PFrancis
asked on
Hard-Drive Failure
A 20Gig SeaGate hard-drive of mine recently failed. It was the primary (OS) drive. I'm running with Windows 2000. The sequence of events were:
1) I booted up and a warning appeared saying that the OS was attempting to repair corrupted files. It worked through some files and then proceded to the standard windows environment.
2) Next time I booted up, it got a little way into the 'Windows Loading...' screen and hung.
3) Tried to reboot and didn't even recognise that drive was formatted.
4) I connected it to another computer and while on boot the BIOS could detect that it was formatted with the NTFS file system, Windows could not, and treated the drive as unformatted.
The drive is not making any strange sounds and is spinning normally (at least I can feel it spinning) when the power is connected.
I would like to recover what I can from the drive. It at all possible, without paying anything. Is there software I can download that will repair the FAT? Is that the problem? Am I just up the brown creek without a paddle?
Links to free utilities (and basic instructions) that will repair the drive enough to recover some data is what I am after.
1) I booted up and a warning appeared saying that the OS was attempting to repair corrupted files. It worked through some files and then proceded to the standard windows environment.
2) Next time I booted up, it got a little way into the 'Windows Loading...' screen and hung.
3) Tried to reboot and didn't even recognise that drive was formatted.
4) I connected it to another computer and while on boot the BIOS could detect that it was formatted with the NTFS file system, Windows could not, and treated the drive as unformatted.
The drive is not making any strange sounds and is spinning normally (at least I can feel it spinning) when the power is connected.
I would like to recover what I can from the drive. It at all possible, without paying anything. Is there software I can download that will repair the FAT? Is that the problem? Am I just up the brown creek without a paddle?
Links to free utilities (and basic instructions) that will repair the drive enough to recover some data is what I am after.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Spencer: You need to copyright that list :)
:)
BTW these two seem to be the most popular among users of this site.
GetDataBack for NTFS
Recover your files when the data is no longer accessible due to formatting, fdisk, virus attack, power or software failure. Get everything back even when the drive's partition table, boot record, Master File Table or root directory is lost or corrupt.
Hard Drives
Partitions
Floppy Drives
Drive Images
Zip/Jaz Drives
http://www.runtime.org/
R-Tools
http://www.r-tt.com/
GetDataBack for NTFS
Recover your files when the data is no longer accessible due to formatting, fdisk, virus attack, power or software failure. Get everything back even when the drive's partition table, boot record, Master File Table or root directory is lost or corrupt.
Hard Drives
Partitions
Floppy Drives
Drive Images
Zip/Jaz Drives
http://www.runtime.org/
R-Tools
http://www.r-tt.com/
dogztar: >>>You need to copyright that list<<< It is, "de facto". Because people who paste it without due credit, usually hear about it from one of the next experts who post. : D
True coral47....
ASKER
Excellent. I found GetDataBack for NTFS to be exactly what I wanted. Thank you.
You are welcome
You can hook up your hard disk on another computer as a slave, and recover the data that way.
You can use PC Inspector to recover data, and it is free
PC Inspector Data Recovery
www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
You can use Ontrack Recovery software. it is a good one, but not free
http://www.ontrack.com