recover your crashed HDD, and also you must download from a pc.

This may Helps you!!!!

Cheers...
 
yeah, stellar phoenix is good. You can get a windows version and a linux version. But you have to pay :(
I used both a few years ago and it did what it should.

Both versions can only be installed on windows.
 
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