nothing8171
asked on
Corrupted Hard Drive
Hello everyone,
Below is an email I sent to Maxtor a couple months ago:
Hello, recently when attempting to reboot my computer, I received a bunch or error messages telling me to perform a chkdsk. The computer wouldn't shut down so I manually shut it down and restarted it. Quick scenerio, I have two hard drives, one that came with my Dell and the second is the one I purchased from you for all my personal things. It's a Maxblast 3 ata hard drive, 40gigs. After restarting my computer, I would double click on the drive it it said "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." It wouldn't let me perform a chkdsk and my buddy who is a Linux nerd attempted to mount it from his computer and it was unsucessful. We're bother comp sci majors so we know what we're doing. My friends computer recognized the hard drive and it was partitioned. My friend believes the NTFS is corrupted. Regardless I NEED some type of answer because I have far to valuable information on that hard drive. Please give me a worthwhile solution. I would greatly appreciate it.
Of course, they had absolutely no worthwhile solutions and just passed off a link to an uncountable number of Date Recovery websites. My problem is, how do I know which one is good and reliable? If anybody could suggest a company with good data recovery software, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
John
Below is an email I sent to Maxtor a couple months ago:
Hello, recently when attempting to reboot my computer, I received a bunch or error messages telling me to perform a chkdsk. The computer wouldn't shut down so I manually shut it down and restarted it. Quick scenerio, I have two hard drives, one that came with my Dell and the second is the one I purchased from you for all my personal things. It's a Maxblast 3 ata hard drive, 40gigs. After restarting my computer, I would double click on the drive it it said "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." It wouldn't let me perform a chkdsk and my buddy who is a Linux nerd attempted to mount it from his computer and it was unsucessful. We're bother comp sci majors so we know what we're doing. My friends computer recognized the hard drive and it was partitioned. My friend believes the NTFS is corrupted. Regardless I NEED some type of answer because I have far to valuable information on that hard drive. Please give me a worthwhile solution. I would greatly appreciate it.
Of course, they had absolutely no worthwhile solutions and just passed off a link to an uncountable number of Date Recovery websites. My problem is, how do I know which one is good and reliable? If anybody could suggest a company with good data recovery software, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
John
Lee W, MVP
www.ontrack.com
Generally they are referred to the most and I think have a pretty good reputation. NOT Cheap though - $100 just to look at the drive, if I remember correctly, up to $3000 to recover the data (not a typo - 3 thousand)
ASKER
leew, that's ridiculous. I can't be the first person whose home hard drive has crashed and needed to recover the data. Perhaps $3000 is what's charged to a company, but an individual?
From the websites I've visited, I assume I'm going to end up shelling out $80 - $100, I just need recommendations on who I should spend my money on.
From the websites I've visited, I assume I'm going to end up shelling out $80 - $100, I just need recommendations on who I should spend my money on.
ASKER
ontrack.com was a company in which I browsed through. I'm assuming I would need the "EasyRecovery™ Lite 6.0 - Individual Edition" for $89.00. Is this correct? Should I go with it?
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ASKER
Okay, I suppose I'm just unfamilar with the data recovery process. I assumed they send me the software and I do everything here at home. I didn't realize I have to send the hard drive in. I'll experiment with it. Thanks for the help.
Again, it depends on how severely the drive is damaged. If it's software only, then it's not THAT expenive, but when some of the hardware itself fails, the process gets messy and the requirements go up. If it's a matter of file systems corrupted, then software you buy might well be able to do the trick. I just get very paranoid about any of this because any changes you make to the disk COULD affect your ability to recover data.