Yes, often. Yes, usually. Expensive.
What happens to tell you the disk is corrupt ?
An easy option would be with access to another computer but your own disk on as a slave and have a look at see what's happened to it.
You could also try obtaining linux on a cd and booting off that, which will then usually give you access to your own disk as a data disk.
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Mark is right,
Put it on another machine as a slave, boot it from a linux on a cd, boot it from windows cd and use recovery console tools, even reload winodws ( the data will still be there as long as you dont reformat or screw the master boot record.) try a norton rescue cd.
All recovery companies do is put the drive on an adaptor and read it with a sector editor, you can do exactly the same.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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>>Mark is right
My life is complete, I need no more. Thanks Stumpy.
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>>Mark is right
But I still have hair
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Thanks, chaps.
OK, for more info - I've put the disk into a caddy and attached to anothe machine. It takes an age but eventually sees one of the partitions (It's an IBM disk with a recovery partition). Then there's a repeated head seek type noise and no access to the partition containing the data and OS.
The recovery program reformats the OS/Data partition before reloading XP - the notes are crystal clear about this. I can't see this partition at all and can't access anything in it. I've tried reloading windows from CD, but the CD isn't even recognised. I've downloaded the Microsoft osftware that creates Win XP boot floppies, but the machie just hangs at the end of this installation.
Is a sector editor something I'm likely to be able to use? I'll have a trawl for one, but your advice would be useful.
I reckon this is payback for leaving IBM two months ago!
V
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No, its payback for having data and the OS on the same partition.
Assuming that you haven't had a total disk failure and that it is a corruption issue then it can only be a couple of things; a bot of data on the disk affecting a [usually small] number of files or something's had a pop at the disk header.
From what you're saying it sounds horribly like the second. Not in itselft an insurmountable issue. What various readers do is ignore what the header says and hunt around the disk loooking for themselves and recovering what they can. When they find a piece of data they move backwards and forwards from it until they get to the extent of the file. Obviously they work best, or at least at their easiest, when the disk is not fragmented. I'm guessing yours is going to be.
How important is the stuff ?
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Ta, Mark,
The data is pretty crucial. I tend to keep emails with crucial data rather than copying the data anywhere, so there are all kinds of receipts, activation codes, bits of information, etc, in there. Put it this way; £300-400 to recover the data isn't scaring me too much compared to losing the data.
The disk is not too fragmented - I did it a week ago or so. Backups apart, I'm pretty conscientious.
I have a Linux Freak-egg around the corner, so I may well try seeing what we can find armed with his setup. If I can find my email data, I'll be 90% of the way there.
I'll let you know how I get on.
V
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For the future;
OS in one partition all data in another. On a separate disk is even better.
E-Mailing stuff you need to keep is quite effective. Only use an internet provider (yahoo / hotmail / etc.) and then they'll keep a backup of all your data as well.
Back up everything you don't want to lose. Always proceed as if someone is going to steal your computer at any moment. If you have any data you're worried about losing which is not on a disk, stick or another computer is going to be gone forever.
Any computer I own or use can be destroyed at any time; I will lose nothing I care about.
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The recovery partition you see is IBM Rapid recovery with Rescue Restore. (IBM RRwRR)
UNder normal circumstances it wont reformat the data drive, just recover the windows program directories. Its clever enough to realise when you have a major failure and tries a refomat as well.
The "long time" and "head seek noises" is a clue. This is the classic sign of a major HDII (thats a "head to disk interface incident" - a head crash to you and me) and a disk seek calibration issue. you have lost a head.
you will need sector editing tools. the disk needs to go into a machine as a slave, onto a machine that is already running a working operating system from the primary boot drive.
Then using your sector editing programe of choice you can copy the strings of complete files from one drive to the other. Text files will be ok, some data files (like word docs) may be corrupt if all the string is not there.
Is this a desktop or laptop?
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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It's a desktop.
The head seek noises are very much as I would expect if it was trying to get data normally, just that they clearly aren't getting to wherever they need to be.
Do you have names for any suitable sector editing tools that you have used or heard good word of? There seem to be a million of them.
V
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www.runtime.org/hints.htm
I use disk explorer for NTFS, but getdataback for NTFS might be whan you want.
Dont forget, one working drive with an os loaded and your duff drive as a slave.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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If its that critical and you get stuck then I probably know a guy who works for me in the Warwick area who will have a go for you. He's pretty good, but no guarantees and I can't reach him until Monday. He'll also want paying, moderately, if he's successful.
E-Mail me if interested.
If you're doing it yourself then be careful. Move slowly and thoughtfully. Do nothing which cannot be undone. Take no risks. There will be no prizes for doing this quickly. If you're going to edit/delete/change then think again. A lot. And then again.
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I strongly recommend having a look at www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
It has saved my bacon a few times from really bad disks.
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So you all know, I found some software that is currently grinding off everything it can find that is uncorrupted on the disk - it's making horrible noises, but data is being written to another drive. It's grinding exceeding slow, but I can live with that.
I'll keep you up to date.
V
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The only time I had this problem a couple of years ago, one of my offspring used some partiction recovery software (the name of which escapes me for the moment) on the lines of:
www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm?gclid=C...g
to recover the data.
Wish you luck with your current attempt.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Thanks for all the advice. In order for future generations to benefit, I'll highlight what I did.
I used Stellar Phoenix. A long, slow plough through with that recovered 90% of my emails - my .pst file (where emails are kept by outlook) was corrupted, but a brief look through outlook help notifies you of a reindexing program that resolves matters.
So, I now had a bundle of data off the disk onto another machine - i.e. all copying off the wrecked disk, nothing being changed on it, to minimise the change of writing over data or fatally wrecking the disk by trying to write to it. Then it was on to the hard stuff. Off to grc.com to get a copy of Spinrite. Spinrite runs off a bootable diskette or CD and looks at your disk at the lowest level possible. It can carry out a range of activities, from reading the surface to check consistency, to recovering data using statistical methods to guess from magnetic flux what the contents on a sector might have been, through to a maintenance check where every bit of data is read, then written back onto the disk twice. Apparently, running this every couple of months is meant to reduce failure rates on disks.
That's currently grinding away exceeding, exceeding slow, finding that big chunks of the disk are beyond redemption. It is, however, reporting that it is recovering decent percentages of those chunks. Overnight, it's made it through 2% of the disk. Once that's done, I'll try Stellar phoenix again and see how much more I get off the disk. I also ran it on the "test and rewrite" level on another machine with a working disk and it took 3hrs for 120Gb. I think it's probably worth a look, if only because it looked at the wrecked disk and immediately said "This disk is in imminent danger of failure according to its smart self diagnostics unit" or words to that effect. I wonder if Windows would ever have told me that?
Anyways, thanks again for your help - I've succeeded to a large extent and now have back most of the data I needed.
Lessons learned:
1. I'm off to get a copy of Norton Ghost to create automatic backups.
1a. If you've never suffered the big crunch, ignore lesson 1 - it'll obviously never happen to you (like it was never going to happen to me)
2. Spinrite will become part of my regular maintenance in future as much as defrag is now.
3. Defragmenting the drive regularly helped a great deal.
4. Don't let the wife use the computer.
5. This site once again shows its quality
6. Someone on here has a receding hairline. No names, no pack drill.
V
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If using Firefox, it has a nice little extension "Gspace", which will allow uploading of crucial stuff to a gmail account. It's best to create a new Gmail account for this, just to keep it separate. 2 MB of Gmail storage will hold a big chunk of the average user's needs.
Sorry if I am repeating information already posted by another forum member in the past
Roger. (Costa del Sol, España)
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