[NHgirl]

Newbie warning!! I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous so please bear with me.

I have a Dell laptop which would not boot (2 months out of warranty) so I bought a new drive and installed and reinstalled the OS and drivers and major applications. Now I'm trying to access the files on the old drive.

Bought a SATA enclosure and installed the old drive and up pops the files. The only problem is that when I try to access them, I receive the following error: E:/... is not accessible. Access is denied.

What now?? The files were from a privileged account (mine) so I suspect there is something I need to do to change protection or get to someplace where a password is required. Right??

Any assistance would be appreciated, GREATLY!!



Dell Vostro 1500
XP Pro

[Triple6]

Are you sure the drive simply isn't faulty? What brand is the drive?

[NHgirl]

It's a Toshiba HDD2D90 5400RPM 250GB

There is a boot sector problem. Can't boot from the disk but I'd like to pull the files if I can get to them.

I can get to the other user's files and see them but can't get to my own. I set my account up with Administrator privileges. Could that be the problem??

[Triple6]

Ok then.

Here's a list of data recovery tools complied by another user, Elvandil. Start with TestDisk.

Originally Posted by Elvandil

Free:

Testdisk Documentation
Testdisk Download
DriveRescue
Testdisk Boot Disk
Partition Find & Mount
Free DTIData NTFS Partition Repair Tool

Commercial:

Diskinternals Partition Recovery (Demo)
Active@ Partition Recovery
Bootmaster Partition Recovery
ZAR Partition Recovery
DIY DataRecovery DiskPatch
Partition Table Doctor
Nucleus Kernel Recovery for NTFS

[NHgirl]

Thank you for te pointers. I'll try that and let you know.

I appreciate your help.

Thanx!

[NHgirl]

I ran TestDisk as you recommended and get to the Data Recovrey Untility and it errors out with the following:
Read error at 65/17/15 (1ba=1045... (lost the rest, I wasn't quick enough
It keeps on giving more read errors for successive areas

67/2/1 and more.

I'm WAAAYYY over my head here. Is it actually running a data recovery on the effected disk?? If so, how long will it run??

I'm not interested in repairing the boot sector as I've already replaced the disk and have all the software loaded but just want to recover some of the files. I had some of them on backup but wanted to be sure I've got them all.

Thanx so much for your guidance.

[Triple6]

I doubt the problem is as much with the boot sector but rather that its a faulty drive.

I kinda miss quoted the previous utilities, they are more for the recovery of the partition or file system of a drive, they would have made the data recovery much simpler if they worked all lowing you to directly access the drive if perfectly successfully but it seems the drive is worse off.

But here's a new list to pick from also complied by Elvandil:

Free recovery applications:

Pandora Recovery (Free for personal use)
Smart Data Recovery
Recover Files
Roadkil's Undelete
Recuva
Restoration
Free Undelete (NTFS only)
Softperfect File Recovery
ADRC Data Recovery Tools
Undelete Plus
Data Recovery
PCI File Recovery
DriveRescue
Ultimate Data Recovery
Disk Investigator

Commercial:

O&O Disk Recovery
Paragon Mount Everything (Mounts any file system, CD/DVD burning, File Manager, Partitioner)
GetDataBack (For FAT or NTFS)
Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro
File Scavenger
Recover My Files
RecoverPlus Pro
Zero Assumption Recovery
Active@ File Recovery
Final Recovery
Recover4All Professional
Easeus Data Recovery Wizard
NTFS Recovery

These are more of what you may want to attempt recovery off data off the drive.

[NHgirl]

Sigh... I guess I'm facing a dim prospect, huh?? Well, I'm glad I got most of the data from the disk. The TestDisk is still running after more than 1.75 hours. It's gone through 82% of the disk so I'll let that finish. It has come up with several errors on various 'cylinders' for whatever that tells you.

I'll try these other tools and see if any of them help me recover the data. A friend told me that the disk is probably junk but I wanted to try to see if I could salvage any of this.

Is there any sense in trying to save the disk?? Should I just cut my losses and move on?? I have most of the data on a couple of auxiliary external drives anyway. If I can't recover files, can a initialize the disk and use it or should I just just trash it??

Thanx for your time AGAIN!!

[Triple6]

If the drive is reporting errors then its likely faulty. But to confirm you would have to run a hard drive diagnostics. The IBM/Hitachi diagnostics should be able to test it since Toshiba does not have its won diagnostics utility: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/technolo/dft/dftnew.htm

As for the data, if its valuable to you then its worth retrieving; if not then its not. But you have little too lose other then a tiny bit more of time to let TestDisk finish.

[NHgirl]

Triple6,

Thank you for trying to help me out with this. I finally gave up and took the drive up to the Geek Squad and they recovered 5 DVDs of my 'stuff' from the disk. Most of this was pictures that I would have hated to lose. I did have most of it up until January but had done a lot of weeding since then. I guess it was worth the money. ($158)

I have learned a valuable lesson. I will ALWAYS back up my data!! This has been a huge eye-opener for me. I have replaced everything where it should be and done my first backup using ntbackup.exe from XP. It was simple and quick and since I already owned it, didn't cost me any extra.

Thanx again for trying to assist this newbie.

NHgirl

[Hughv]

For next time:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421