Computer Help

[Russell]

I have a 1.5 Western Digital Caviar Green hard drive that I am looking to get some data from. I originally thought that the drive had completely died on me but I am beginning to think that it has a damaged NTFS boot sector. I have not completely run the Western Digital diagnostic tool but on startup the diagnostic tool says that the drive is 100% functioning but needs to be formatted as it has no valid partition… which is the problem as I know that there is a valid NTFS partition on that drive. I created a GParted LiveCD with a copy of cgsecurity.org – TestDisk when I try to mount the drive in Linux I get an error message and after completing a Deep Scan using TestDisk on the drive it has yet to turn up any valid partitions. Does anyone have any suggestions for data recovery tools? This drive was almost completely full and I would really like to get some of my data back.

[luunta]

Re: Computer Help

You live in Calgary right? Call memory express.

[darkmanCANADA]

Re: Computer Help

You may want to try PING: http://ping.windowsdream.com/

I have used it to clone dying drives before with good success

Also Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

However I would suggest getting a bigger drive than the original. I recovered an accidentally formated 250GB which ballooned in size to almost a TB and it took almost 2 days. On the upside I was able to get all the files back for the person

Someone I talked to suggested Fixboot: http://www.ptdd.com/fixboot.htm

REMEMBER these are only suggestions. Whatever you do is up to you.

[Kor]

Re: Computer Help

This is a highly useful tool:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Might be something in there that can help recover your data.

[Russell]

Re: Computer Help

Bit of a stupid question maybe but I will see if someone can explain it to me.

The drive that is currently not working was 100% data, it did not have a bootable partition on it… should this not make repairing the partition table easier to reconstruct? (if that is my problem).

You live in Calgary right? Call memory express.

Im willing to bet that Memory Epxress will charge me an arm and a leg to try and get the boot sector back. But I will call and see what they say.

You may want to try PING: http://ping.windowsdream.com/

I have used it to clone dying drives before with good success

Also Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

However I would suggest getting a bigger drive than the original. I recovered an accidentally formated 250GB which ballooned in size to almost a TB and it took almost 2 days. On the upside I was able to get all the files back for the person

Someone I talked to suggested Fixboot: http://www.ptdd.com/fixboot.htm

REMEMBER these are only suggestions. Whatever you do is up to you.

I'm not sure if my drive is 100% dying or that the boot sector got corrupted

[darkmanCANADA]

Re: Computer Help

This may or may not work

http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz/r...ot_sector.html

[Vulcan]

Re: Computer Help

You can try to image the drive with AccessData FTK Imager. It will do a bit by bit copy of the entire drive. You can also use it to copy data from the drive or from the image you create. Best of all FTK Imager is free!!