Forum Home
Press F1
Thread ID: 92628	2008-08-17 04:39:00	HDD Recovery	B.M. (505)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
697876	2008-08-17 04:39:00	I’ve got a 40gig Western Electric HDD that is, I believe, shot. It is producing messages to back up all files as the drive is failing at time of boot. Chkdisk /f & /r find damaged allocations units everywhere and are not able to do anything about it. I just wiped the partition using fdisk and am in the process of reformatting but the message list of trying to recover allocation unit ?????? is becoming monotonous. However, I thought that in the interest of science I would try some utilities that may fix the problem albeit probably temporally. :) Now, to this end I have read about utility programmes, some supplied by the disk manufacturers, that can reposition the read/write heads so they use a fractionally different part of the disk. So, do any of you guys have any recommendations? Free would be best as there is nothing on the disk now but I thought it would fill in a cold wet day experimenting. :D :thanks	B.M. (505)
697877	2008-08-17 04:53:00	If you like give HD Regenerator (http://www.dposoft.net/) a try. It locates damaged and failing sectors on a drive and attempts to repair them. I wouldn't trust any drive with failing sectors so use at your own risk after wards. What it does is scan your drive and locates the bad sectors, which show in red. The free version does 1 sector at a time, so if it finds 50 failed sectors it needs to be run 50 times. (good for that cold wet day) the paid version does the whole drive at once.	wainuitech (129)
697878	2008-08-17 04:57:00	Based on the amount of time this would cost it would be more effective to get another hard drive. If you need data off it then it may be a different kettle of fish.	Sweep (90)
697879	2008-08-17 05:36:00	I agree with both of you. No, I wouldn't trust the drive and no, it's totally uneconomical to do this. :) However, it is a cold wet day and it is in "The interest of science". :) I’m off to have a play with HD Regenerator, ;) I’ll let you know the results. :D PS: This disk would be ideal to test any data recovery programme. It's had heaps of data on it, so if anyone has any suggestions along those lines let me know. :thumbs:	B.M. (505)
697880	2008-08-17 07:12:00	IE password recovery; find save password in IE PCI file recovery; recover lost files PCI picture recovery; recover lost pictures Recuva; recover lost data Acronis True image 11; backup, recovery disk clones Test disk; powerful recovery of data and pics, also partitions Inc RAW partitions You could try any of these just copied them from a word doc so no links just google them, the acronis one is not free as it came with my true image 11. All the others are free, recuva is from the same people who make ccleaner. I have not personally used any of these yet I saving to build a new test rig so I can try stuff without breaking this comp :punk	gary67 (56)
697881	2008-08-17 07:14:00	I saving to build a new test rig so I can try stuff without breaking this comp Thats where virtual machines can be really useful. :badpc: :badpc:	stormdragon (6013)
697882	2008-08-17 07:24:00	Thats where virtual machines can be really useful. :badpc: :badpc: Looking into that as well don't know how they work yet but going to do some research this week	gary67 (56)
697883	2008-08-17 07:28:00	Have found Virtual PC 2007 from Microsoft is really easy to use with MS guest OS's.	stormdragon (6013)
697884	2008-08-18 23:53:00	Update for those interested . Wainuitech: HD Regenerator looks like a good programme but at $60US one would need to be a technician to warrant the purchase . I did download it because it said I could trial it . However, the trial was only to fix one bad sector and this drive we’re looking at has dozens . Anyway, in the interest of science I tried to fix it using XP and the XP Recovery utilities . None could do it so I out with my old 98/ME startup floppy and went right about deleting all partitions using fdisk . . I then made one logical drive for the whole thing and went about formatting it in FAT32 format . Well, we coughed and spluttered with messages about trying to recover sectors and a couple of hours later the job was done . I then ran Scandisk and it came up with a picture of a drive scattered with bad sectors . . imagef1 . net . nz/files/Scandisk_" target="_blank">www . imagef1 . net . nz(Small) . JPG Fine, I then slaved it to a XP computer and tested it with XP but it came up with a clean sheet? :eek: No errors! :confused: Question is why couldn’t it see the sectors that had already been marked bad? I then ran WE Disk diagnostics again and this time, instead of telling me the drive was about to fail, it told me it was fine, no faults found . :confused: So, here we have a drive that on one had looks to be absolutely shot, and on the other hand perfect . What goes on here? :confused: Do I have to rely on ME Scandisk and a FAT32 format to be able to see HDD problems? Gary: I tried TestDisk but it seemed to be a copy of the utilities already supplied with the OS . All very educational, but I would like a definitive answer as to what exactly is going on . :confused:	B.M. (505)
697885	2008-08-19 00:35:00	Wainuitech: HD Regenerator looks like a good programme but at $60US one would need to be a technician to warrant the purchase. I did download it because it said I could trial it. However, the trial was only to fix one bad sector and this drive we’re looking at has dozens. YEP! I said that in post #2 it only offers to repair 1 at a time, so you would need to do multi runs if it found more than 1. Looking at the pic posted it shows at least 58 failed sectors (B) meaning if you ran HD Regen through in trial mode you would have had to have done it 58 times at least to get each one. Looking at that Pic - the drives knackered. Mind you I also mentioned I wouldn't trust any drive with lots of failed sectors, even if that program said it had fixed it, once sectors start to fail they generally dont stop.	wainuitech (129)
1 2