Hard Drive Data Recovery, Please Help.

[jeffreyscotttweedy]

About a month ago, while running CCleaner, my external 400GB Seagate
HDD showed an error indicating something like "the master file is
corrupt" or "the directory file is corrupt". It might have been the
master boot file. I don't remember the exact language. I rebooted my
pc and restarted the drive. It was not recognized and could not be
accessed. System Restore indicated it could not restore the external
drive as it had been turned off. Disk Management indicated an empty
drive. The HDD was set up with NTFS and was in a firewire enclosure.

Prior to this error, there were no indications of problems with the
drive- no noises, no error messages. I used the drive for media
storage- largely for mp3 files, but also some movies. Some of the
data was backed up, but about 100 gb was not. A bunch of data
recovery services gave me quotes in a range of $400 to $3500.

I did some exhaustive google searching and found some recommended
programs. The freeware PC Inspector File Recovery did not show any
data on the Seagate. GetDataBack 3.03 did a thorough scan and showed
all my files were still accessible. This program allows you to access
individual files, but not copy or save them to another location
without paying a $80 fee (ie. I was able to play individual mp3s, but
not recover or copy them).

I'm impressed with the GetDataBack program and do not object paying
for the registration if that's my last option, but at this time $80 is
a significant amount to me and I would like to try any lower cost or
free options if there are any.

Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for either a method of
manually accessing the data or some other freeware solution?

Thank you,
Scott

 

[ckramer7070]

Do you have another external HD enclosure? We have had the same
problems at work, figured it was the drive itself and after replacing
2) 300GB drive we found out the enclosure was burning out the drives.
They were somewhat recoverable; could pull some files off but most of
them were corrupt. You could also try taking the drive out of the
enclosure and installing it into a PC to see if it is recoverable.

Chad

 

[chad]

Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for either a method of
manually accessing the data or some other freeware solution?

http://free-backup.info/data-recovery-software.htm

 

[jeffreyscotttweedy]

Chad- Thanks, I did remove the drive from the enclosure. I did wonder
if the enclosure contributed to demise of the drive because of heat
containment, poor design, etc. Thanks.

C...@ahhh- Thank you, too. Those programs are undelete programs and
don't seem to work. I had this question posted in another group
(24hoursupport.helpdesk) and the conclusion seems to be that there is
no freeware available for this job.

A lot of people and sites recommend SpinRite6 ($89) and GetDataBack
($80). I took the plunge with GetDataBack and it seems to be working
very well. After doing so, though, someone recommened Active
Partition Recovery 5 which does the same thing as GetDataBack
apparently, but is $45 cheaper. I set up APR5 and it appears to work
well. Like GetDataBack, you can't actually save the files you're
trying to recover until you register. It's not as an attractive
interface as GetDataBack.

Thanks for you help.

 

[Jaymon]

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
I have used the above Photorec app to recover data from a formatted HDD and
have repaired the MBR on a HDD with the TestDisk 6.5 app, (both are included
in the zip file) that was showing up in Disk Management as unallocated..
The new stable ver is TestDisk 6.6 might be worth a try, it's free (GPL)..
Might help you if your up to it..
Cheers
j;-j