Data Recovery from Hard Drive

[scooter5]

A 60 GB IBM Hard Drive (single drive on the PC) crashed and became inaccessable. Digonstics indicated bad sectors. Drive was replaced and new Windows XP Pro with all updates was installed.

The old (i.e. bad) 60 GB is now in a USB 2.0 enclosure and I am trying to recover the data if possible and practicable.

XP disk management will reconized the disk correctly in all regards except it indicates that the drive has no file system and indicates that the entire drive is free when in factsome 30% of the dis has data.

The drive shows in the tree but any effort to run explore on it locks the entire system up. Turning the drive off immediately releases the sytem from the lock. Occassionally this results in a message box saying: "Drive X is not accessable. The parameter is incorrect." I have also experienced a message that the drive is not formated.

Can the drive be accessed in Windows XP? Will Norton Ghost or Runtime GetDataBack successfully copy the drive or selected parts?

Any other ideas that can give me access would be appreciated.

 

[micker377]

I'd take the drive and put it in the computer as a "slave". You have enough problems, without trying to figure out the USB problems! Is the old (bad) drive XP also?

 

[scooter5]

The old (i.e. bad) drive is XP also. As an update I may have this solved but would like to complete my work before posting it as solved.

 

[Rufusman]

If the data is valuable, and nothing else works, go to

http://www.pcbsearch.com.au.

Their core business is hard drive repair for data recovery companies. They do not charge anything to look at the drive and have a flat fee if the data is recoverable.

 

[scooter5]

Thanks all for the replys. In that time was short and the data needed I took a chance and tried GetDataBack from Run Time. I have previously, on the suggestion from CompUSA tech tried Ghost. GetDataBack worked! The time required was long (overnight) but it created a directory tree of the disk and it appears that the majority of the data will be recovered. There were lots of bad sectors on the disk. I'll post an updta eif the disk can be reformated and reused successfully.

 

[jaxter99]

Can you give me a quick overview of setting up the IDE hard drive as a slave?

I have the same issue, but will be trying PCToolsPro which also does this kinda thing. However, I haven't installed a slave drive before, and don't want to screw up the system's properly recognizing which is the primary (or start a hard drive conflict) by just slapping the dead drive into the HD2 connector on the cable.

A simple checklist would be appreciated.

Architecture:
Win XP
Dell Dimension 4600 (P4)
IDE HD
CD-ROM
CD-RW

Thanks, jaxter99

 

[Freestone]

IDE devices usually have pins labeled Master, Slave, Cable Select, or in some cases, MS, SL, CS, of which only 1 set of pins is jumpered. This normally the case, but it is always best to refer to the device documentation as some drives have jumpering other than the standard three I've mentioned.

When using Master/Slave jumpering on a single cable, ensure your primary (boot) drive has the Master (MS) pins jumpered, and the other drive is set to Slave (SL). When using Cable Select (CS), the primary (boot) drive must be placed at the far end of the IDE cable, while the slave will be placed on the center connector.

 

[stduc]

Now you have one partial recovery, if the data is valuable enough, run SpinRite on the drive (

http://www.grc.com)

and see if it will recover the bad sectors. If it does, you can then run GetDataBack again and probably recover the lot!

 

[scooter5]

An update: The majority of the most critical files were recovered and were easily transfered to a new drive. I have noticed that many of the files that weren't recovered were .jpg files and fortunately were not critical. The major outstanding problem, at this moment, is trying to recover the contact files associated with MS Outlook. Time has not been available to focus on this so it continues.