atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Hard Drive Failure

Ok I know the first question and you know the answer before you ask it. When's the last time you did a backup. NEVER. The bad part is 2 months ago I was at Sam's and bought a new 160G HD was just waiting until things slowed down a bit to install it.
Anyone know a company that can rescue the data that reasonable?

I use a clean room over in Grand Prairie, Texas. It normally runs between $800-1300.

If it's not worth it to you consider this. It's usually the electronics on the board and not the actual drive inside. I have in the past been able to take an identical drive, remove the board from it, and put it on my old drive, bring it up and recover data.

If you want the clean room's contact info let me know.

I moved the HD to a different PC and can see it from a command window and access some files but then I get the error cant read a r f. So I think it's data this time not electronics. I dont think the clean room can help if the data is messed up or can they?

Our bookeepers drive slung a rod a few months back and I took a gamble with software from these folks. https://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

It was about 120.00 and I was able to install the bad drive as a slave in my machine and the software did the trick. I was not able to see anything on the drive prior to running it thorugh the software. I was not able to completely bring the drive back where it would boot on it's own but I was able to get all the data I wanted then was able to reinstall a fressh copy of XP.

I have never tried the above mentioned software but I'll throw this out that since the late '80s I have never been disappointed in Spinrite from Gibson Research, I have used it on some pretty sad looking situations and for real can’t think of a time when it would not resurrect a failing drive and in most cases turn what was looking like a drive on its way to the dumpster into a drive that lasted for years.
Believe me I don’t work for them but when you see what it can do you’ll know why I say all this about it.
Bottom line as long as the controller card can see the drive spinrite is a pretty sure bet that ANYTHING on the drive can be retrieved or rebuilt, it will work with any FAT structure, NTFS, Linux, floppie, pen drive,zip disk, you name it and best of all a money back guarantee. A lot of good reading both how a drive works and what Spinrite can do to them at the website, if you have never been there take a look and while there run a “SHIELDS UP” test “FREE”, pretty spooky just how many vulnerable ports are left open in an average winblow$ install, just my 2 cents……..Happy Turkey Day to ALL

https://www.grc.com/

Steve, moving one drive to another machine can corrupt files. Normally, one would not do this. You best bet is to take the drive and install it as a slave drive on a windows machine and recover what you can.

On a side note. I got a call from the secretary of our church. Her computer had just crashed. Lucky for me, I had installed an external backup drive and Norton Ghost and had been doing nightly backups. Had her machine fixed in about 45 minutes. I can't stress enough to everyone who uses a computer to get an external drive and run Norton Ghost. You can get a Seagate 160 gigs for under a $100 at one of the superstores, and there is always stuff on line. It has saved me a ton. And avoid the external drives you make yourself. They tend to be nothing but headaches. Get one from a reliable manufactor, Seagate, WD, Maxtor.. and off you go. Then get a copy of Ghost 9 or 10. Make sure you get the version that comes with the recovery CD. It will boot, recognize the external drive, and allow you to restore drives.

Believe it or not, I've had them recover stuff even after reformatting.

The suggestion about moving over as a slave is a good one though. If it's just the boot sector that is bad you might recover everything.

All is almost well.
Thanks to Reb for the link I jumped at the first one sent. I downloaded the demo after installing back into the same PC with a new HD ran the demo and it was able to read the files. $129 vs $499 quote from the clean room of corse after counting time maybe about even. I have been able to get the word docs and pdf stuff so far I hope I can recover the outlook express I hate to loose all those email's and addresses. will let yall know more on Monday. Taking the rest of the week off. Hope all have a great Turkey Day

That's GREAT! Please post back and let us know how you come out. I may want to get a copy of that software and play with it for future issues. I hate it when a voicemail system crashes and they have no backups.

BTW, like Z-Man suggested, I keep an extra desktop running on my network. There is a complete virgin ghosted image of every computer on my system on there, and a complete ghosted image goes to that machine everynight.

I use Symantec Ghost instead of Norton Ghost. They're made by the same people but licensing is cheaper for Symantec due to the way they have it structured. Norton is more of the over the counter version you get at Office Depot. Symantec version is best ordered online.

My vote goes to Spinrite. If you're getting read errors, it can almost always recover the whole drive. I usually run it on all my drives about every 3-4 months just to check and refresh everything.