OT: Need Data Recovery Suggestions

jrazz wrote on 7/6/2009, 12:16 PM

History:
A friend of mine lost a hard disk yesterday during a storm. I went to help him recover it and saw that the data could be found using a program demo online. He purchased it and we had to wait for several hours for the activation key to be sent via email. Once it was sent, there was also a link to a new download for the complete software. We downloaded it and ran the software after activating it and loading the log file created by the demo (showing the file structure of the disk) and it pulled up informaiton only from the recovery section of the disk- not the information the demo pulled up.

I have been online chatting with the company for the past hour and finally got a stated refund from them (they have a 100% guarantee on their software)- I was suprised to actually get the money back for him.

Their website is: http://www.recoverdatatools.com/

Need:

I need to find a place to ship the disk to or a software utility that will allow me to recover the records on this disk.

It is a 120gig Western Digital EIDE ATA drive for a Desktop. It has two partitions- 1 FAT32 for recovery files and 1 NTSF that contained the OS and all the files.

I was able to hook it up and see the FAT32 partition and the NTSF was labeled as RAW under disk management. The software above was able to find all the files and folders under Windows without issue when using the trial. Now itonly sees one partition and it is unallocated. What is weird is that the computer i have this drive hooked up to has 2 partitions on its internal hard drive and the software only shows it as one partition as well.

Anyways, anybody know of a good recovery tool that is cheap or a place to send a disk to and get the contents off without paying an arm and a leg? Preferably somewhere in the states.

j razz

Comments

ddm wrote on 7/6/2009, 1:27 PM

I think if you send it to a service you will pay dearly. I have had good results in the past with a product called R-Studio. It can take quite a while to scan a damaged drive but I have rescued several drives with this software. The problem you might be having is that the drive is getting worse. I just had a drive go bad, it started to have errors for a few days, had to run checkdisk on it, I then decided to back up my most critical data and then I could no longer boot from it. I yanked it out and put it in another machine, the machine saw it and I proceeded to copy everything to another drive, almost a full terabyte. The next morning, the drive was completely dead. I feel I dodged a bullet there, pure luck. So time can be of the essence.

MPM wrote on 7/6/2009, 2:53 PM

"I feel I dodged a bullet there"

Yeah, you did. The 1st thing you do is power off to shut down Windows -- minimizes the chances of anything getting written to disk, possibly overwriting something in the tables or data. The 2nd is to do an image backup of the disc from another PC or booting from USB/CD -- you can do an image faster than you can copy or zip everything onto another drive. Restore the image to an empty partition, & if necessary you can try as many recovery programs as you like -- if 1 mangles the content, just restore again.

I've had some luck with Partition Table Doctor, when those tables were what got messed up -- otherwise I've used several of the data recovery apps, but not one really stood out more than any other. I suppose you might track down a copy of the the forensic software the labs use.

"I think if you send it to a service you will pay dearly."

The only figures I've ever read started in the few thousand range! Supposedly they disassemble the drives in a clean room, then go over the platters manually. 'Course that could be nonsense, or not -- just stuff one service published about their biz.

rs170a wrote on 7/6/2009, 3:11 PM

I've heard extremely good things about SpinRite being able to recover data when nothing else could.

Mike

Himanshu wrote on 7/6/2009, 3:20 PM

MRM makes some good suggestions. Many people make the mistake of using the damaged drive further, e.g. by running CHKDSK and other tools. Don't.

Many years ago my Win2000 system crashed while capturing video to a 160Gb hard disk, which I now believe might have happened because the system wasn't prepped (BIOS update) for anything more than 120Gb which was the limit back then. Anyway, the software I used at that time was

http://www.runtime.org/

It worked reasonably well for the price, salvaging about 80% or more of everything I was interested in. I definitely remember losing some material/files, but that was because I had already attempted CHKDSK and other things that modified the contents of the disk.

Woodenmike wrote on 7/6/2009, 3:43 PM

MPM makes a terrific point...i wish i had thought of that when i had the last two disks go down...the 2nd time around i was backed up and only lost minimal files that hadn't been backed up yet. The first time , though it was a total loss. i had taken it in to a local source that used software recoveries that were ineffective and possibly further damaged the disk. (reading what MPM says) I then sent the drive to a clean room facility (Digital Medix) where they indicated they could see data and retrieve it...for $1500.00 (this was for a disk with just under a terabyte of pictures and audio files on it) i declined the offer and they sent the disk back with no charges and it sits in my closet as we speak. i guess the message I have is the obvious, which is redundant storage (i.e. raid 5) or at the least a daily back-up. As more folks start shooting and rendering HD, the storage issues are going to really stack up. I work in SD and already have over 10T of storage, and am needing to "clean the attic" every couple of months to keep my system open for edits.

lynn1102 wrote on 7/6/2009, 3:46 PM

Several weeks ago I hit a wrong key and formatted a wrong drive. I got a program called "get data back". For 29.95 you can get either a fat32 or ntfs version. I recovered the whole disk with the exception of one song, which I had trouble with before the format. All files and programs intact. I think the company is Runtime Software. They have a free trial and gaurantee.

Lynn

There is also a program call "get back data". This is not the same and I know nothing about it.

CClub wrote on 7/6/2009, 3:56 PM

Every situation is so different, as mentioned, and I'd hate to send you on a wild goose chase and waste more money, but I was very successful recovering data with http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/Easeus Data Recovery Wizard[/link].

There's actually a free demo that will show you what their program can recover; if it shows the files you know you lost, it would be worth the $69 to buy the full version. There's also a pro version... not sure the differences.

MPM wrote on 7/6/2009, 5:20 PM

Not a plug what-so-ever, but check out giveawayoftheday.com 7 days a week. Picked up Partition Table Doctor, which can reconstruct the tables, like after a format... [the data's all still there, but the table of contents is missing]. Also picked up half a dozen file recovery apps, including the one from Easus.

jrazz wrote on 7/6/2009, 5:35 PM

Well, I've tried Easeus and it didn't find the drive. I am currently trying- get data back and it found one of the two disks (one disk contained the Acronis backups and the other disk contained all the stuff that he was backing up- the backup disk shows unallocated and healthy but during the "get data back" scan it came up with a bunch of errors).

He feels like Murphy is out to get him seeing how both is primary and backup external drive both succumbed at the same time to errors!

He is a non-profit and all of his information is currently lost.

j razz

TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/6/2009, 5:59 PM

does he have a linux comp handy? When I'd have drive trouble I'd boot up linux to see what it sees. sometimes windows itself is having the issue & the drive can still be read.

yeah, I know it's to late now, but for next time just maker periodic updates to DVD's/CD's. they're dirt cheap & it takes as long as you use the can.

jrazz wrote on 7/7/2009, 6:37 PM

I just found this place: http://www.aerodr.com/default.asp. They charge a flat fee of 279USD for a basic drive (anything other than RAID) and they are based out of Illinois. I believe I am going to send it in to them and see what they can do. They have up to a 10 day turn around time and if they don't recover your files, they don't charge you.

The only thing I would like to know is what they charge for the replacement drive if you purchase one from them- it is a usb powered drive and they don't list a price. Surely it wouldn't be over 200USD. I'll find out.

j razz

Rain Mooder wrote on 7/7/2009, 7:35 PM

If your problem is that the partition table and the data was scrambled then the runtime.org tools are the gold standard in my opinion. I have recovered many disks that were corrupted by operating system malfunctions using GetDataBack.

If the drive clicks, sounds like it is spinning off-axis or manifests any physical problems you need to stop now and figure out if you have the $300+ it is going to take to send this item to a professional. There are many and either of the top 3 are good options. I've used drivesavers.com before.

//Have lost man TB of data in my time...