Re: Hard disk crash please help

Need a Miracle, how does testdisk work. If you download the file from them
and your computer is dead, how do you do it? Please help.

"Need a miracle" wrote:

First, sorry I posted my appeal in two sections (I also asked for help in the
"general" XP discussion thread.

And ....Test Disk has recovered ALL my data.

The only question remaining is whether I ask it to use the backup boot
partition it found, or to rebuild the boot partition.

Anyway let's close this discussion on this thread --- I'lll check the one on
XP general from now on.

Thank You Thank You.


"Paul" wrote:

Need a miracle wrote:
Hi:

Something sent a power surge through our house today and the main circuit
breaker flipped, cutting off power to my computer.

Catastrophe. The drive won't boot. Windows just doesn't see it. Even the
"dir" command DOS (which I accessed through the repair recovery console)
gives me an error that says the "directory cannot be enumerated."

Running the Windows XP CD, I'm told that there's no system there and the
drive needs to be reformatted to install it anew.

I know the data is still there. I downloaded a program called "getdataback"
and as far as I can tell, I did not lose a single user file. The preview
function works and every file I looked at seems to be fine. All I have to do
is send in $79 and the program will copy the data over, hopefully in usable
form.

But it's a holiday weekend, and if I cannot ressurect the system itself, I
will lose days reconfiguring a new system. I cannot afford this. The preview
system won't read the "identity" files from Outlook Express, so I cannot
access critical emails.

I'm in pretty deep trouble.

Please please ... is there anyway to revive this drive? How bad can the
damage be?


You need resources, to safely attempt a recovery. For example, a spare drive
to either use for an exact backup of the bad disk, or a spare drive as a
place for the recovery program to put its data. You also need something
to boot the computer with, implying another bootable drive.

The reason for making a sector by sector backup of the original disk,
is in case you are using an "in-place" recovery or restoration tool.
Or, if you suspect imminent mechanical failure of the drive (hear
clicking as the drive tries to find track zero). For example, the
following tool does stuff "in-place", and before I used a tool
like this, I would copy the entire disk to a second disk. If
you read the second link, I think you can see there is room to
make serious mistakes.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

If you purchase a blank drive, then go to the new disk drive
manufacturer's web site, they have utilities for copying the
data. Or, in the event that the utilities only accept valid
partitions, you could use the Linux "dd" command, to copy one
disk, sector by sector, to a second disk. A Linux LiveCD, such
as Knoppix (knopper.net) or Ubuntu (ubuntu.com) could be used
for that. They are a 700MB download, and require burning a CD
with the ISO9660 file you download. You'd want the new
drive to be the same size, or a little bit bigger, to
copy over the data.

I advise making a backup of the drive, as I had
a bad experience years ago doing recovery. I was using an
"in-place" tool, to recover a disk. The utility claimed to
copy the "good directory information", over the bad information,
as the file system of the computer I was working on, was known to
have duplicate structures. (This was not a Windows based PC,
but a proprietary computer.) But the program copied the
bad structure over the good one, forever dooming the
information on the disk. I learned from that experience,
to always make an image backup, before going further, in
case an "in-place" tool makes a mistake. A utility which
attempts to copy files from a bad disk to a good disk, doesn't
run the same level of risk, but also won't do as good a job
(as not all files will be recovered).

If the data has any value, you can afford to wait until after
the holiday. And have someone skilled at recovery, handle it.

Paul

.

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