Hard disk partition recovery programs (updated)
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((Update - my friend has now taken the hard disk to a "data recovery specialist" - I hope this solves the problem, but at least it takes the responsibility away from me!))) A long-distance, slightly-PC-knowledgeable friend asked me for help recovering a Win98SE FAT32 drive which no longer sees its partition. Details of what happened to the drive are given below, in case this affects the recovery recommendations. After Google searching (which gives a zillion options) I have semi-randomly chosen a few options to suggest to him: PC Inspector (Freeware) www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm[^] TestDisk (OpenSource / GPL) www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk[^] Does anyone have experience of these, or can anyone recommend a good freeware or GPL (or not too expensive) solution? Description of actions which killed the partition: * Wanted to sort out some (unknown problem) on a Win98SE PC, 10 Gig FAT32 HDD * Scandisk'ed and Defrag'ed the drive * Suspected a virus, so bought Norton Antivirus 2006 * Discovered NAV2006 requires Windows XP * Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006! * After installation, Windows XP went into a continuous reboot cycle – not possible to install NAV 2006 * Removed hard disk, installed it as a slave in another Windows XP PC * Antivirus scanned HDD using antivirus (Trend Micro, I think) – 48 trojans / viruses / etc found. * All viruses cleaned, quarantined, or infected files deleted Problem – now hard disk appears "clean" – no partitions defined. -- modified at 3:53 Wednesday 15th March, 2006
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((Update - my friend has now taken the hard disk to a "data recovery specialist" - I hope this solves the problem, but at least it takes the responsibility away from me!))) A long-distance, slightly-PC-knowledgeable friend asked me for help recovering a Win98SE FAT32 drive which no longer sees its partition. Details of what happened to the drive are given below, in case this affects the recovery recommendations. After Google searching (which gives a zillion options) I have semi-randomly chosen a few options to suggest to him: PC Inspector (Freeware) www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm[^] TestDisk (OpenSource / GPL) www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk[^] Does anyone have experience of these, or can anyone recommend a good freeware or GPL (or not too expensive) solution? Description of actions which killed the partition: * Wanted to sort out some (unknown problem) on a Win98SE PC, 10 Gig FAT32 HDD * Scandisk'ed and Defrag'ed the drive * Suspected a virus, so bought Norton Antivirus 2006 * Discovered NAV2006 requires Windows XP * Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006! * After installation, Windows XP went into a continuous reboot cycle – not possible to install NAV 2006 * Removed hard disk, installed it as a slave in another Windows XP PC * Antivirus scanned HDD using antivirus (Trend Micro, I think) – 48 trojans / viruses / etc found. * All viruses cleaned, quarantined, or infected files deleted Problem – now hard disk appears "clean" – no partitions defined. -- modified at 3:53 Wednesday 15th March, 2006
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((Update - my friend has now taken the hard disk to a "data recovery specialist" - I hope this solves the problem, but at least it takes the responsibility away from me!))) A long-distance, slightly-PC-knowledgeable friend asked me for help recovering a Win98SE FAT32 drive which no longer sees its partition. Details of what happened to the drive are given below, in case this affects the recovery recommendations. After Google searching (which gives a zillion options) I have semi-randomly chosen a few options to suggest to him: PC Inspector (Freeware) www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm[^] TestDisk (OpenSource / GPL) www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk[^] Does anyone have experience of these, or can anyone recommend a good freeware or GPL (or not too expensive) solution? Description of actions which killed the partition: * Wanted to sort out some (unknown problem) on a Win98SE PC, 10 Gig FAT32 HDD * Scandisk'ed and Defrag'ed the drive * Suspected a virus, so bought Norton Antivirus 2006 * Discovered NAV2006 requires Windows XP * Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006! * After installation, Windows XP went into a continuous reboot cycle – not possible to install NAV 2006 * Removed hard disk, installed it as a slave in another Windows XP PC * Antivirus scanned HDD using antivirus (Trend Micro, I think) – 48 trojans / viruses / etc found. * All viruses cleaned, quarantined, or infected files deleted Problem – now hard disk appears "clean" – no partitions defined. -- modified at 3:53 Wednesday 15th March, 2006
normanS wrote:
Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006!
[slaps forehead in anguish] Cheers, Vikram.
I don't know and you don't either. Militant Agnostic
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??Not sure - but that doesn't look like it has the "recovery" features needed. It has a link to their new Data Recovery tool http://www.easeus.com[^], but those tools are not free. In any case, I have just phoned my friend, and he has decided to take the hard disk to "data recovery professionals" for a free quote.
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normanS wrote:
Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006!
[slaps forehead in anguish] Cheers, Vikram.
I don't know and you don't either. Militant Agnostic
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normanS wrote:
I did describe him as "semi-PC-knowledgeable", didn't I!
You are overestimating him. Where is the time that computers were so expensive only people who understood them had access to one (a quote from our sysadmin :) )
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((Update - my friend has now taken the hard disk to a "data recovery specialist" - I hope this solves the problem, but at least it takes the responsibility away from me!))) A long-distance, slightly-PC-knowledgeable friend asked me for help recovering a Win98SE FAT32 drive which no longer sees its partition. Details of what happened to the drive are given below, in case this affects the recovery recommendations. After Google searching (which gives a zillion options) I have semi-randomly chosen a few options to suggest to him: PC Inspector (Freeware) www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm[^] TestDisk (OpenSource / GPL) www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk[^] Does anyone have experience of these, or can anyone recommend a good freeware or GPL (or not too expensive) solution? Description of actions which killed the partition: * Wanted to sort out some (unknown problem) on a Win98SE PC, 10 Gig FAT32 HDD * Scandisk'ed and Defrag'ed the drive * Suspected a virus, so bought Norton Antivirus 2006 * Discovered NAV2006 requires Windows XP * Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006! * After installation, Windows XP went into a continuous reboot cycle – not possible to install NAV 2006 * Removed hard disk, installed it as a slave in another Windows XP PC * Antivirus scanned HDD using antivirus (Trend Micro, I think) – 48 trojans / viruses / etc found. * All viruses cleaned, quarantined, or infected files deleted Problem – now hard disk appears "clean" – no partitions defined. -- modified at 3:53 Wednesday 15th March, 2006
I used GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/[^] to do something exactly like you describe. It will not repair the partition but it will get the data off the drive (or it did for me). The only problem is that you need an entire day to scan and then recover this was on a 160 gig drive. It did work though and I recovered 100% of my data. If you want to repair the partition a couple of options are out there. Acronis has a repair tool in it's http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/[^] I've also used SpinRite 6.0 from Gibson Research (my gosh what a product but it's $80). http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm[^] If you were going to pick one or the other I'd put my money on GRC. But that's like trying to predict the weather. Computers are very hard to predict.
A Plain English signature. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
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I used GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/[^] to do something exactly like you describe. It will not repair the partition but it will get the data off the drive (or it did for me). The only problem is that you need an entire day to scan and then recover this was on a 160 gig drive. It did work though and I recovered 100% of my data. If you want to repair the partition a couple of options are out there. Acronis has a repair tool in it's http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/[^] I've also used SpinRite 6.0 from Gibson Research (my gosh what a product but it's $80). http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm[^] If you were going to pick one or the other I'd put my money on GRC. But that's like trying to predict the weather. Computers are very hard to predict.
A Plain English signature. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
Thanks - recovering the partition does not matter, as long as the data files are OK. It is more-or-less of academic interest now, since my friend has taken the drive to a recovery expert. I'll try to use this incident as an incentive to back up more often. BTW, I used Spinrite many years ago. Before IDE drives were around, when 120 Meg was a big drive. Great product.
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??Not sure - but that doesn't look like it has the "recovery" features needed. It has a link to their new Data Recovery tool http://www.easeus.com[^], but those tools are not free. In any case, I have just phoned my friend, and he has decided to take the hard disk to "data recovery professionals" for a free quote.
normanS wrote:
Not sure - but that doesn't look like it has the "recovery" features needed.
Read the line "Backup or Restore the MBR, Partition Table, Boot sector" on the web page. :) Jeremy Falcon
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normanS wrote:
Not sure - but that doesn't look like it has the "recovery" features needed.
Read the line "Backup or Restore the MBR, Partition Table, Boot sector" on the web page. :) Jeremy Falcon
It looks to me like this would have been useful, IF it had been used to back up the MBR, Partition table, & Boot sector before everything disappeared. Since we don't have back-ups of those structures, I don't think this program will help in the attempts to recover the hard disk contents. These seem like they are more applicable to the problem: PC Inspector (Freeware) www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm[^] TestDisk (OpenSource / GPL) www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk[^] (But the disk has been sent to a "recovery expert", so it is not my problem any more.)
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((Update - my friend has now taken the hard disk to a "data recovery specialist" - I hope this solves the problem, but at least it takes the responsibility away from me!))) A long-distance, slightly-PC-knowledgeable friend asked me for help recovering a Win98SE FAT32 drive which no longer sees its partition. Details of what happened to the drive are given below, in case this affects the recovery recommendations. After Google searching (which gives a zillion options) I have semi-randomly chosen a few options to suggest to him: PC Inspector (Freeware) www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm[^] TestDisk (OpenSource / GPL) www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk[^] Does anyone have experience of these, or can anyone recommend a good freeware or GPL (or not too expensive) solution? Description of actions which killed the partition: * Wanted to sort out some (unknown problem) on a Win98SE PC, 10 Gig FAT32 HDD * Scandisk'ed and Defrag'ed the drive * Suspected a virus, so bought Norton Antivirus 2006 * Discovered NAV2006 requires Windows XP * Installed Windows XP, in order to run NAV 2006! * After installation, Windows XP went into a continuous reboot cycle – not possible to install NAV 2006 * Removed hard disk, installed it as a slave in another Windows XP PC * Antivirus scanned HDD using antivirus (Trend Micro, I think) – 48 trojans / viruses / etc found. * All viruses cleaned, quarantined, or infected files deleted Problem – now hard disk appears "clean" – no partitions defined. -- modified at 3:53 Wednesday 15th March, 2006
Use Kernel for Windows Data Recovery software to recover data from Hard disk. It is advanced and cost-effective application and you can easy to use this tool. Using this tool you can recover all deleted files from corrupt HDD. Visit http://www.windowsdatarecovery.recoverlostfile.net/[^]