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I have an old laptop HDD that I use as an external hard drive unfortunately this seems to have gone a little tits up.
For some reason I cant access the contents of the drive and windows it telling me to format it. I have tried error checking but I cant get access to the disc for that.
I have tried a couple of recovery programmes that seem to have found the contents of the drive but I have to pay around £60 to recover them. I don't have £60 spare to be able to pay for it otherwise I would.
I wouldn't mind if they were just normal files but all of the photos of my kids are on there.
Please help.
Recuva
then
BACK EVERYTHING THE F*CK UP! 🙂
Thanks. I have now got hold of another external drive so will be doing the whole backup and leave in different locations thing as soon as I can get this data back.
Well that doesn't seem to be working either.
It says the drive is corrupt and unreadable well that's why I need the program.
Any other suggestions?
[url= http://www.knoppix.com/ ]linux boot disc[/url].. free and most definitely works. Alternatively a free option would be to download recovery software such as Acronis's from via Isohunt/bit torrent, though that's illegal and maybe riddled with spyware/virus's, so I could never advocate that.
linux boot disc.. free and most definitely works [b]sometimes[/b].
FTFY. There's no "definitely" when it comes to data recovery, outside of a forensics lab anyway.
Sound advice though. I'd have gone for Recuva and then Linux too.
Incidentally,
I'd be interested to hear recommendations for Linux-based maintenance tools generally. I use a Parted Magic live CD (via USB) for general disk fettling; anything else I need to be aware of?
sorry I say "definitely works", with the meaning that I've recovered data using knobbix, where-as any number of free data recovery software I've tried did nothing, nada, bugger all...
I don't understand how to get knobbix to work my eyes have glazed over when reading the release notes.
If the drive's suffering from stiction & refusing to spin up, sticking it in a sealed bag in the freezer overnight has worked for me in the past. The cold frees up the bearings enough to get the drive spinning. Boot off a Fedora/whatever rescue image, dd the drive image off onto another drive or NFS mount, & work on recovering the files from there.
I don't understand how to get knobbix to work my eyes have glazed over when reading the release notes.
Good god man your reading the notes? WTF for?
Download the ISO (CD) image, burn it to a cd, boot up on it with your knackered drive & new drive. If it is able to access the knackered drive copy the info onto the new one.
I'd respectfully suggest that the freezer trick is a 'last resort' option.
Ie, might work, might make it worse. Worth a punt if your only other option is throwing it in the bin.
You lost me after you put it in the freezer.
Not sure why I need to boot it, there is no OS on it I formatted the thing a few months ago to use purely as a portable external drive.
Not sure why I need to boot it, there is no OS on it
No there no OS on it, but the OS on the computer is also unable to read it.. you boot up via the linux disc to load linux as your OS (with needing to load it onto your computer), which will or will not then be able to read the corrupted drive...
FTFY. There's no "definitely" when it comes to data recovery, [s]outside of a forensics lab anyway[/s].
FTFY
The more I read of this thread the more I think that the OP will either have to spend the £60 or never see those photos again.....
FTFY
Conceded. (-:
Bristolbiker you're probably right. I will give this knobbix a got tomorrow and hope for the best.
Await questions tomorrow on how to boot the drive off the disc.
This is an excellent utility, takes some fiddling with but worth a shot depending on the error.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Just having a go with Test Disc above and it is telling me that it cant read the FAT boot sector and that the FAT boot sector is invalid.
Does this sound likely to people and is it fixable?
I can't say I've ever bothered to try but a quick [url= https://www.google.co.uk/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cant+read+the+FAT+boot+secto#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=repairing+a++FAT+boot+sector&oq=repairing+a++FAT+boot+sector&gs_l=serp.3..33i29l3.5136.7867.0.8862.12.12.0.0.0.1.163.1434.4j8.12.0...0.0.r0Qo6dz6VfM&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=c72d84806ae8a6&biw=1280&bih=909 ]Google[/url] suggest it might be possible.
I still suggest using the linux boot disc to access it, recover the date, & then reformat the drive again. Linux doesn't rely on the reading the boot sector info unlike Windows, hense why it should be possible to recover the data using that boot disc.
If you're able to, then I'd concur with z1ppy.
I'd expect a corrupt volume boot sector to be fairly readily fixable by testdisk, but your priority should be accessing the data rather than making changes.
Also, [i]if [/i]that's the only problem with the disk then it'll stop it booting, but it should still work as a slave drive in another Windows system. Ie, your data should be easy to get back either via Linux or a donor Windows PC.
The TestDisk guide is worth looking at.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
FAT boot sectors and NTFS boot sectors are different animals, but it should give you an idea as to how to make TestDisk work for you.
There's an interesting line at the end too: "If it doesn't work... try PhotoRec, a signature based file recovery utility. "
PhotoRec will go hunting for files based on raw data that looks like pictures. Theoretically though, you shouldn't need to be going to "brute force" lengths unless both of the volume's FAT tables are corrupt.
So your steps are:
1) try and read the disk in linux to copy off the data directly.
2) attempt to repair the volume boot record using TestDisk.
3) try and recover what you can with PhotoRec.