Recover data from drive with bad sectors

[DaddaP]

Hi!

I'm trying to help a friend having problems with her portable hard drive. The drive wouldn’t mount up through the USB connection so I took it out from it's case and tried to mount it in Windows as a regular internal hard drive but Windows Disk manager it wouldn't even detect it. Now, I've installed it in a laptop and is running a program called "DRevitalize 2.1 (Light)" from Hiren's boot cd and that software has reported a vast number of bad sectors. Some is reported "recovered" while some sectors it could not recover. The DRevitalize program has been running for a couple of weeks now and it seems that I'm getting nowhere with this method. I've also tired the SeaTools bootable CD but it reports too many errors to even finish off the test.

The main issue is classic: my friend has some pictures stored on this hard drive and nowhere else and is obviously anxious to get as many as possible recovered. My question is if anyone knows a good free software that can help me mount the drive in a windows Environment (or other) OR to "repair" the disk to such state that it possible to mount it so that my friends pictures can be copied and (at least partially) saved?

The disk is a standard 2.5" 500 Gb SATA disk from Seagate.

Thank you!

//Daniel

P.S. Sorry for my bad English, I'm Swedish... ;-)

 

[rclarke250]

Software will not help with physical defects in the drive. Now that doesn't mean that some programs won't be able to recover some of the pictures, you will need another drive for the recovered data to be saved to. But I would look at Easeus,Link

Runtimes get data back Link

And check out this article that has 17 free tools for recovery of data. Link

Also, I'm sure you have informed her, that a backup is always advised, and there are free cloud storage options, with dropbox,skydrive,and google drive, and one of my favorites is box. All have different abilities, all are free, and all are very useful. Also, if you have an Android, or IOS enabled device, most have free applications for sharing and syncing to the same account. As an example, I have my Galaxy s4 pictures, sync to my google drive, and also I send them to my dropbox as a safeguard, then when I get home, I send a copy to my NAS. In minutes, I have 4 copies of the picture in 4 different places, and all can be recovered from either my PC,laptop,tablet,or phone.

 

[DaddaP]

Thank you very much rclarke250, for your fast reply!

I will look at the links you posted as soon as I get the opportunity and post feedback in this thread!

And yes, we have been discussing a future backup plan for her. In my opinion you should always have 3 copies of the data that is vital to you; one copy for easy access (computer, phone, laptop), one backup copy (ext. drive, NAS) and one copy located in another place than home (external drive that you place at your parents’ home or at work). Cloud storage is also a great tool but a little bit dangerous because many of them is a synchronisation service. A friend of mine got a new computer at work and a colleague "inherited" his old laptop and simply deleted all his files in his SkyDrive which was synchronized throughout his clients. But as a way to have a copy for easy access a cloud storage service is great!

Thank you for valuable input, I'll get back when I've tried your advice above.

//Danie

 

[goombawaho]

I second the GetDataBack. I bought it for myself. If it can be seen in the trial version you can probably get it back (no pun intended).

one copy located in another place than home

This is especially true now with the CryptoLocker malware that can encrypt mapped drives/external drives. Your entire data stash could be toast.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[DaddaP]

@rclarke250: I checked out the links you posted. Unfortunally most of them where links to software for recovering deleted files. In my case, I had a problem with bad sectors and were unable to mount the drive in windows to even access the data partially.

Thus, the problem is now solved (at least 95%): after running "DRevitalize 2.1 (Light)" for a couple of weeks (!), the disk seemed enough repaired so it could be mounted in Windows. I managed to run CHKDISK which made it possible for me to recover 100 GB of data. The only information I did not get my hands on was about 1500 images that seems to be located on an area on the disk that is damaged.

Well, my friend who owns the disk is happy even without the missing images and we now have a plan for future backups including a NAS and a external HD.

Thanks for participating in this thread.

Sincerely,
//Daniel

 

[goombawaho]

future backups

Yes, current backups are far superior to "I should set up a backup" - future backups.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.