recovering files from bad HD

[sswats]

my sister managed to drop the whole computer (not a laptop, A BIG ASS COMPUTER).

Anyway I got a missing or corrupt file when trying to start windows. and then chkdisk reported errors when i ran that.

so i bung in he HD to my PC and I'm trying to copy the files and I'm getting "cyclic redundancy" and "cannot read" errors on a lot of files

what can i do to recover these files?

edit: forgot to mention. when i tried to do a virus scan or any type of scan which looks at the hard disk my PC freezes, and the reset button has to be pressed.
I tried a couple demos of recovery programs but they all scan the whole disk when i just want to access the documenst and settings folder.

 

[Captain Fizz]

It definitely sounds like the HDD is physically damaged.

You can try ghosting the drive to a new one - Ghost can ignore the errors it cannot get, copy accross what it can.
Then work from the new disk and extract the files using GetDataBack(NTFS) or Ontrack - Easy Recovery Pro. (There are others)

Or try those programs on the disk directly, but every second the drive is up and running, more damage could be getting caused.
Which is why it's better to ghost the drive to another, then work on it.


EDIT - Yep - After your edit, the HDD is physically damaged.
Ghosting would be the only way to get any usable amount of data from it.
If you have another HDD the same size or bigger, use the 'Image All' option within Ghost v7 or 8 and ignore read errors.

People will suggest Acronis - I've never used it in this way but theoretically it should be able to do the same thing.