Hard-Drive Crashed...Help!

dlkett59dlkett59 VB, VA
edited August 2006 in Hardware
We had our hard-drive crash yesterday. We couldn't get past the Windows XP in safe mode or any other way. Computer techs couldn't retrieve anything and I have the last 2 years of my mother's life in many photographs I didn't backup. She passed away on Easter. Does anyone no if its possible to retrieve photo's etc that won't cost an arm and a leg? Thanks for any help. dlkett59@yahoo.com:rolleyes:

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2006
    Test Disk
    TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery utility! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing your Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

    Download: HERE

    TestDisk can scan for and recover files on your hard drive unless the HDD has mechanically failed; if it has not mechanically fail, it can also attempt to replace the file tables for you so the disk is restructured and can be accessed from Windows once again.
  • dlkett59dlkett59 VB, VA
    edited August 2006
    Thanks, how do I do this? I have an older computer, could I put the hard drive in it and download it or do I need to put it in my current one and download the software you are talking about. We can't even access pas the windows stage, it keeps restarting and thats it with the old hard drive? Thanks. Dianne
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2006
    It doesn't really matter which computer the hard drive is plugged in to, but it is a practical/good idea to hook the hard drive up to another computer with a working copy of Windows. File-recovery can be a bit easier if you have a copy of Windows you can access the bum hard disk from after you've done what you can.

    The basic gist is that you download the file at the link and burn it to a CD with a program like Nero or Easy CD Creator, and you boot your PC with the defunct HDD hooked up as a spare with that newly-minted CD in the drive. The program will boot and say:
    Please wait...

    Then prompt you with a list of hard drives installed into the system you're working from. You'll want to select the hard disk size from the list that matches the Hard Disk you want to recover from; if, for example, the HDD you're trying to recover is 120GB, you'll select an entry that looks like this:
    Disk /dev/sda - 120 GB / 111 GiB

    Then hit proceed.

    The next step is to select the partition table, and you'll always want to select this option for a home PC HDD:
    [ Intel ] Intel/PC partition

    Now go here...
    The MFT (Master File Table) is stometimes corrupted. If Microsoft Check Disk (chkdsk) failed to repair the MFT, run TestDisk and in the Advanced menu, select your NTFS partition and choose "Repair MFT". TestDisk will try to repair the MFT using MFT mirror, its backup.

    The NTFS partition is the virtual space in which all your files are stored on the physical disk. A partition is like a virtual filing cabinet: A well-labelled, well-kept filing cabinet. Well what happens if you take the cabinet away and dump all the contents on the ground? No one knows where anything is but the information is still there. Recreating the NTFS partition, which is our first step, will try to recreate the filing cabinet and put everything back in order.

    TestDisk will show you what files are contained in this partition before writing the new partition information, so if the info looks right and familiar to you, go for it!

    Hope this helps. We have some other options if this doesn't work.
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