Need Data Recovery from HD

[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 Sergheyev]

After I send this post, I'll physically remove it and put the jumpers
off and then back on to make sure of the contacts. But if Western
Digital's literature is correct, then I have the drive correctly
jumpered as slave - 1&2 connected + 3&4 connected, both jumpers next to
the power connector.

The size of the drive showed up as reduced after I ran CHKDSK /F. While
I was running that, BTW, CHKDSK correctly listed the name of the drive
and it's size. Now I can't even get the name.

Since the drive is now listed as healthy in Computer Management, I
believe if I formatted the drive now, it would be usable at the reduced
size. But that's relatively not important. I want to retrieve the

data.

Here's an MS article on CHKDSK.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx

When I now try to run CHKDSK on the (now labeled "f") drive (using the
/v switch; I think I'm doing it correctly), I get

C:\Documents and Settings\Nehmo Sergheyev>chkdsk f:/v
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

 

[Eric Gisin]

But in Window NT/2K/XP, neither the command prompt or chkdsk are DOS programs.
Yes, chkdsk is the correct program for minor problems.

I doubt anyone has something better for NTFS. If it can't be fixed, you have
to copy with findntfs or a commerical alternative.

 

[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.

 

[t.cruise]

WD is a very reputable company. You should have no trouble getting a replacement. Their
drives haven't given me or my clients any problems. They also have some good utilities
for diagnostics and copy drive to drive. You can get a 160 GB WD for $107 at:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=456153

Beware of Maxtor. According to the many posts here, Maxtor drives seem to have a higher
than average failure rate.

T.C.
t__cruise@[NoSpam]hotmail.com
Remove [NoSpam] to reply

 

[Jetro]

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

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Actually, the only disks I have ever run into problems with have been
IBM and that was a while ago. Most disk manufacturers today are
excellent and reputable. I highly recommend Seagate, Western Digital,
and Maxtor. These are the three big ones in my opinion. Can't wait
until SATA300 comes out with a 15K RPM drive. Whatever of these three
companies releases it first will be getting my money for two set up in
RAID

----
Nathan McNulty

WD is a very reputable company. You should have no trouble getting a replacement. Their
drives haven't given me or my clients any problems. They also have some good utilities
for diagnostics and copy drive to drive. You can get a 160 GB WD for $107 at:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=456153

Beware of Maxtor. According to the many posts here, Maxtor drives seem to have a higher
than average failure rate.

T.C.
t__cruise@[NoSpam]hotmail.com
Remove [NoSpam] to reply

- jazz -


storage, you


- 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!)

 

[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.

 

[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 *
*********************

 

[t.cruise]

AND, your results will vary, depending upon how much you've used the drive since you lost
the data. You might only be able to recover portions of files, and not the whole file
itself, or not be able to recover certain files at all. The rule of thumb is to use the
system as little as possible, until you recover what you need. Otherwise, the drive
sectors that contain the files might be overwritten. I once deleted about 200 JPG files.
By the time I recovered them with EasyRecovery, I was only able to fully recover about 80
of the files. The other 120 files were either only partially recoverable, with 1/3 to 1/2
of the image viewable, or not recoverable at all. So, timely recovery is VERY important.

 

[Nehmo Sergheyev]

(Recap of story:
I had physical damage to the m-board which was attached to a 80 GB HD.
I got a new m-board, but with it I couldn't see my 80 HD. I installed
an old 15 GB HD I had on a shelf for such emergencies. WinXP worked
off the 15 after a repair install. I installed the 80 as a slave (I
thought I installed it properly) but I couldn't read it, nor could I
repair-install WinXP on it. I called MS, and the tech instructed me to
run CHKDSK /f . I still couldn't read, and the XP setup wanted me to
format the 80. I tried data recovery software of various types first
because the formatting would destroy all my data on the 80.)

Anyway, I discovered my problem with the 80 GB HD. When I was
jumpering it I only looked briefly at the large-sheet Western Digital
instructions that came with the HD. I used the slave jumpering
configuration.

Unfortunately, I was looking at the wrong side of the instruction
sheet. I was looking at the Macintosh side. The jumpering for regular
IBM clones is different. The way I set the jumper was incorrect for my
computer.

For someone familiar with installing drives, this would have been an
easy mistake to catch. Harry Ohrn did indeed ask if I had the drive
jumpered correctly. I answered and described how I had it jumpered,
but nobody noticed I was doing it wrong.

I now can see all my old data, and WinXP is running properly.

Links to the thread:
http://snipurl.com/89b8

http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&...=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&scoring=d&q=nehmo+hd

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Nehmo.

I now can see all my old data, and WinXP is running properly.

Congratulations! And Thanks for the report. Those of us following the
thread are glad to learn what the actual problem (and solution) was. The
same problem could happen to any of us some day, so having this info tucked
away somewhere in our head might save us the kind of troubles that you had.

RC