My hard drive crashed on my home computer

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 923

You guys now of any utilities to pull data off a hard drive that crashed. I think I can still get to it if it isn't the boot drive. So I have to set up another one and see if that works but would like some options if not.

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 8:55 am

is the drive working?, i mean will it spin up and shit? cause if the drive is jammed or not spinning up for some reason, data retreival is unlikly by usual means other then professional data miners...

if the drive works, i used to have a utility that will recover deleted and formated info, ill look for it.

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 923

I think it works it boots halfway up then restarts...I think if it wasn't booting up I might be able to pull crap off of it.

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 9:08 am

actually, the utility im thinking of might just work for a system actually booting and runniong to recover old data. hmmm, might check on BM, for more input...still a little thin here for people who participate...

Joined: 25 Jan 2005 Posts: 37

don't know if i'm too late on this, but sometimes throwing a drive in the freezer can bring it back long enough to get stuff off of it

also you may want to try knoppix, its a bootable linux distro that doesn't touch your hard drive. you can boot up the OS off the CD, mount your drive and grab what you need.....it might be kind of sketchy if you are formatted for NTFS, but its worth a shot

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 923

The freezer trick is my last resort.

I got a new hard drive installed now...but I can't access the drive.

Joined: 25 Jan 2005 Posts: 37

if your running it as slave and booting up on a new drive that knoppix thing won't help you there....

you could try some standard disc recovery stuff..i have OO recovery, but have nevery actually tried it

http://www.oo-software.com/en/index.html

if something along those lines doesn't work you may be at your last resort

did you have backups of your important stuff?

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 923

No I am a complete a total dumbass...the only backup solution I have at the moment was burning CD's and I was always to lazy to do it.

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 923

I got my data off the drive.

After trying a bunch of stupid tricks...freezer dropping.

I finally got "smart" about getting the data off.

I ran a Drive Fitness Utility from IBM/Hitachi and that came back with there were bad sectors.

I went and googled for some data recovery tools figuring then that the drive can read the good sectors if the head hasn't crashed.

The first utility I downloaded just pain out sucked then I found this one.

http://www.snapfiles.com/features/filescavenger-803-406688.php

After I scanned the drive over night I was able to see all the files that I needed...but of course to recover them I needed to buy the software...at $45 it was a no brainer to buy the software and get the data.

I am so happy!!! Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 9:22 am

nice job red. dont thost data fitness utilitys repair the bad sectors and allow data access?

StaticNine Moderator Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 923

yes and tried to repair it but it would get more then half way and fail and say Hardware defective.

The Data Recovery was my only hope that it would work. I had a feeling it would for some reason.