Can somebody please help?
My C:\ is a WD300BB (Western Digital 30gb). I ran Disk Defragmentation and when i finished I ran Scan Disk. Scan Disk wanted me to restart first. With the Restart it never loaded my XP, instead I recieved a message to start up in "Safe Mode" or "Safe Mode With Networklng" or "Safe Mode with Comand Prompt" or "Normal Windows".
No matter which one I choose, my Computer starts up, up to the black screen with the XP logo and blue bar showing progress. The next moment it just restarts again.
I think my partition table is broken.
I've tried fixing the problem by booting with XP cd and restore/fix, with no success. It wants me to format the HDD and re-install XP.
There is no software tool from hard drive manufacturer that I can find.
I've even made a old 20gb HDD as my C:\ (master) and installed XP on it, then connected my 30gb HDD as slave to try and recover the data. My 30gb is displayed in explorer and Disk Management, but it is not accessable.
How can I retrieve/save my data from that HDD? Or how can I fix my HDD?
First step is to STOP WRITING to the hard disk! Remove it and install it as a secondary drive in a different machine, you can recovery whatever data is accessable that way.
i have stopped wrting to it. it is basically in another machine.
i took it out, put a old 20gb in, installed fresh copy of xp onto 20gb, then added 30gb as slave.
Go on your working hard drive, goto command prompt and type chkdsk volume:/f. Where you see "volume", replace with either C: or E: (whichever the NON WORKING drive is). This will re-write all the sectors and tracks onto the hard drive, whilst keeping your files in-tact.
OR
Goto My Computer, right click and goto properties - from here go to tools and then goto error checking and check now - finally tick the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
Do NOT do a CHKDSK on the drive until you've tried other recovery methods! CHKDSK /F is very likely to delete anything it doesn't recognize, it's not very bright about data recovery.
Look for a utility on the internet called Get Data Back. It is used to recover lost files, partitions...here, just check out this website where the program is. I've used it a few times, and it does a very comprehensive job of restoring lost files.
I cannot imagine why. You know when you have important data on a hard drive and don't back it up, aren't you really just asking for trouble? Recovering data fropm a dead drive is a specialty and worth the $ you have to pay if the data is.
I put the hdd into another pc and ran FINDNTFS.
I recieved the following log file below when finished.
Does this mean my HDD is stuffed and I can't retrieve any data from it?
What do you suggest is a good data recovery software?
Thanx for the help so far.
===============================
FindNTFS, version 2.05 - for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
Copyright Svend Olaf Mikkelsen, 2006.
Directories: 0
Files: 0
Trees: 0
Exe/dll files: 0
Exe/dll files signature: 0
Cluster KB: 4
MFT record used: None
There were sectors, which could not be read.
First read error in this search CHS: 392 187 11
Last read error in this search CHS: 392 202 9
Well, you might try some of the other data recovery utilities. In general, if a serious hardware faulure occurs with a hard disk, you're unlikely to recover some or all of the data, that's the way it works.
Ok, i did get my data restored.
Somebody else did it for me.
all you need is a data recovery programme and time.
Why was it so difficult for someone to mention a name of a good data recovery programme? well, thanks for all the help and info that was given.
ps, data can be restorred even if hard drive was formatted or in a fire.
data is not easilly removed permanently from a hard drive.
hope this info helps someone else.
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