Eli said:
HELP!!
I have a 230GB hard drive that I use in Win NT Server 4 as a file
server.
On Thanksgiving, I got a message that the drive was corrupted. Ran
chckdsk and it stated that the version of chkdsk was older and I
needed to run chkdsk
from the newer updated version. Installed HD in win XP operating
system,
it's a NTFS format, and chkdsk ran automatically when i booted up.
CHKDSK
deleted thousands of orphan files and now my drive is wiped clean.
All my files are gone, need help on how to retrieve the info, I have
unreplaceable
pictures on my family that makes me want to cry if they are lost.
What can I do to retrieve the files?
*IMPORTANT* - If there is any question that the drive is at fault - it's
making noises for instance - and the data is crucial DO NOTHING FURTHER
ON THE DRIVE. Every time you spin that drive up you may be destroying
data. If this is the case, send the drive to a professional data
recovery company like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data
Recovery. General prices run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers recovered
all the data on a failed laptop drive for one of my clients and it cost
$2,700. He thought it was worth the money; only you know what your data
is worth. I understand that some insurance companies are now covering
data recovery charges under "Loss of Intellectual Property" so check
with yours.
Drive Savers -
http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services -
https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/
*IMPORTANT* - If you think the drive is physically healthy, it may be
possible to retrieve the data by software methods. DO NOTHING FURTHER
ON THE DRIVE. The data is still on the hard drive but if you overwrite
it, it will be extremely difficult or impossible to recover it. If you
use data recovery software, install it on another machine and either
use it from that operating system or create a bootable cd/floppy and
work with that. If you don't have the skill and/or equipment to do
these procedures and the data is crucial, take the machine to a
professional computer repair shop that has experience in doing data
recovery. This will not be your local version of BigStoreUSA. In-shop
data recovery is usually not exactly cheap (for ex., my charges are
generally $150-350USD), but it normally costs less than sending the
drive to a company like Drive Savers. You need to make the
determination of the value of your data and decide what to do.
So now you know the options. Since you say you've been using the drive
on an NT4 server, my guess is that the drive is elderly and probably is
experiencing physical failure. Since you also say the pictures and data
are irreplaceable, my professional recommendation is that you send the
the drive to Drive Savers so as to not take any chances of losing the
data.
After you get your pictures back, invest in a DVD burner and put a
backup strategy in place.
Good luck,
Malke
