fastest data recovery

[songoku]

i have a 300 GB that started to make high pitch noises, so i think its going to die. its currently unplugged and waiting patiently for its replacement. I want to get as much information as possible off this drive and as fast as possible (meaning GB/s). any advice?

PS. I was thinking something like norton ghost would be best, but have no clue.

Antec Neo Power 480, AMD Athlon 3000 (@2.2), A8v Deluxe (rev 2.0), Kingston Hyperx pc2700 (@350), ATI Radeon 9800XT, WD740GD, 6Y200M0, 6B300S0, 1633s, 832s, HD-166D, Samsung 172x, Logitech MX700.

 

[RichPLS]

If it is still working you could just copy and paste all data files to new drive.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[songoku]

like with in windows?

Antec Neo Power 480, AMD Athlon 3000 (@2.2), A8v Deluxe (rev 2.0), Kingston Hyperx pc2700 (@350), ATI Radeon 9800XT, WD740GD, 6Y200M0, 6B300S0, 1633s, 832s, HD-166D, Samsung 172x, Logitech MX700.

 

[RichPLS]

Yes, this is how I would do it with a suspected failing drive but otherwise operational.

And in the future I would keep either a spare drive for regular backups and (at least or) a current set of DVD's or CD's as emergency backup protection.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[songoku]

now lets say for some reason, my computer wont boot to windows with it installed. what next?

Antec Neo Power 480, AMD Athlon 3000 (@2.2), A8v Deluxe (rev 2.0), Kingston Hyperx pc2700 (@350), ATI Radeon 9800XT, WD740GD, 6Y200M0, 6B300S0, 1633s, 832s, HD-166D, Samsung 172x, Logitech MX700.

 

[RichPLS]

Oh, it is your boot drive. I thought it was working, just suspicious sounding.

I would re-install OS on my new replacement drive, then plug in 300gb suspect drive and see if you can access. You might still be able to access if failure occured on area holding os which is likely. Then try copying it to new drive.
If that fails, I have had success running checkdisk on the drive and after recovering errors was able to retrieve data and continue using drive for many years. If it finds errors, I recomend running again till it does not find any errors.

If that fails then you might try something like this...
<A HREF="http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm" target="_new"> Spinrite 6 is good recovery software, but costs $90 </A>



<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>