Broken hard drive partition.

[VenUk]

Hi All

I've got a problem with a hard drive. The hard drive was originally an internal laptop drive. The computer stopped booting up and became unusable. At the time I thought the hard drive was dead so got a new hard drive and the computer is backup and running. However I plugged the I though it was dead hard drive in to my computer and I can see the partitions on it. I can browse the recovery and system partitions but the main partition shows nothing. Now this main partition has photos on it I'd really like to keep. I've had a look about and there are various places that say I need to take control of ownership of the drive to see the files. How do I do this in Windows 8? I feel that alone will no resolve the issue I think that perhaps the partition is also damaged in some way and I might need to repair it any one got any ideas on that?

Thanks in advance
Ian

 

[Hawkeye22]

Have you tried any 3rd party utilities like recuva to see if it can find the missing files?

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

[VenUk]

Have you tried any 3rd party utilities like recuva to see if it can find the missing files?

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

No I've not tried anything yet other than plugging the drive in and seeing that I can see drive letters and access the files on all but the main (What was the C: drive with Windows on it) area. The files havn't been deleted I'm sure they are still there I just can't see them and think this is because the partition became corrupt or damaged.

To add a little more detail before the computer stopped working completely it would keep asking to do the Windows Restore. After about a couple of hours of trying to do the restore it stopped working completely

Thanks
Ian

 

[Hawkeye22]

Well, I'd say something like Partition Master might help recover your partition, but you say you can see it. Take a look and decide.

Designed to recover deleted or lost partition on unallocated space or recover lost partition after repartitioned hard drive.

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

 

[VenUk]

Yes its all a bit weird really. I can see the drive but if I try an do anything with it Explorer falls over. The other partitions no problem can see them and the files on them. It's almost as if the FAT table is missing or something.

 

[fzabkar]

Perhaps there are bad sectors which are crashing Explorer? If so, try cloning as much of the drive as possible, sector by sector, using ddrescue (freeware). Then use data recovery software on the clone.

You could also examine the drive's SMART report. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

 

[VenUk]

Ok so using the link supplied by Hawkeye22 I was able to recover most of the files from the damaged partition. Thanks to Hawkeye22 for the advice.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Glad that worked for you and you were able to get some of your files back. Unfortunately recovery is never a 100% guarantee of success.