hard drive data recovery

D

David Kistner

My dad's hard drive will not boot. It is a vfat32 Seagate that was
running Windows ME. I pulled the drive and made it a slave and tried to
access its files from another XP machine. The machine could see the
drive but reported it as an unformatted drive.

Any recommendations as to how I might recover some of the files off of
this drive? I've Googled and found software packages that are supposed
to help recover data in cases like this. Are these worth trying?
Thanks in advance for your help.

- David Kistner
 
D

DaveW

To truly retrieve the data off a failed harddrive usually costs~$1000 from a
professional service.
 
S

Sir Edward Jones-Dome

You can try Easy Recovery from Ontrack. You can download a trial version
that wll let you know if it can see recoverable files. If it does, then you
can shell out about $75 for the lite version or $200 for the full version.
It recovers files by extension (.txt, .exe, etc). A bit of advice- this is
most valuable when you are looking for a specific file type. Good luck

--
Sir Edward Jones-Dome

"Now the game is clear, there is no longer any possibility of an alliance
with the Anglo-Saxons. We can see the next war panning out- Europe against
America. We'll be reconciled with the Fritzes. We will be a very strong
alliance...When I am in power, I shall ask Russia for time to reorganize
after the war without her intervention.. .I shall then have accomplished
what Hitler failed to do- become the master of Europe."
Charles DeGaulle, 1943.
 
O

Odie Ferrous

David said:
My dad's hard drive will not boot. It is a vfat32 Seagate that was
running Windows ME. I pulled the drive and made it a slave and tried to
access its files from another XP machine. The machine could see the
drive but reported it as an unformatted drive.

Any recommendations as to how I might recover some of the files off of
this drive? I've Googled and found software packages that are supposed
to help recover data in cases like this. Are these worth trying?
Thanks in advance for your help.

- David Kistner

David,

If you get stuck you can send me the drive.

Although I'm in the UK, it will still work out *very* substantially
cheaper than your local options.


Odie
 
A

Adam S

My dad's hard drive will not boot. It is a vfat32 Seagate that was
running Windows ME. I pulled the drive and made it a slave and tried to
access its files from another XP machine. The machine could see the
drive but reported it as an unformatted drive.

It could be that the MBR (master boot record) is messed up, I have seen the
same symptoms once before, I had a disk that came up as unformatted, I used
FDISK to restore the MBR and windows could read the drive again. Needless to
say I copied everything off it quick and replaced it.

More info here:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...pport/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1
or http://tinyurl.com/azqo

http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm

Try rewriting the MBR at your own risk, Good luck.

Adam S
 
S

Spajky

You can try Easy Recovery from Ontrack. You can download a trial version
that wll let you know if it can see recoverable files. If it does, then you
can shell out about $75 for the lite version or $200 for the full version.
It recovers files by extension (.txt, .exe, etc). A bit of advice- this is
most valuable when you are looking for a specific file type. Good luck

also can try PC Inspector (www.pcinspector.de)
shareware (good one) limit: you have to open/close - run it again
between recoverys; no other limits in demo version ...
 
T

the gnome

I swear by GetDataBack. The demo version allows you to see what can be
recovered, and then buy it to save the tracks.

It recovers from disks with damaged sectors, reformatted disks, disks that
show up as unformatted for no good reason.

the_gnome
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top