Help needed to recover files from HDD

k3n888

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Mar 2, 2014
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I have a HDD which crashed a few weeks back. It is detected by windows explorer but upon accessing the drive, it throws the format your drive error. For certain cases, it has shows the CRC error. We have tried several hdd recovery softwares to no avail (e.g. getbackdata, sea tools etc.). We have sent it to a trusted recovery centre here, but the costs is too steep. Was looking for alternatives and was considering to perform the following:
1. Format the drive (hopefully this resolves all the bad sectors making the drive accessible).
2. Try to recover the deleted files using a recovery software.

Question:
1. Has someone tried this before?
2. Is this a workable solution?
3. Any software recommendation?

Thanks for your advice.
Kenneth
 
Solution
Definitely do NOT Format the unit!!

The only version of Format that finds and "fixes" Bad Sectors is a Full Format. (By the way, a "fix" here means simply replacing a Bad Sector with a good one that contains junk data, so the file is corrupted.) BUT the point is that in all current Windows versions, a Full Format works by writing a test pattern to EVERY Sector and then reading it back to check that it works. This means that the old data on EVERY Sector is wiped out! You CANNOT recover any data from that!
The more you mess with it the less chance there is of recovering anything useful. If the data is that important do things the right way and take it to a data recovery service. They have the proper tools required to extract data from a failed drive, including opening the drive in a clean room environment and swapping the platters to a new chassis if necessary. Not something you can do at home.
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
Definitely do NOT Format the unit!!

The only version of Format that finds and "fixes" Bad Sectors is a Full Format. (By the way, a "fix" here means simply replacing a Bad Sector with a good one that contains junk data, so the file is corrupted.) BUT the point is that in all current Windows versions, a Full Format works by writing a test pattern to EVERY Sector and then reading it back to check that it works. This means that the old data on EVERY Sector is wiped out! You CANNOT recover any data from that!
 
Solution