Getting Data off a possibly Duff Drive

Hi

The BIOS will recognise the size of the drive and its parameters, but if trying to boot from it, it says invalid disk or HDD error.

I took it out of that computer and put it in a caddy in another computer, and the error came up to say it was not recognised.

Is there a program that can get at some of the valuable data I have on there, as the drive seems to spin, but the surface must be corrupted.

Thanks

Mike

 

You may want to try downloading the trial version of O&O Disk Recovery from;

http://www.oo-software.com/en/datarecovery/

and see if it can see the files.

You could also try a solution using a Knoppix Live CD I outlined at;

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-nt-2000-xp/471877-trying-bypass-windows-2000-pro-2.html

in post #18.

I honestly don't know whether Knoppix will be able to see the files or not but you want have a big investment to try it, just the time to download and burn a CD.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I got so far with 0&0 registration and found it only works with XP and not 98. Well the computer that wont boot is/was Wins 98 - is this no good ?

If I take the duff HD out and put it in an XP computer, would that work

Although if what we are talking about is a "boot" cd with its own os, does this matter ?

A bit confused....

Thanks

 

I'm sorry I didn't know O&O only worked with XP. Taking the drive out and putting it into an XP machine wouldn't help because 98 is still on the hard drive.

Try the Knoppix Live CD.

 

The O&O CD has it's own operating system like a Knoppix Live CD. Neither program writes anything to the hard drive they just run off their own CD.

Knoppix requires a lot less resources than O&O and I feel sure it will work with Win98.

 

Hi

I used Knoppix, but it could not read any files off the drive - only one - Viglen.pqi.

Is there another utility in the Linux os that I should be using ?

Thanks

Mike

 

You may want to try a program called Recover My Files

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Read the information provided at the website. It says it works with FAT32 but I have never used the program and don't know that as a fact. I have seen a few postings on this board where people have used it (don't know on what systems) and it worked. Wish I could tell you more, but as I said I personally have never used the program.