Storage Solutions Recovering Data from a Crashed HDD?

Aditya

Skilled
Hey!

Well the inevitable happened.

My Maxtor 300GB Crashed. Im sure it was the damn P5B Deluxe's Dual boots that crashed it. Gah.. anyways..

Well, what softwares can I use to recover the Data?

Im using Stellar Pheonix Windows Data Recovery, it reads my HDD perfectly, all folders were there, but I need to buy it to recover the Data.

Right now, I can only see the Data.

Its 100$ to buy, and, If it doesnt work, after I buy it. That would completely SUCK.

What should I do?

Any other softwares around that surely work?

Thanks!

Ad1tya.
 
the last time such a thing happened to me, I had used GetBackData for NTFS and it worked very well.

Aditya said:
Edit : Admin, please change the Topic to "Recovering Data from a Crashed HDD?"
isnt that what the title say now? :S
 
Hey you can use hiren's bootcd also.

Straight away boot from that cd after downloading and burning the cd.

And then using the recovery softwares which are built-in you can copy data from ur conked off hdd to a working hdd.
 
@Ad1, can you tell us exactly what happened? What do you mean by crashed?

Are the partitions not visible? Files got deleted but partitions are there?
 
Partitions are still there..

Windows Disk Management reads them as 100% Free.

While, If i try to click on them, I get an error "drive is not accesible"...

Well, Stellar reads all the files perfectly there, Im trying to backup some data now.

Full detailed list of what happened.

Well, I started the computer, and when it booted, it gave a Check Disk, on Drive D:\ (10GB Partition of Windows, Old OS Drive fortunately), It found a bad something, not bad sector, and deleted it. It took like 5 mins for that. Finally it got into Windows, and everything was fine.

Until I tried to load a shortcut off "E drive" which is a 270GB DATA Partition...

Thats when I found out..
 
Looks like your partition table got corrupted half way...

So backing up the data now na, hope on another drive...

Oh and after you are done, can ur hdd be my guinea pig, wanna try something kindof drastic (nothing physical, just softwarish)...

Oh and one more thing, can you install find and mount

Partition Find and Mount — painless partition recovery software

and tell me after you search for the partitions and mount them, if you can see the data there.
 
All I* wonder what makes a HDD Crash & have BAD sector so often ?
Is it due to Excesive use of the system or the system HDD running Hot (40C +) for too long???

Really having gone through a HDD crash just last month of my 250 GB hdd, & being a victim of data loss, this is a issue which always rakes up my mind( hope ur too)

So any body have a CLEAR cut simple answer about this expensive data loss isuue & better how to prevent it at all???? :huh:

about my HDD recovery, I didn't have the heart to do the data recovery all myself (coz there were really some rare ,very very precious files in there without backup) & which I could Not take the risk of recovering them by myself,me being a novice@this job. So gave it to a third party for the recovery job, who cheated me like anything & billed me a 10k fig for the job which got done in about a week!. I was left without any option except paying that hell of an amount,knowing fully well, the job didn't cost him more than 100 bucks!!!

However once bitten,twice shy, after this incident, i probably trying to get a little smarter, have almost every other Recovery tools available on the NET(FV-all) & trying hard to learn the recovery process since then!!!
** About STELLAR PHEONIX, i have heard the Interface is NOT so user friendly! (in't my personal opinion)!

Discussion is More than Welcome is this Vexed issue of HDD Bad Sectors,Data Loss & Data recovery! So plz keep posting!:help: :please:
 
To Techie#1: The way data recovery guys charge is on estimated value of data, not the size or the difficulty of recovery.

I am getting a professional recovery done on deliberately deleted data at my workplace, and the initial estimate is well in excess of Rs 50,000/-. That is because the data is valued very high, in the order of lakhs of rupees, even though the total size is about 40 GB only.

I would say if you spent a lot of time and internet money downloading all that data ;) the money you spent on recovery is just a little expensive but not a con job.

The best way to avoid data loss is a backup, preferably on tape or another disk. There is simply no other failsafe way. Even the software can fail in some instances to recover some data, specially old or overwritten files, and physically damaged disks. A hard disk is as liable to fail as any other component, maybe more because it has moving parts.
 
Techie#1 said:
So any body have a CLEAR cut simple answer about this expensive data loss isuue & better how to prevent it at all???? :huh:

You know the answer to this already, its called backup.

preferably 2 options, optic as well as another HD.

I mirror all my stuff to a pair of redundnant HDs. I don't bother with RAID, its just open box, stick pci card in and hookup older IDE drive, sync. Done.

NB: this requires you to have 2xthe storage you currently have. But since older drives have shit resale value, ie no one wants to buy them unless there is a waranty, they are excellent for backups.

some things i backup to dvd as well. But to be safe with optic, you need to have a writer that can do quality scans so you can be more confidnet of recovery if the case arises. This means you need a dvd-wirter that can do quality scanning reliably.

AS you said, data recovery is costly, that is the case everywhere, market is willing to pay high sums to recover important data. You were lucky in india to pay $hundreds, when i was in the US, the price started in $thousands !!

What i have suggested to you above is the most effective and cheapest way to be safe. Recovery software is only good when the drive itself is not damaged ie it won't save you from the worst case scenario. Your odds are 50-50, maybe the drive can be read maybe not, if you have redundant backup, then your chances increase.

But then you have maintenance duty, (see..most ppl are unwilling to do this), i mirror everything once a month, its just using Syncback software, syncing is much faster than duplicating. It's free but only works for everything *but* the windows/sytem partition. You need imaging software to back that up. Provided you separate system from apps from data, you will be fine.
 
Make sure that you save the recovered data onto another HDD. You cannot use the same HDD for a recovery as you will write over the current data and the new write will not be at the same location on disk....at least I think it's not possible unless there is some software that can save the reconstructed disk file and folder structure in memory and recreate the Master File Table on the same disk.
 
I would recommend GetDataBack for NTFS.

its not freeware so you have to use other methods to make it free :p
 
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