Hard Drive Recovery Program (1 Viewer)

[Adam Sanchez]

I'm trying to think of the name of a HD recovery program I onced used. I believe it was 2 words with the word disk being one of them. Any ideas?

Or if anyone could just suggest some good recovery HD apps, that would work too.

My brother is having PC problems. Again. This time his hard drive is screwing up. It is making clicking sounds. Now I have heard this can either be it's physically going out, or be sector errors, which can possibly be fixed. This HD is only 6 months old... and it's not the first time this has happened. I have no idea why he has had this problem more than once. Each time it has been with a different hard drive... even different brands. The computer itself is all different too. I don't get it...

 

[Mike Fassler]

i beleive disc commander may be what you are looking for!

 

[DaveF]

Stop! Do not run a recovery program! The clicking indicates mechanical failure and running a recovery app increases the risk of damage and permanently losing the data.

Do not use the hard-drive anymore. Remove it from the computer. Contact Gillware and send the hard-drive to them for recovery. It will cost $400 - $700 if they can recover the desired data. It will cost $6 in shipping if they can't help you.

Read my thread from last week on my hard-drive failure.
Hard drive crash! How to recover data & info?

 

[SethH]

I personally disagree with the above. I know Dave recently lost his data, and that really, really sucks. But your drive is still fuctioning. How much data is on there that CAN NOT be lost? My guess is that it's not all that much -- as most people only have a few GB's of really important stuff. I would back all of that up as quickly as possible onto CD's, DVD's, or another HD. After you've done that, then run the recovery programs that have been mentioned.

 

[Christian Behrens]

If it's still working, indeed, backup all the most important data IMMEDIATELY.

Then what you could try is to make a sector based copy of your failing drive to a new one. Ideally you would boot from a different medium (i.e. CD) to run a tool to do that, for example a Linux CD that contains dd_rescue. That *might* give you all your data back.

However, whatever you do, be extremely careful, and have someone help you if you feel uncomfortable with this! The key really is to use the drive as little as possible, and only for getting data off it.

-Christian

 

[DaveF]

I did too, until I lost my most valuable data

If the drive is still working, despite the clicking sounds, then you could try copying the critical data off of it ASAP.

Regardless, stop writing data to it. If this is the C: (or boot) drive, I suggest stop using the computer. Remove the drive and connect it to another computer as a secondary, slave (D drive. Then try to get your data.

But if you can't copy data normally within windows, and it's clicking, I reiterate my suggestion to send it to professionals. You may have luck with an $40-$80 program. Or you can cause further harm, risk increasing the cost of professional recovery, and risk losing the data wholly. How much is the dat worth to your friend?

Another bit of practical advice: if you run a recovery program, like GetDataBack from http://runtime.org and it's taking more than an hour or two to scan the entire drive, quit. There's a hardware failure and you're only causing more trouble. I wish I had known that before attempting my own recovery.