data recovery

[RGraze]

I have a maxtor 40gb hd. One day when the comp got booted all the data was gone. Windows says the drive is fine but needs to be formatted. What type of data recovery software is recomended? Are there any good free ones out there?

[Johnny Fist]

The only one I ever had any luck with was GetDataBack. It sounds like you'll need to slave that drive in a working system but I won't promise it'll work.

[Midknyte]

Please look at the "best of" thread:
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154817

[RGraze]

I have the drive on my test bed now. But windows is reporting it as empty and needs format so I got my hands on magic recovery and got the data I needed off of it and when I went to do a full format I got an error stating that format failed so I then used quick format and it seemed to work but can I trust this drive?

[elroy]

Run the Maxtor utility that is available for free on their website. It will test the drive and it also has a utility to zero out the drive. This will TOTALLY erase all previous data and then you can partition and format it. If it passes the tests ok then try using it again but back up any important data.

[RGraze]

Well I ran the matrox utility and got an error code caa79d78. I guess its the end of the line since matrox doesnt offer any explanation of thier error codes and want you to RMA the drive, which is out of warranty. Thanks for all the help.