Missing Data After Chkdisk---Please Help!

[lungnut2002]

This is unreal. I had one (of four) hard drive in my system that was
failing. Two of them (including the one that was failing) was on my
motherboards Ultra100 TX2 IDE Controller.

I had had problems in the past with the driver of this controller, and
so when I started experiencing problems with the failing hard drive, my
first step was to uninstall/reinstall the driver for this device.

What this did was make chkdisk kick in upon my computer booting and it
proceeded to check both of these hard drives. The one that was failing
reported a lot of "File Record Segments" as being unreadable, and, as a
result, that drive is on its way to a data recovery service.

However, the result for the other drive, the "good" drive is that it
only shows a fraction of its original content on the drive, only about
2GB worth, and 230GB free. Suspecting that it again was a problem with
the controller, I removed the drive and put it in a firewire enclosure.
The result was exactly the same--over 99% of the original data seems to
be gone.

This drive is a 250GB Western Digital drive that had about 220GB worth
of data (35,000 files painstakingly organized in folders). I cannot
afford to
lose 218GB worth of this data.

Also, there is a new hidden folder on the drive, "found.000", and it
has a
small amount of the missing data inside it, but arranged in nonsensical
folders named "dir0000.chk" and "dir0001.chk".

I downloaded a file recovery program (PC Inspector), but it doesn't
show the old folders and files. It only sees the surviving folders and
what was once deleted on the hard drive (but not the missing "good"
folders/files).

This stuff cannot be lost--it has to be on the drive. How do I get it
back?

Thanks.

 

[Rod Speed]

This is unreal. I had one (of four) hard drive in my system that was
failing. Two of them (including the one that was failing) was on my
motherboards Ultra100 TX2 IDE Controller.

I had had problems in the past with the driver of this controller, and
so when I started experiencing problems with the failing hard drive,
my first step was to uninstall/reinstall the driver for this device.

What this did was make chkdisk kick in upon my computer booting and it
proceeded to check both of these hard drives. The one that was failing
reported a lot of "File Record Segments" as being unreadable, and, as
a result, that drive is on its way to a data recovery service.

However, the result for the other drive, the "good" drive is that it
only shows a fraction of its original content on the drive, only about
2GB worth, and 230GB free. Suspecting that it again was a problem with
the controller, I removed the drive and put it in a firewire
enclosure. The result was exactly the same--over 99% of the original
data seems to be gone.

This drive is a 250GB Western Digital drive that had about 220GB worth
of data (35,000 files painstakingly organized in folders). I cannot
afford to
lose 218GB worth of this data.

Also, there is a new hidden folder on the drive, "found.000", and it
has a
small amount of the missing data inside it, but arranged in
nonsensical folders named "dir0000.chk" and "dir0001.chk".

I downloaded a file recovery program (PC Inspector), but it doesn't
show the old folders and files. It only sees the surviving folders and
what was once deleted on the hard drive (but not the missing "good"
folders/files).

This stuff cannot be lost--it has to be on the drive.

Yes, but it may not be organised anymore.

How do I get it back?

I'd see what Easy Recovery Pro finds if it was mine.

 

[Peter]

This drive is a 250GB Western Digital drive that had about 220GB worth

of data (35,000 files painstakingly organized in folders). I cannot
afford to lose 218GB worth of this data.

Can you afford professional service then?
What is the maximum amount of money you are willing to spend on fixing it?

 

[chad]

Hi Lungnut,

If you want the best odds, buy a second drive of the same or larger
size then fedex them both to Nationwide data recovery in Miami. They'll
ghost the data over to a new drive after replacing the controller or
whatever they have to do to get the data back. Price is very reasonable
($100-$500).

Alternatively, if you want to try out some other data recovery tools,
here's a collection of freeware data recovery apps:

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

Good luck,
Chad

 

[lungnut2002]

Thanks for the link, I tried some of those and while they didn't work
for my situation, they seem to be great at retrieving deleted files.

However, thanks to a guy in the pc-homebuilt newsgroup, I found a
program for $40 that seems to be recovering my data. It's called Active
Undelete.

It's going very, very slowly--about 3GB/hour. At this rate, it will be
done in about three days. But just as long as it gets done, I'm not
complaining.

Also, it's amazingly enough restoring my organizational structure
(folders inside of folders inside of folders).

Chkdsk is evil, but not backing up is stupid.