Re: Need Data Recovery from HD

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: jazz (aprilo9_at_hotmail.com.nospam)
Date: 07/23/04 

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 18:31:09 -0400

That is because the first checkdisk has screwed up the partition table and
it no longer coresponds with the formating map. NTFS works a little
differently from fat filesystems but the concept is the same. Do not
reformat it or anything. Get easy recovery profesional or r-studios recover
software. you will prpbably also need a larger drive to stor the old data
from it. you will be able to find most if not all the data like game info,
downloaded music or other files, word documents and such like that. you just
need to make sure you have enough room to store the stuff after it is
recovered and it won't (shouldn't) allow you to stor it on the drive being
recovered.

The windows XP repair install will only replace system files so you are
pretty safe in asuming that noting important was over writen unless you
attemped to reinstall after the partition table became messed up. Most data
recovery programs will cost around 100 -300 dollars if not more. If this is
the only time you think you might ever use it then you might want to just
send it off to a recovery lab. look for one that won't void a warenty on
the drive and they usually start around 2-3 hundred dollars plus a little
fee for whatever type of medium you have them place it on (like another
drive or cds or dvds).

 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.

After you are satisfied that you have all the data you need from the drive,
you should repartition it and then reformat it and it will regain the full
80gig back. It might be a good idea to visit the manufacturers website and
download a diagnostic utility to chach the drive for errors too. Do that
only after you have done your data recovery so there is less of a chance of
sending the drive to the graveyard if it does have a problem. Also if it
stopes being reconized by the bios or the disk management snapin, the data
recovery houses can usually still recover so if it stop spinning there is
still hope. It just get a little more expensive. Definatly do not write any
thing or format the drive until after you have don your data recovery.

BTW the checkdisk on the seperate mainboard probably misinterpreted the LBA
wrong because of the way it works and that is the reason it had the error.
If it was on the original mainboard, nothign should have happend. logical
block adressing is needed on most drive over a certain size. it creatres a
CHS (cylinders-heads-sectors) address scheame larger then what the ide chips
can generaly use and does it on 2 generaly different ways. IT runs a little
program that interprets it for the IDE controler and can have different
values with different mother board chipsets. This is why the chkdsk's forced
repair saw the partitioning differently on the new mainboard and is now
showing up as a 30 somethign gig drive instead of the 80 it should be. To be
truth full it should be real easy for a data recovery program to find you
data at this stage because it will ignore the partition and formating being
reported by the drive and attempt to apply it's own algorithm to discover
what apears to be valid data. Also there should be a backup boot sector that
has the partiton and formating information from before the chkdsk made its
changes. If you havn't ran the chkdks too many time it should be able to
pick up on that and find you data with easy. If it isn't there then it is
just a matter of applying different formulas unitl it comes upo with a
likely possablility based on what it knows about file systems.In other
words.. you should get most everythign back but will probably need to
reinstall the programs to use it.

"Nehmo Sergheyev" <nehmo54@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ASdMc.33592$6t1.11115@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>
> > 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.
>
> --
> *********************
> * Nehmo Sergheyev *
> *********************
>
>

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