Hard Drive Crash

[brisqs]

HELP - I am trying to recover data from a crashed hard drive. To explain the situation: I was away from the machine for a while and when I returned everything was frozen (I had Excel, Access, and Word up at the time). I did not try to close anything down individually, I just Ctrl+Alt+Del twice to soft-boot the PC. Unfortunately it was too late when I realized it but I had left a floppy in the A: drive so when the pc booted up I received an "Invalid system disk error - please press any key to retry" message. No big deal I removed the disk and pressed enter but I received the same Invalid system disk error, therefore I shutdown the pc completely and then I powered it back on but I still received the Invalid system disk error. I tried rebooting a couple more times but I kept receiving the same message. Next I tried booting up with the system floppy from the manufacturer which enabled me to get into DOS but when I did a directory listing for the C: drive there were no files or directories listed yet it showed only 3GB of space free on my 6GB drive so I knew my files were still there but I couldn't get to them. Next, I did something that I'm not sure I should have. I re-installed Win98 SE once I knew it would not re-format the drive (it’s FAT32 if that helps). I thought that re-installing windows would just overlay my system files and get me back into the operating system without harming my data files, however, after re-installing windows (which went smoothly) and getting back into the pc through windows I still could not see any of my data files. I believe my files are still there even though I can't see them because my system shows I only have 3GB free but I have a 6GB drive and I know Win98 doesn't take up 3GB. Unfortunately after this unsuccessful attempt I started searching around for solutions and tried fdisk /mbr and sys c: commands but they were also unsuccessful and I’m worried that the order in which I tried my solutions was incorrect. I believe my partition table has been corrupted. Can anyone help me recover my data or recommend a good tool or service that can help me? Thanks, I appreciate it.

 

[paparazi]

I would try removing the drive and refitting it in another system as slave (adjust the jumpers), this way the PC isn't relying on your drive to boot and if it finds the drive and it's contents you should be able to copy your valuable files over onto the other computer.
If this is sucessful you could then do a low level format (this program is usually free from the harddrive manufactures website) and run a drive diagnostic to see if it's any good.
If OK reinstall OS and motherboard drivers then you can piggy back as slave again to copy the files back over.
OR same proceedure but with brand NEW drive (partition and format first) Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.

 

[brisqs]

Thanks, for the reply. I already swapped the bad disk into another machine that i know is working properly. Unfortunately once i put the bad slave in I can't get past scandisk and when I had the bad disk as the master in the old machine it would boot into windows.

 

[brisqs]

I connected the bad drive to the secondary IDE connection so now I can see both drives but the info I want cannot be seen on the bad drive (D