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Thread ID: 79332	2007-05-16 12:07:00	More data recovery!	george12 (7)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
550347	2007-05-16 12:07:00	My father's computer packed up a few days ago, announcing a corrupted registry. In my experience the usual cause of this has been hard drive trouble, meaning impending failure - and this was no exception. Recovery console can't read the drive, it gives a device error when I type "dir". The BIOS can still see the drive fine, and starts booting off it (making it to the bluescreen error I mentioned) but Windows setup cannot recognize the partition, making a repair install impossible (it thinks it's not formatted). With a dodgy hard drive and precious contents I wouldn't have done a repair install anyway though... Seeing as my dad's precious book he's writing is on it, not backed up in ages, I had to get it off. So, I put the drive in my PC on the secondary channel, and booted it up (off my HDD of course). Windows wanted to do a scan on it (I didn't let it), and saw the drive in My Computer. The problem is, if I try to access My Computer with the drive connected, explorer crashes. Also worth noting is the dreaded "Windows is starting up..." message, which I got on startup when the drive was connected. The drive seems to occasionally spin down for a second, which I guess is the cause of its corruption. It is a 30GB Maxtor Fireball 3, made in 2002. So what do you guys think is the best way to get this book off? Image the drive, access it in super-super-super-slow freezy mode and try to copy stuff, run spinrite or something, or some other technique?	george12 (7)
550348	2007-05-16 13:52:00	try imaging it but if that doen'st work you may have to take it to a data recovery outfit and be prepared to pay maybe $1000 for them to dismantle it in their cleanroom environment and transfer the platter to a working drive body ......	drcspy (146)
550349	2007-05-16 20:12:00	Or you could try the free way, and use a linux live cd to boot with. Leave the faulty drive on your machine as secondary, set your machine to boot off CD first, once the live cd environment is running, find the files to copy from hdb (the faulty drive as secondary) and copy them to hda (your main drive). A few live cds to look at would be Mepis or Knoppix	Myth (110)
550350	2007-05-16 20:30:00	Try something like Paragon Partition Manager's Partion Explorer and see if that can read the drive	The_End_Of_Reality (334)
550351	2007-05-16 21:34:00	I'd recommend using dd to create a disk image before it gets any worse. If the drive's dying, the last thing you want is death during recovery. With an image, you can recover the data from the image at your leasure, without worring about further damage to the drive.	Erayd (23)
550352	2007-05-16 23:16:00	I wouldn't even touch it if I were you, given the book issue and the potential for finger pointing. You Dad didn't back up, so your Dad should pay computer Forensics (or other professional outfit) for recovery. He'll soon forget the cost when he sees that his precious work is safe, but you'll be disinherited and never hear the end of it either if you stuff it up. The risk is too great for amateur recovery attempts, you'll go from hero to villain in the time it takes to press the start button. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
550353	2007-05-17 00:29:00	Sounds like good advice to me, Billy. Just finished a job to replace a trashed hard drive. No backup, of course. Extracted the bad drive, handed it over and told them to evaluate themselves whether it was worth taking to a pro. Don't get caught in the middle is a good guideline!	linw (53)
550354	2007-05-17 03:15:00	I understand why you didn't let windows scan the drive, but if the drive is simply corrupted and not actually failing it could well fix the problem. I have had a drive that refused to boot or let me access the drive repaired completely by doing just that. You do of course run the risk of losing data - including the book, so perhaps as others have said it's best to stay out of it - or get your dad to agree to the possibility that he'll lose it before you do anything.	dugimodo (138)
550355	2007-05-17 05:30:00	Don't forget to let us know the final outcome George, posthumously if need be. We'll have an on-line seance (a PF1 first) to hear what your Dad said when he found his book was trashed, and what he did when he finally caught up with you! Cheers Billy 8-{) :D	Billy T (70)
550356	2007-05-17 06:22:00	If it's getting as far as complaining about registry errors, it has found and read some system files. It is too dangerous to attempt file recovery with Windows. Windows is too fond of writing to disks. The first rule of data recovery is "NEVER, EVER, WRITE TO THE DISK". A live Linux system, with a USB disk to receive recovered files is the way to go. If the files are plain text it should be easy to locate them ... even Word files might not be too hard to find. dd is a very useful tool, designed for accessing data on devices ... even if there isn't a good file system. It can access sectors on a drive. grep can be used to locate known strings or keywords to help in the search. "pipe"ing dd's output to grep is very effective.	Graham L (2)
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