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Need some help in recovery data from a damaged external HDD

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MerleOne:
where can I get getdataback for NTFS license key? :) thanks.
-llley (July 10, 2007, 02:28 PM)
--- End quote ---

I finally found that ActiveFileRecovery Pro was much more useful in the situation I described.  I would advise you to benchmark it before selecting Getdataback.

brahman:
If you are serious about your data, here is what you need to do:

1.) Never let Chkdsk do anything to a damaged hard drive, it will only make things worst and unrecoverable.  :down:

2.) Attach the drive to a second IDE channel, since HD utilities cannot reliably read all drive data from a USB drive. Especially when you are trying to rebuild the MFT and recover partitions this is absolutely essential, since USB drives give wrong physical information to the OS.

3.) Don't do anything to the harddrive until you have mirrored the drive to another drive with special software (NOT with backup mirror software like Ghost or Acronis TI) that is used for HD recovery (pcinspector clonemaxx, Raw Copy by Roadkil http://roadkil.net/RawCopy.html is the only free util that does reverse copy, which is easier on a failing drive, driveimage xml clones from windows, http://copyr.tetroniks.ru/download/copyrR13.zip  copyr is the best free clone  util for inaccessible drives - though there are much better commercial ones).

4.) Start the actual recovery process:

Handy recovery has a very capable freeware solution after you have cloned the drive. Commercial: Restorer 2000, Handy Recovery later not free versions. All around HD solution: diyrecovery.nl. Testdisk is also very good but only if you really know the program (and not via USB!).

5.) Suggested further informations:

Here is an exhaustive freeware link collection for hard drive related troubles:

http://www.s2services.com/quickdiskrecoverylinks.htm

Hope that helps. If you are careful and don't mess up too much, you should get all your data back, though it may take some time.  :Thmbsup:

Regards,

Brahman

brahman:
Oh sorry,

just saw that the original question was from Februar and then the thread got revived. Oh well ...  :-\

Maybe it will help some other people with similar problems!

Regards,


Brahman

f0dder:
1.) Never let Chkdsk do anything to a damaged hard drive, it will only make things worst and unrecoverable.
-brahman
--- End quote ---
Used to be (very) true on win9x, and does hold for FAT filesystems. With moderate corruption, chkdsk is fine for NTFS filesystems though (ie., a standard BSOD or poweroff - but if you've been dealing with driver development or there's garbled file/folder names, get a better tool).

3.) Don't do anything to the harddrive until you have mirrored the drive to another drive with special software (NOT with backup mirror software like Ghost or Acronis TI) that is used for HD recovery
-brahman
--- End quote ---
Very important advice - with more-than-minor corrupted filesystems, never do in-place "repairs", always restore files to another drive, or do a mirror first.

Ghost and Acronis are fine for imaging if there's not any physical damage to the drive btw.

donzonion:
Hi
Had a crash on my Lacie 500gb USB drive – suddenly the files were gone and xp did not recognize the partition. There was about 400gb of stuff on the drive, nothing important so no big deal. Anyway this could happen to more important stuff sometime, so I tried to recover (as an exercise). Borrowed a similar  drive from a friend and did a backup to that drive.  I used freeware tools from http://www.smartpctools.com/products/
Used NTFS recovery to recover the files and had them copied over to the other usb drive. It took over 24 hours! Maybe it’s faster working with drives attached to the mainboard or with other recovery tools – I don’t know, but it seems you must have some patience.
I would say about 99% of the files were recovered and working which was impressing.
Step 2 would be to repartion, reformat and copy the files back to my own drive – which would probably take another 24hours. Anyway Smartpctools had another freeware tool: Smart Partition Recovery. It uses a database of known disks to instantly recover the partition on damaged drives. With my files already safely backed up, I dared to try just that. Smart Partition Recovery found my drive and  I executed recovery. Took less than a second – and everything was back on the drive as normal – totally amazing. And yes, it is still in order 3 weeks later.
Just repeating what’s been said in other posts:
1.   Do no operations on the crashed drive.
2.   Use file recovery software and recover your files to a second drive before you do anything else - if they are important to you.
3.   Copy the files back or try the Smart Partition Recovery software.
Just my own opinion:  large usb drives should only have a small internal, cache max 2mb , to avoid write errors, and wait a few seconds after operation before detachment. Do not activate drive delay on usb drives.
 :)

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