HD Corrupted/crashed/destroyed/damaged?

[hari]

Greetings,

I've this Western Digital 120gb HD which I feel now is just a big chunk of metal!

It all started when I was getting blue screens (i felt it came due to contnious power failure which resulted in powering down the pc without proper shutdown) on my XP.. Temporary fix was by running chkdsk from recovery console or adding it as a slave to another pc and runnign chkdsk/r... The diagonistic utility from western digital gave me an Error code, which meant that there are too many errors and the support team has asked me to backup my data and send back the HD for replacement! Even after their warning, I kept running chkdsk and using the same HD as I was short of funds to get a new HD to back my data!

Just two days before, I ran chkdsk /r (i usally run chkdsk/f) and to my suprise it took nearly a whole night to finish the process. But it wasnt successful, it said no space to save bad clusters! So I thaught this is about time I look in to backing my stuff using some kind of recovery tool! Below are the following I tried:

Ontrack DataRecovery, PC Inspector File Recovery, Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS, Runtime Diskexplorer for NTFS.

I started with Ontrack and cancelled the process within 10 min due to the long estimated finish time (something liek 72 hours). Then I tried stellar, which also interrupted by me couple of times to check how good is the recovery.

Finally, I left Stellar running yesterday and too my suprise I recovered blank bolder (some million of them). When I ran Runtime Diskexplorer for NTFS, i tried to view the contents of the HD in text and I found some text that said, NTLDR is screwed press ctrl+del to reboot.. I guess thats the message I get if i boot from the HD?

Anyways, I've delayed any recovery process due to the non-avilability of a backup drive. Now when the computer boots, the HD is detected... but win xp failed to load completely. But the HD works when I connect to an another system to run the WD diagonistic tool, which is in DOS

Here is my question, is it possible to recover this drive at all?! If so, are there any dos utilities that can do the job? Currently I'm reading up on TestDisk

Also, if i do a quick format, I feel that my HD will be detected by windows? then i can run Ontrack to recover my files? is that possible?

Pls, any help is very much appreciated!!

[Jeremy]

FinalData is excellent at recovering data.

[hari]

FinalData is excellent at recovering data.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok, is this a windows based recovery tool... if so, then how is it gonna recovery when my HD is not getting detected by XP?

[Wicket20519]

If your harddrive is NTFS, and you've got an extra hard drive, then hopefully this article will be of some help. It worked for me, and I was able to recover 95% of my information off a Maxtor 120GB harddrive (NTFS format).

Hard Drive Data Recovery

[dirtwarrior]

if you just want to salvage HD and not worry about data, you can rewrite the HD to zero(low level format) look on WD website for this ontrack has an excellent tool for this

[hari]

if you just want to salvage HD and not worry about data, you can rewrite the HD to zero(low level format) look on WD website for this ontrack has an excellent tool for this

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

the idea is to get as much as data possible.

What happens if i format the drive? say quick format in DOS? and then use Ontrack or any other recovery programs... I see that they have an option that refers to recovering data from formatted HD?

[hari]

if you just want to salvage HD and not worry about data, you can rewrite the HD to zero(low level format) look on WD website for this ontrack has an excellent tool for this

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Also i wonder formatting will help at all as the Ontrack software will refer to the old file system instead of the new... so if the old file system has been damaged, then what is the point in formatting the drive.

Edited August 13, 2005 by hari

[Technoguy]

hari here's a thing which u can do.i do assume that most of ur c:\drive wud be gonners by the bad sectors.do u have ne important data stored in it?if yes use the above mentioned recovery tools.if ya got a spare hdd just format the c:\drive backup ur data on the spare hdd and then just run spinrite or hdd regenerator 2 just fix the bad sectors upto an extent but a reformat wud be advisable.hope that helps

[mark]

hari here's a thing which u can do.i do assume that most of ur c:\drive wud be gonners by the bad sectors.do u have ne important data stored in it?if yes use the above mentioned recovery tools.if ya got a spare hdd just format the c:\drive backup ur data on the spare hdd and then just run spinrite or hdd regenerator 2 just fix the bad sectors upto an extent but a reformat wud be advisable.hope that helps

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I hope you are telling him to use the spare, format the spare and use the spare as the c: drive before he does anything. I found your advise a little confusing. Formating his dying HDD would damage any remaining data, would it not?

DL

[Wicket20519]

I would strongly suggest NOT formatting until you've atleast tried to follow the directions in the link I posted.

Like I said, I followed those directions and was able to save 95% of information of a 120GB harddrive that I couldn't even boot from, or fix through Disk manager.

[mark]

The article that Wicket20519 referred to has a dead link to a program called FINDNTFS which might be the same as the one on this page: Link

DL

[Andromeda43]

As a computer repair tech of many years, I've saved data from dozens of drives that would no longer boot.

If it will run at all, you can connect it to a running PC as a slave and copy all the data files to the HD on the running PC.

I do this all the time for my own customers. I copy their data files to a folder on my own HD and then burn them to a CD or DVD for them so that they have a permanent copy of their data. Whether they restore it to a new HD or not is up to them.

It's a quick and easy way to get the data and does no further damage to the HD.

The more you fuss with that old drive, the more chance you have of loosing everything.

If you don't have the resources to do what I've said here.....take it to someone who can. If you were nearby, I'd say bring it over here and I'd do it for you. No charge.

It's about a five minute job.

Cheers!

Andromeda43