Recovery of knackered disk

[hereward]

I have a 6 month old Deskstar which is knackered
- ran Norton Disk Doctor and IBM's Drive Fitness Test, both to no avail
- In WinXP Explorer, I can see that two partitions exist on the drive, but that's as far as it can handle it (eg it can't tell how much used / free).

Is there a site out there with a step by step guide to recovery out there?

There's one small-ish file on that disk that I MUST get back - any advice (other than take regular back-ups) ;-)
Thanks in advance

 

[jds580s]

There are companies that can get it off of there for you, but it costs $$$... no make that $$$$

www.ontrack.com
www.drivesavers.com
www.actionfront.com

My IBM does the same thing (reports the partitions, but no sizes etc...)

Can you hear yours making an attempt at reading from the platters? (Read..Read..Read..Read....[pause]....Read...Read...Read...Read...etc.)

Good luck with it.

Justin

 

[hereward]

I found a Shareware program called "GetDataBack" on Tucows
- excellent!
Still working with it, but for the first time I can "see" into the partitions - it has identified file names etc.

More when I have it.
------------------------------
Update: Here's the catch - the Shareware version allows you to "see" the file, but in order to recover it, you need to upgrade the licence - cost $60 approx. I can't complain really, I suppose.
One quibble about it though, - it ignores deleted files - it would be MUCH more powerful if it could also recovered deleted files.
(this may seem picky, but regarding the one file I really wanted to recover - I can see that recovery only recovered "half" the file - the rest is missing (prob physical damage on the disk - but the missing half contained the data I needed...but there was a previously deleted version on the disk as well... it seems that everything is Catch-22 at the moment! )

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by hereward on 07/16/02 08:00 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[endless_n00b]

Forgive my asking, but what on earth does "knackered" mean?


-
Cheap memory: $26
Unstable OS: $95
Your boss getting the BSOD late on a Friday: Priceless

 

[hereward]

"Knackered" - Anglo-Saxon for "f**ked" (another Anglo-Saxon word)

 

[btvillarin]

<A HREF="http://home.arcor.de/christian_grau/rescue/" target="_new">Drive Rescue</A> (freeware, but I haven't tried it yet)

I hope that helps better, because then you can save that $60 for something more useful, like......I dunno.

Bryan
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