# HELP! Data recovery software S.O.S



## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

So the 500gb HD died suddenly while I had about 15 windows open in WinXP Pro and the HD was grinded to a snails pace at 100% (3 finger check in the processes area). 

Now the HD won't boot up anymore. Sometimes it won't even see the drive in the BIOS when I disconnect the power then reconnect and power back up. It will see the drive when I auto scan the drives in the BIOS.

When the drive boots up it'll only make it to the dos selection prompt for 'safe mode/networking/etc, last known good boot, and boot normally'. When I pick the the safe mode or any of the selections it'll try to boot up then just reboot the computer and go back to the same screen.

I just got a Western Digital 500gb, 7200rpm, 16mb, Sata 300, SATA drive in hopes to recover the data loss on the Seagate 500gb, 7200rpm, 16mb, Sata 3G that is down right now.

Does anyone know of any GOOD data recovery software? I prefer comments from personal experience or what you used at your company. 

Thank you kindly in advance.

EDIT:

I was at Tigerdirect today to get the drive and was told they use ZARS, On Track, and some E something I forgot but wondering if anyone knows of anything free.


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## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

Have you tried another OS to recover the data?

When my HD crashed in the Summer with my thesis documents on it (after freaking out), Overleaf suggested I download and use Ubuntu to recover the files from the corrupted hard drive. 

I set up a boot disc on a CD and booted it on a different machine, then connected the HD, and transferred my files over from the corrupted drive to a clean one.


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

ameekplec. said:


> Have you tried another OS to recover the data?
> 
> When my HD crashed in the Summer with my thesis documents on it (after freaking out), Overleaf suggested I download and use Ubuntu to recover the files from the corrupted hard drive.
> 
> I set up a boot disc on a CD and booted it on a different machine, then connected the HD, and transferred my files over from the corrupted drive to a clean one.


I used Ubuntu v9.10 and checked the S.M.A.R.T status on the drive. Not good. Ubuntu said the drive had too many errors and recommended I get my data off as the drive was failing. WTF!? I never got any SMART warnings before on my reboots abou thte drive failing and such. Thing is I've got accounting on this drive so right now it's mission critical to recover as it's got 4 months backed up on it. The SMART data read the drive was powered on for 103.xx days and I'm pretty sure that's correct as I got the drive a few months ago. This is my first SATA drive. All my PATA's have been running for a long time. Hell one of my PATA's is back from 1995 and still going. I know some of the modern drives from the reviews I've read on Tiger seem to have cheapened up a lot in the quality department.

Ubuntu can't access the drive. It keeps searching and searching for hours but only shows the drive is there but can't mount it.

Right now it is really messed up.


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## Zebrapl3co (Mar 29, 2006)

Isn't there any hard drive diagnostic tools that comes with the harddrive? Did you buy OEM? You may still be able to down load a diagnostic tool from the manufactuer's site. If it's just the OS that's corrupted, then it's no biggy (err ofcourse if you have your files encrypted and don't have the key. You are screwed). But if it's a hardware failiure, you are pretty much screwed in that area too. You need a harddrive forensic specialist to recover from that.
Sorry, I can't be of much help, but there are plenty of recovery tools out there.
I used severals, but still haven't found a really good tool.
"File Recovery 7.5", I have to admit does a good job at recovering files. However, it's GUI is flaky and keeps spamming me will this stupid error. Also, don't bother downloading it's free version as all they do is recover the file, encrypt it and hold you ransom until you pay of the full version and then they will decrypt the file for you. Also don't bother downloading a crack either as the crack out there for this one has a trojan in it. It will span you to purchase anti-virus software. After ignoring it several times and when you attempt to uninstall the virus, it crashed your OS. How's that for experience? heh
Anyway, one thing that this software does, is that it did recover my lost files.
There is another software out there that may be better but I don't have any experiency with this one:
http://www.tech-pro.net/how-to-make-data-recovery-boot-cd.html

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## Mr Fishies (Sep 21, 2007)

Ontrack easy recovery works very well IME, but if the drive has physical ailments preventing normal operation it won't help very much.


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

Best is ti slave the bad drive and try to recover that way. If that doesn't work well, GetDataBack might help.


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## bae (May 11, 2007)

Argh. In future, do backups. You don't have to back up the whole disk, just stuff you are working on. You can always reinstall your applications from the original media, right? If you're writing, you can back up files onto diskettes. Other stuff (like your accounting data) you can back up onto CD daily. CDs are cheap. Or you can back up onto another disk, although that's a bit less reliable, it's faster and easier to automate, and disks are very cheap these days. Laptops, especially, should be backed up onto removable media in case they get stolen.

As other people have suggested, if you can get another disk in there with a bootable copy of Windows, it may be able to read the disk even if it can't boot from it. I can't help you with any details, because I'm a unix jock of long standing, and don't know much about Microsoft software.

One more thought -- if it's the controller rather than the disk that's shot, you might be able to read the disk on another Windows system (or unix/linux system).


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## DaFishMan (Dec 19, 2006)

Hi AquaNeko, sorry to hear you're having a headache with the drive.

Before resorting to data recovery software, or messing with another OS..

To agree with Riceburner, slave the drive. I use a separate working pc for that in case the sata controller is shot or in case windows is corrupt, then mount inside as a slave, or from outside the case using sata to usb adapter or from within an external drive case. See if the good pc can detect and read any of the drive thru 'My Computer'. If so, files can be recovered to cd/dvd/usb stick/another external hard drive, or create another partition on that drive to store the data. Can even use the good pc to virues/malware scan defrag /cleanup the bad drive. Saved a lot of drives that way. Easier to fix drives when they're not trying to boot the OS.. Those scans can take some time, I usually start them b4 going to sleep.

Good luck !


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