File recovery tools?

[Tim]

Hi. I have an 80GB hard disk that starting coming up with
a hard stop error on boot up. I tried everything that I
knew and most of the things I could understand in the
Knowledge base but can't access it. I downloaded several
shareware file recovery programs and one in particular
seemed to work well. But it costs $120 - and the data I
want to retrieve (basically just my email .pst file) isn't
worth that much to me - I am wondering if anyone knows of
a method that will help that would not be so expensive.
Thanks... Tim

 

[Al Dykes]

Hi. I have an 80GB hard disk that starting coming up with
a hard stop error on boot up. I tried everything that I
knew and most of the things I could understand in the
Knowledge base but can't access it. I downloaded several
shareware file recovery programs and one in particular
seemed to work well. But it costs $120 - and the data I
want to retrieve (basically just my email .pst file) isn't
worth that much to me - I am wondering if anyone knows of
a method that will help that would not be so expensive.
Thanks... Tim

Don't try booting the disk over and over. It can't help,
and may hurt.

If you have access to a PC with the same version of Windows you can
mount the disk as a secondary, do a chkdsk and copy the data from it.
Assuming you have a friend with a working computer and a CD burner you
can download Knoppix ISO from www.linuxiso.org and burn it into a
bootable CD.

Boot Knoppix. On 99.9% of the PCs it wil come up with a GUI that you
should be able to figure out. By default Knoppix mounts all the FAT32
and NTFS partitions as READ ONLY, so you can browse them see your data
and copy it, but not do any damage. The first thing it will tell you
is that your data is OK. Copying lots of data (more than a floppy)
takes some expertese, but I've done it a bunch of times.

As far as what to do after youve copied yoiur data; If the disk seems
OK do a full format. If no bad sectors show up do a full install from
scratch and keep an eye on it for a while.

 

[DL]

On the assumption you installed a new master hd and o/s, with old/faulty
disk connected as slave you may be able to recover files.
Also hd manu site may have a checking utility that may be able to do a
partial repair.