Did Your Hard Drive Die?

[Baddog]

So your hard drive crashed, we know you have all of your valuable data backed up. If not shame on you. So what can you do now? Well if it was clicking or grinding you are pretty much up the creek with no paddle unless you want to spend big bucks with a recovery company that charges about $100.00 a gig. There is an extreme chance of getting the drive to work by applying adverse temperatures to it. You can wrap the drive in a moisture proof bag with the IDE and power cables hanging out of the bag and put it in the freezer for 24 hours. Then you can reinstall it into your computer and if this works you better be ready to backup or transfer your files fast before it heats up. But on the same note you can also do the reverse. Put your HD into your home oven and set the oven at about 100 degrees for about 30 minutes. When you take it out be prepared to install the cables and insulate the HD quickly, install in the computer, and if this works you better be ready to backup or transfer your files fast before it cool down. The idea of this is to expand or shrink the shaft or bearing in the HD to reduce the friction.

Next option is that the HD is still working. You can put the HD into another computer as a slave drive and back your data up.
Ok, so you formatted the wrong drive a lost all of your data. There are different programs out there that can recover you data even after a format.( As long as you have not overwritten the files on the drive, such as trying to reload Windows.)
My favorite is GetDataBack for Fat or NTFS. It can be found here (http://www.downseek.com/directory/104.asp). And if you do find your files, do not save them to the same drive that you are restoring from! And some more: Commercial recovery software list.

R-Studio http://www.r-tt.com

Disk Commander http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/ diskcommander.asp

File Rescue 2.5 http://www.file-rescue.com

GetDataBack for FAT GetDataBack for NTFS http://www.runtime.org

Norton Utilities/SystemWorks http://www.symantec.com

Undelete http://www.executive.com/consumer/undelete/undelete.asp

Hard Drive Mechanic

http://www.highergroundsoftware.com/6.html
http://www.highergroundsoftware.com/downloads2.htm

Back2Life http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/57588.html

DFSee/ http://www.dfsee.com

Fast File Recovery http://savemyfiles.com/fastfile.htm

Undelete 3.0 http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/ productdetail.asp?product_id=309884

Active UNERASER http://www.uneraser.com/undelete.htm

File Scavenge http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

File Restore http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/ filerestore.asp

File Recover 2000 / http://www.filerecover.com

Undelete http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/undelete.stm

Fast File Undelete http://www.dtidata.com/products_ff_undelete.asp

Data Recovery http://www.dtidata.com

For NTFS http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm


Last edited by Baddog on 01-17-2004 at 06:19 AM