Hard disc recovery

[mike o'sullivan]

I had a recent disaster when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I
had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.

 

[Gary Chanson]

I had a recent disaster when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I
had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.

There are various programs which might be able to recover your data. Do
a search for "Ultimate Boot CD" which has several of these programs on it.

 

[William Asher]

I had a recent disaster when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I
had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.

Mike:

First thing, don't panic and do something rash with the drive. Just set it
aside, don't write to it or reformat it, and you can more than likely get
those wedding pics back.

Look at the products available from Ontrack (www.ontrack.com) and maybe
give them a call to see if something there would work for you. I've used
both their custom service and own a copy of their Easy Recovery Pro.
package. It works well (although it isn't cheap) and has saved some
important files for me on several occasions. You *might* be able to use
their cheaper standard version (which admittedly, is still not all that
inexpensive). There is also a free version you can download to check if
the files are recoverable (just don't install it on the drive you want to
recover the files from).

There are also probably lots of other options around, I have no vested
interest in Ontrack's, it's just the one I used first and found to have
worked.

Alternatively, you could try a social engineering solution and convince
your daughter the guy she married is a jerk, have the wedding annulled, and
then you don't have to recover the wedding photos. Just don't tell your
wife why you are sabotaging your daugher's marriage.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I had a recent disaster when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I
had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.

There are two answers to your question: A technical, and one of
common sense.

The technical answer: Temporarily install your hard disk as
a slave disk in some other Win2000/XP PC. There is a
good chance that its files and folders are still accessible, or
easily recoverable. Post again with the result.

The common sense answer: Important files must never be
stored on one single medium, for obvious reasons. Many
PC users learn this simple lesson the hard way.

 

[Gary Chanson]

Mike:

First thing, don't panic and do something rash with the drive. Just set it
aside, don't write to it or reformat it, and you can more than likely get
those wedding pics back.

Look at the products available from Ontrack (www.ontrack.com) and maybe
give them a call to see if something there would work for you. I've used
both their custom service and own a copy of their Easy Recovery Pro.
package. It works well (although it isn't cheap) and has saved some
important files for me on several occasions. You *might* be able to use
their cheaper standard version (which admittedly, is still not all that
inexpensive). There is also a free version you can download to check if
the files are recoverable (just don't install it on the drive you want to
recover the files from).

My experience with Ontrack is that it's close to useless...

 

[mike o'sullivan]

I'm very grateful to everyone who replied. I'll investigate them all.

Mike

 

[mike o'sullivan]

The technical answer: Temporarily install your hard disk as
a slave disk in some other Win2000/XP PC. There is a
good chance that its files and folders are still accessible, or
easily recoverable. Post again with the result.

I certainly will report back if I succeed, thanks.

 

[James]

Regarding the earlier post about Ontrack being next to useless. My
brother-in-law has used it to recover over 100G of files from a "dead
drive" that had been under XP when it failed. Nothing else had workef
for him. The short answer is that not all software works in all cases.
You may have to try more than one package to recover what you have
lost. The good news is that as long as nothing is written to that disk
there will be hope to recover critical data.

James

 

[Dan Seur]

Curiously, with Ontrack file recovery, files not found on an NTFS
partition after deleting a directory will be found if that directory
name is recreated. At least that has happened on my system.

I too disagree with that imbecilic comment about Ontrack. It's not a
professional-level recovery utility, but it works quite well in many
common situations.

 

[Gary Chanson]

It's good to hear that it's been useful to some.