Need Data Recovery from HD

[Nehmo Sergheyev]

- jazz -

If you have a network with another computer that has availible storage, you
should be able to transfer the stuff to it across the network. This might
negate the need to buy another drive if money is tight for you.(especially
after buying the recovery software). -Good luck with it.

- Nehmo -
The only network I *have* is the internet.

Early next week I can afford a new HD. I'm thinking about this Samsung
160 GB at US$110
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results_bargain.phtml?product_id=168101

If I can't get my WD 80 GB going again, it's covered under warranty. I
bought it at CompUSA in March 2004. I'm not sure if I can exchange it at
the store or if I have to send it away. Every time I call the Overland
Park, KS store, they put me on hold and forget about me.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to be able to try Easy Recovery for
the Word docs.
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/

The Word docs are the most important unavailable files. I do home
repairs, and I'm in the middle of a large repair & stain job. All the
records, money transactions, progress pics, activity reports, receipt
images, etc are on the unavailable drive. It's hard for me to ask the
customer for interim money if I can't report what's we've done.

I'm trying to reconstruct everything as best I can, but it's taking a
lot of time I don't have.

(And don't anybody give me a lecture about backing things up. You'd be
too late!)

 

[Al Dykes]

- jazz -

- Nehmo -
The only network I *have* is the internet.

Early next week I can afford a new HD. I'm thinking about this Samsung
160 GB at US$110
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results_bargain.phtml?product_id=168101

If I can't get my WD 80 GB going again, it's covered under warranty. I
bought it at CompUSA in March 2004. I'm not sure if I can exchange it at
the store or if I have to send it away. Every time I call the Overland
Park, KS store, they put me on hold and forget about me.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to be able to try Easy Recovery for
the Word docs.
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/

The Word docs are the most important unavailable files. I do home
repairs, and I'm in the middle of a large repair & stain job. All the
records, money transactions, progress pics, activity reports, receipt
images, etc are on the unavailable drive. It's hard for me to ask the
customer for interim money if I can't report what's we've done.

I'm trying to reconstruct everything as best I can, but it's taking a
lot of time I don't have.

(And don't anybody give me a lecture about backing things up. You'd be
too late!)

You exchange WD disks by going tothe web site www.wdc.com. Find the
right section, give your serial # and it will tell you if it's still
on warranty and give you a return authorization.

 

[Jetro]

It's just a lazy talk after Bill's crying. It's summer...

 

[Joep]

Certainly chkdsk.exe exists in any MS OS, this is its native utility. OTOH,
DOS version prompts to use scandisk.exe instead starting from DOS 6.2 when
MS has purchased scandisk.exe from P.Norton.

I think (fairly certain) it was Central Point (PC Tools) Scandisk was bought
from.

 

[Nehmo Sergheyev]

- jazz -

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/
are a couple of links to some poular recover software options. I have used
both and found the ontrac offering a little easier to use for ther novice
but the rstudios seems to be a little more powerfull with the ability to
recover from other partition format types like ext2 and 3 and

reiserFS.

- Nehmo -
EasyRecovery Professional Edition from Ontrack http://www.ontrack.com/
did indeed extract files from my victim HD. It found about 10,000 files
of different types, and it categorized them by type and displayed each
file's size. In other words, after examining the victim drive, ER
displayed that it had found so many .docs, so many .gifs, and so on. The
original file names are gone, but ER applied its own number-name to each
file (FIL211, FIL212, FIL213, and so on), and it also provided size info
for each file. ER didn't provide creation dates or anything else.

So now, since I only have 2 GB of free space on the 15 GB HD that I'm
using, I still need a new good HD to store my extracted files. Then I
need to figure out what they are and organize them. I may be able to
find my critical Word docs soon because I can estimate their size and
look for that.

At this point, I don't know if I'll be able to recover everything, and
it's going to take some time figuring out what's what.

It was a mistake to run CHKDSK when I did.

Since I had successfully repair-installed WinXP on the 15 GB HD*, I
assumed I could go through the same process on the 80 GB HD, and that's
what I was trying to do. I should have first hooked up the 80 as a slave
to the working 15 and checked if I could read the 80. Then if I could
read, I should have backed up the critical files. If I couldn't, I
should have attempted recovery from that point.

*This was actually a precaution to _avoid_ losing the data on the 80. I
wanted to first see if I could install WinXP on a disk that had
expendable data. My plan was, once I was successful at that and familiar
with the process, I was going to deal with the 80 the same way.

 

[Crusty \Old B@stard\]

Isn't that what I suggested to you about 25 posts earlier (-:

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[Nehmo Sergheyev]

-Crusty "Old B@stard-.

Isn't that what I suggested to you about 25 posts earlier (-:

- Nehmo -
Yes, and (even though "25" is an exaggeration) I thank you for the
directing me. I only have about four hours per day to devote to ALL of
what I need to do on the machine. I didn't get to EasyRecovery until
yesterday.
I still have to read more about what it does. I notice I'm getting some
large Word docs with nothing visible (at least in Word) in them.
I dying to get another drive so I can see what I end up missing.

 

[John Turco]

- jazz -

- Nehmo -
The only network I *have* is the internet.

Early next week I can afford a new HD. I'm thinking about this Samsung
160 GB at US$110
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results_bargain.phtml?product_id=168101

If I can't get my WD 80 GB going again, it's covered under warranty. I
bought it at CompUSA in March 2004. I'm not sure if I can exchange it at
the store or if I have to send it away. Every time I call the Overland
Park, KS store, they put me on hold and forget about me.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to be able to try Easy Recovery for
the Word docs.
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/

The Word docs are the most important unavailable files. I do home
repairs, and I'm in the middle of a large repair & stain job. All the
records, money transactions, progress pics, activity reports, receipt
images, etc are on the unavailable drive. It's hard for me to ask the
customer for interim money if I can't report what's we've done.

I'm trying to reconstruct everything as best I can, but it's taking a
lot of time I don't have.

(And don't anybody give me a lecture about backing things up. You'd be
too late!)

Hello, Nehmo:

I'd recommend Samsung, normally, as I own two SP1614N (160GB PATA) OEM
hard disks (among several other Samsung goodies), and love them.
Although, did you read your "Bargain Bin" item's "specific terms of
sale?"

If not, please go here:

Micro Center Online Bargain Bin
<http://www.microcenter.com/bargain_terms.html>

I quote, in part:

"1. What are Bargain Bin products?
The products displayed in the Bargain Bin are working products that
have been returned to Micro Center or may be "open box" products. In
some cases, the product may be brand new. Returned or open box items
may be missing non-essential parts - manuals, original packaging,
etc. - however they are still functional, working products. Because
of the nature of these products, it is possible that the condition
of items will vary when ordering more than one."

You have enough trouble, at the moment -- why risk compounding it, by
grabbing a "Bargain Bin" drive? A HDD is the >one< component, I'd
never consider buying secondhand, which Micro Center's Samsung SP161NR30
160GB (OEM PATA), could well turn out to be.

These search engines will enable you to find even lower prices, on
completely-new merchandise:

Price Watch <http://www.pricewatch.com>

Froogle <http://froogle.google.com>

This one is more of a gamble, I guess, yet I've had great success with
it, overall:

eBay <http://www.ebay.com>

Good luck and happy hunting!


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>

 

[Jetro]

Didn't PC Tools have DiskFix utility? Anyway, Symantec bought 'em both
Norton and Central Point <sigh>

 

[Nikolay]

Hello,

Try ZAR! http://z-a-recovery.com
It not have the problem with the names of restored files.

 

[Nehmo Sergheyev]

- Nikolay-

Try ZAR! http://z-a-recovery.com
It not have the problem with the names of restored files.

- Nehmo -
It stalls on
"Analyzing, stage 2 of 4
Determining Volume Parameters".
The execution progress never gets beyond 0%.

Maybe I'm not doing something right. I'll have to read up on it.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

- Nikolay-

- Nehmo -
It stalls on
"Analyzing, stage 2 of 4
Determining Volume Parameters".
The execution progress never gets beyond 0%.

Maybe I'm not doing something right.

Then it either is not foolproof or it is trash.

 

[Nehmo Sergheyev]

- Nehmo -

EasyRecovery Professional Edition from Ontrack http://www.ontrack.com/
did indeed extract files from my victim HD.

I'm learing how to use the app. I may have been misleading with my
previous description of the results it produced. I'm getting different
and better results now, but they're still not easy to use. It's not
like you can open Explorer and see the everything on the victim HD.

I'll report back later on how successful I've been.

*********************
* Nehmo Sergheyev *
*********************