Meier_Link

Next weekend I told my cousin I'd try to help him get some data off a drive that XP isn't reading anymore. I'll have to look at it before I know if it is a complete mechanical failure or just corruption. I want to use the best utility I can get my hands on to try to save his files, and I was wondering if anyone has experience with PC Inspector File Recovery, as it is free. Where I used to work we used R-Studio and it worked pretty well. I know Ontrack has a reputation for good data recovery, if he doesn't mind the high price and I can't get the files I might recommend he send the drive off to them.

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Lebell

I've had good luck with Spinrite

Not to expensive either.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

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meanSpleen

You can also try grabbing a copy of either Hiren's BootCD or MiniPE. They are both bootable CD's that have a ton of utilities, including data recovery tools.

Hiren's BootCD - http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
MiniPE - http://www.minipe.org/

Hiren's BootCD is pretty much no-frills, and is not pretty to look at. All the applications load up from DOS, and the start to boot to load time is very fast. Average boot time for me is 15-30 seconds.

MiniPE uses whatever Microsoft's bootable cd-OS is. It has some of the same stuff Hiren's BootCD has, but MORE. And it has a GUI. The start to boot to load time is about 10 times longer than Hiren's. Maybe a minute or three minutes total depending on your system.

I use Hiren's almost exclusively, except in the rare instances where it doesn't work/doesn't have what I need. Then I'll drag out MiniPE.

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Rekna

75% of the failures i've recovered from i was able to get data off them by slaving the drive and booting into windows or linux and then using rstudio (in windows) or cp (in linux).

in the other 25% the controller board on the drive was shorted and it wouldn't even spin up. In that case I wasn't able to get anything back.

Hain

I have used PC Inspector File Recovery and Recuva successfully for recovering files, but not from hard drives that windows does not recognize...

Even when my friend installed Linux over my media drive, windows would still recognize it and I could recover my media.

Good luck.

echo5delta

I've got a quick, easy, but somewhat related question - I have a big WD external HD that WinXP decided to run CHKDSK on last year, and I was afraid of pulling the plug on it. It turned about 270 GB of data (inlcuding all types of video files and a ton of MP3s) into *.CHK files.

I've since stopped using that PC, and the files are all there on the HD. I can right click, open with, and use all the files just fine now... but only one at a time.

Do any of the recovery tools mentioned restore *.CHK files to their original format? Anyone know the best way I can go about this without renaming each file individually?

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meanSpleen

This could handle a separate thread, but anyway:

There are a bunch of tools that can help you rename files. pfrank and ant renamer come to mind. They are both free, and can help you quickly and easily rename files.

pfrank - http://www3.telus.net/pfrank/
ant renamer - http://www.antp.be/software/renamer

pfrank has a greater learning curve than ant does. Since we're just renaming extensions, I would go ahead and just use ant renamer.

Click on "Add folders..."
Choose a folder (it helps if the entire folder contains the files that are all going to have the same extension, like mp3. You may want to organize them first)
Click on Actions
Choose Change extension
Enter the extension - example: mp3
Click on Go, and thats it!

(I'm pretty sure there is another thread about renaming files on here somewhere)

Edit: - http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=109127

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arch13

Nearly any decent data recovery tool can help you if you simply need to undelet files. Since a file is not actually deleted to begin with.

1. When you "delete" a file, the OS removes the header information from it. This essentially orphans the file to be written over when space is needed. If the drive can be read as a slave, almost any program can find thos orphaned files and write new headers, essentially "reviving" the file and linking it back to the file system.

2. If the Master boot record was deleted, follow the instructions here" http://pcpropaganda.wordpress.com/20...ot-record-mbr/
to write a new MBR. That will allow the drive to be a bootable partition and access the windows system file again.

3. Worst of all is corruption or loss of the file system table. The % this happen to is so small as to be unrealistic. This would involve the drive being seen by the BIOS, spinning up, being seen by windows, but major kernal panics if you try to double click on the drive. I have never seen it where copying 5+ gigs and a kernal panic where not involved. If that is the case, you would need a data carving utility like foremost for linux. It's the kind of tool the FBI and NSA use for reviving lost infoormation from a recovered data disk. It's not within the realm of 99.9% of casual users and is linux command line only. If someone knows of a windows data carving utility, please mention it, as it may be easier to use.

I would recomend trying 1 & 2. If the data is of great personal importance (and I mean SEC required financial statements, HIPA Records, Legal Documents in a pending trial, etc) then pay for proffesional recovery. If what was lost is divx movies, mp3's, and old term papers. I suspect it's best to call it a loss if ! & 2 don't work.

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