asked on

Hard Drive Failure - recover files?

Hi,
System is a Win98 that was showing one bad cluster. However, at boot up, Win98 screen appears then crashes. I attempted to do a scandisk at dos level, but machine freezes at 20%. I can get to a C Prompt and run DIR - how can I recover lost .doc and .wks files? Any chance of recovering programs?

Thanks

ketapillar

Put the drive in another computer... Boot the other computer up and try to copy what you can from the "mucked" drive to the good one.

Don't grab all of the files at once.. just grab the folders one by one until it hangs on you... reboot and don't copy that folder just move to the next.

Also get a new drive...

ketapillar

Oh programs won't copy over... just grab your save's, doc's, etc.. and reinstall the programs... if you don't have the install disks you won't be able to reload the programs.

Cert98

ASKER

Thanks for the input - what I need is the directions on how to copy the .doc files and if possible the windows favorite files from the C prompt. The system already has a second drive installed - possible to copy over to that drive? instead of a floppy? I am planning on replacing the first drive.

thanks

ketapillar

Just copy them over like normal... using the windows explorer..

(Type "explorer" in the Run command box)

The favorites will be in...

"c:\windows\favorites"

The files are wherever you saved them

"c:\my documents" ???

ketapillar

Doh!!! Need to read the whole q before answering...

Yes, just copy them to the other drive don't need the floppy at all...

Cert98

ASKER

System will not boot passed the Windows 98 - I can't even
get it to boot into safe mode. But I can get to a C Prompt and type in Dir/w and see all the files. I guess the bad clusters are all at the beginning of the drive.
I know there is a dos command to let me copy over the files to either a floppy or the other drive. ??? Something like copy*.*.doc ?????

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

ketapillar

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial