Corrupted files on start-up

[Guest]

I installed a new cd drive in my computer yesterday, and
when Windows booted up it corrupted some of my files. It
gave some kind of error message when doing a disk check
and said that some of the files were bad. It took many
of my folder that were several hundred mb or larger and
converted them to this unknown 32k file. I had 500mb
worth of pictures and they are all gone. This file was
on a different hard drive then my windows install.

Is there any way, program I could use, to recover this
lost data? I have tried several file recovery programs
with no luck

 

[Malke]

I installed a new cd drive in my computer yesterday, and
when Windows booted up it corrupted some of my files. It
gave some kind of error message when doing a disk check
and said that some of the files were bad. It took many
of my folder that were several hundred mb or larger and
converted them to this unknown 32k file. I had 500mb
worth of pictures and they are all gone. This file was
on a different hard drive then my windows install.

Is there any way, program I could use, to recover this
lost data? I have tried several file recovery programs
with no luck

Since you say you tried several file recovery programs but don't tell us
which ones, it's hard to give you specific advice. You can try 1)
pulling the drive and slaving it in a working XP box and see if you can
copy the files over; 2) or boot with Knoppix if you have a FAT32
partition or other drive where you can copy the files (no ntfs writing
supported yet in Linux). You can try taking the machine to a local
computer repair shop and see if they can recover your data with their
data recovery software. Or you can call DriveSavers
(www.drivesavers.com). DriveSavers is a professional data recovery
firm, highly respected in the tech industry. Their services are not
inexpensive, and only you can decide how much your data is worth.

Malke