Can anyone recommend software for hard drive recovery?

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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6 Sep 2005
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Not recovering files however but for fixing (as much as possible) bad sectors.

I've got a Western Digital 1.5TB that's so knackered even the Data Lifeguard tools gave up after a few minutes. :eek::mad:

I can see the directory structure of the drive though and what's there but I can't access it, it just crashes Explorer.

So I'm either looking for software that can sort out the bad sectors or something that will allow me to copy the data that is there onto another drive without crashing constantly...freeware/open source would be preferred of course!

Any hints would be greatly appreciated! :)

Many thank!
 
I've had a 2TB WD disk do exactly the same thing to me recently. Fortunately I noticed it misbehaving and made a copy of the files I needed in time. Eventually, the root of the disk became inaccessible (crashes explorer) so it's pretty much dead now.

During the time it was acting strange, I could run chkdsk and it would restore accessibility to some folders but it really was a hit and miss operation.

Have you been getting SMART errors? And if anyone has any ideas I'd like to hear them too.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Errr not that I know of, nothing of note came up. but looking on it in HD Tune it seems pretty much destroyed.

I'm currently running HDAT2 to see if it can repair the bad sectors, I think it's going to take more than 8 hours so it'll be an all night job. :(
 
Nah it's not that, I know WDs do get hot but it's cool while it's been doing, I think it's pretty much knackered really.

I'm going to have a look now and see if it's possible to upgrade the firmware on WD drives as that seems to be the latest problem.

I'm trying to run a repair scan with HDAT2 and at teh moment it seems to just be looking at blocks of sectors rather than the individual sectors...currently it's at block 43 of 127 and has been at it over an hour.

When it started the first time I could watch it whizzing through each sector, now it's said about this firmware corruption all it seems to be doing is saying (for each sector block):
Verify 0000000000042 - ID not found.

Doesn't seem good. :(
 
Zap said:
why are you even trying to fix it? Send it back.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure where the receipt is off hand (don't know whether that matters or not, it's obviously still in warranty).

There is data on there I want to retrieve, nothing crucial but stuff I want to retrieve if possible.

It's a learning experience, if I can get it to a state where I can recover the data I'll have learnt something and I can send it away then.

Finally if I do get it working there will be a written account of what to do for other people like theheyes to follow.
 
hirens bootcd and hdd regenerator comes to mind :)

Runs outside of windows so it wont crash or struggle with any luck....

Hirens bootcd also has a winpe mode which can run outside of windows and you may have more joy to see and copy your files across, or try unstoppable copier which is designed to get files off as best it can even on hdds with bad sectors.

Your best bet is trying to get files off slowly and one file or folder at a time...

Im surprised the WD tools couldnt do much, I recall when my 1tb WD green drive was dieing and not even showing up in computer managment let alone device manager... but was showing in bios, WD tool prompted me would you like the WD tools to fix the errors on your drive to allow you to copy your data ? Ive never clicked yes as that fast... it worked but took 12hrs and died 6hrs later :)
 
File Recovery

I use GetDataBack, works well but not free, a trial version is available you can use it to see what is recoverable, but to actually recover your data a payment is required,

Mole
 
Aim testdisk at it and leave it overnight (possibly longer)

I have recovered corrupted files with it before (partially corrupted JPEGs which were somewhat visible after)

Exceptionally long process however (Made even more so by corruption). If it's just corruption you might get somewhere if it's a physical problem you may be well out of luck.
 
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