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is there a way to recover data from a "dead" hdd?

Discussion in 'Overclocking & Hardware' started by CerealKiller, Apr 29, 2002.

  1. CerealKiller

    CerealKiller Member

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    as above. background info

    inshort. have 'cuda IV die on me. (not overclocking anything). i lost ALL my data. no other place to restore it from. very pissed off. is there a way to recover it?

    Things the disk CAN do: :D
    load up in BIOS (50/50)
    "accessed" by hdd management facilities (ie. PQ Partition Magic 7.0, IBM Drive Fitness Test)

    Things it CANNOT do: :(
    write/read from the disk.
    i think that sums it up.

    I've tried to ghost an image of the drive onto another but it won't let me...something about an "MFT error". In PMagic I try to resize and copy to another partition but it says something about "incorrectly mounted" or something like that.

    I REALLY need to get the stuff off this drive cos it's stuff like my resume etc...

    edit: if this seems very short/brief its because i installed win98 in about 45 minutes on a spare drive and i cbf'd installing all the drivers for video/LAN etc...just the bare essentials (aka O@H NIC)...so I'm viewing this in 16 colours (which is hurting my eyes) and @ 600x480....
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2002
  2. haXor

    haXor Member

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    I am just a figment of your imagination...
    there are companys that are recovering data from HDD's from the twin towers when they copped water dust fire ect... and they have been quite successful at it too.
    However at about $40k to $60k each, I'm not sure that it may justify it, and they dont gaurantee that they can recover the data eathier.
     
  3. OP
    OP
    CerealKiller

    CerealKiller Member

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    ^ anyone?
     
  4. GaulHahn

    GaulHahn Member

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    I know a scanning electron microscope can read overwritten data on hard drives but costs about as much as a small european country! Not sure if it can read corrupted data though?
     
  5. Mattk

    Mattk New Member

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    hmmmmm

    OK if the HDD is cactus , you must rebuild it to recover data from it , In otherwords put the disk into a working unit . or what ever .
    Otherwise you will not recover the data from a cactus HDD .
    ( the data is on a magnetic disc , some have readers that you put the disc into to recover data , so pay the ??$$ to have a proffesional do the recovery or rebuild the drive )

    Matt:cool:
     
  6. OP
    OP
    CerealKiller

    CerealKiller Member

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    that's crap cos i void the warranty of 2 discs :(
     
  7. Mattk

    Mattk New Member

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    hmmmmm

    OK if your HDD is Cactus ( faulty ) ( Broken ) ( Busted ) you tell me how to retreave the data then ! cos a faulty drive aint going to work now is it , so you either put the magnetic disc into a universal reader ( for recovering data from cactus drives ) or have the original drive fixed .

    Matt:D
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2002
  8. Blakey

    Blakey Member

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    Don't give up yet

    As long as the drive still spins up and is detected by the bios, then you can use some software to directly access the disk and copy the files off. The directory structure will be horriffic, and some file names may be different, but you get your data back.

    The program I've used with great success is called (funnily enough) getdataback for fat or getdataback for ntfs.

    You can get it here

    The unregistered version will show you the data you can recover, and once it's registered you can copy it off. It's up to you whether you pay for it or not.

    Have a go.

    Blakey.
     
  9. OP
    OP
    CerealKiller

    CerealKiller Member

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    there is no way...i had to bear the pain and i lost all my data :( got it RA'd....grrrr
     
  10. Blakey

    Blakey Member

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    I thought you said it still spun up and was detected by the bios? I had a drive that would detect and spin up, but wouldn't show in windows, GDB managed to retrieve all the information for me. It was a slow and tedious process (took hours and hours to scan the drive) but well worth it.

    Or was I just too late with the reply?

    Oh well, as they say, if it was important you would have had a backup right? Which reminds me...

    Blakey.
     
  11. max223

    max223 Member

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    Seagate Australia use to have data-recovery service on dead hdds. It costs quite a bit and they don't guarantee they can recover anything (or anything still useful).
     
  12. Myne_h

    Myne_h Member

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    a corrupt mft table is usually reparable by NT/2k/xp
    assuming you can get an install of say 2k on another disk Run chkdsk /p (ithink its p) and it may just work.
    I dont trust ANY other program to fix ntfs
    worked for me once
    just make sure you dont use pq magic coz it just writes damaged shit to file and cannot read the ntfs repair info. Chkdsk can.
     

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