Hard Drive Crash Recovery

[sheila]

Well, on one of our machines last night we suffered a bad disk crash. Three of our partitions were damaged. On two of them, not even the folder/directory structure remains intact. The partition with my files at least has directory structure, and many of the files remain intact, but not all of them (many are damaged).

We are looking at purchasing software for data recovery. My husband had narrowed it down to two titles:
Norton Utilities (latest version...something like "System 2000 Utilities")
Nuts-and-Bolts (McAffee)

Does anyone have any comments, suggestions, recommendations?

[Justin]

You might want to check this out: http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

This guy is a very good programmer (100% assembler), and he explains SpinRite in as much detail as you are willing to read... It might be worth a look. Note that I have no personal experience with it, but from what I've read, it sounds like it might be a good choice.

Hope this helps.

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[tedloh]

This is my area LOL.

You do NOT want either of those titles, they are horrible and somewhat useless.

Justin, Spinrite is for physical hard disk testing.[nbsp][nbsp]I used that thing 15 years ago, and you're right, Steve Gibson is a real whiz.[nbsp][nbsp]But it isn't appropriate for this situation.

What you need to try and find is one of two pieces of software:

1.[nbsp][nbsp]Lost and Found from Powerquest, or
2.[nbsp][nbsp]Tiramisu (called something else now) from Ontrack.

These two are not only your best, but probably only hopes of recovering any problems.

Also, you MUST stop using the physical hard disk that is affected right now.[nbsp][nbsp]And you will need an additional hard disk with space available to recover from the "damaged" hard disk.

HTH.
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Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Got2Bet.com - The Net's Winner's Circle
http://www.got2bet.com
ted@tygresystems.com

[sheila]

Thanks, ted and Justin.

Just before I read your reply, ted, my husband had just started up the Lost and Found to try and recover some of my files. Keep your fingers crossed!

P.S. ted, if you looked at SpinRite 15 years ago, are you sure that you can evaluate the current product? I looked at their page, and it looks mighty impressive. Unfortunately, they only sell from Mon-Fri during (sort of) business hours. Don't they realize that disk crashes most often occur on Friday nights around 2 am and people can't wait until Monday to recover their data? :P
[This message has been edited by sheila (edited 06-04-00@03:12 am)]

[sheila]

Well, I'm SOO HAPPY! At the very least, Lost and Found by PowerQuest recovered the two files I need most this weekend: Last year's Intermediate Algebra final exam versions A and B. Yes, I could have retyped it completely this weekend, but that would have been hours of additional work. Now I can just edit them to update them for this year.

As for the other files, haven't had time to check them all out, but it looks promising. My husband hasn't gotten to his two partitions yet. They were trashed worse than mine. We'll see what happens.

[Justin]

Ted - I think you will find it beneficial to read through the link above. SpinRite does serious hard disk recovery, using many techniques that are unique to SpinRite - browse through his site and you'll see that he really knows what he's doing. SpinRite prevents crashes *and* recovers lost data like no other program can, at least according to him and some of the many reviews...

PS - 15 years is an eternity in PC years...

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support
[This message has been edited by Justin (edited 06-04-00@4:20 pm)]

[tedloh]

Umm...[nbsp][nbsp]maybe I should have been a bit more clear (gee, what's new LOL)

Spinrite does indeed recover data - from disk damage.[nbsp][nbsp]After going to read the link above it has not changed much in 15 years (Spinrite 3 to Spinrite 5).

If you have the loss of partitions, Spinrite is not going to be of any help.[nbsp][nbsp]Lost and Found and Tiramisu can both detect partitions, FATs and such.[nbsp][nbsp]In fact, both of these products claim to be able to recover data even AFTER a format!
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Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Got2Bet.com - The Net's Winner's Circle
http://www.got2bet.com
ted@tygresystems.com

[tedloh]

Spinrite was most commonly used 15 years ago to determine the optimum interleave for a hard disk, and also to determine if there was physical damage.[nbsp][nbsp]It has changed very little since then, and it is still a useful product.

Steve Gibson actually started to write a hard disk recovery utility at one stage after the CIH/Chernobyl virus struck the first time two years ago.[nbsp][nbsp]I am not fully aware of whether that product is still available or not, but I am pretty sure it is not as powerful as Lost and Found or Tiramisu, particularly because it was designed solely with CIH in mind, whilst the others were designed for all types of data recovery from the ground up.

Whatever Steve Gibson writes is inevitably top-notch software - but in your case his products are not necessarily suitable for your needs.[nbsp][nbsp]His most famous stuff now is OptOut.[nbsp][nbsp]He is one of the very few from the early shareware days that is still writing useful software, and I do not have enough good words to say about him.[nbsp][nbsp]None of his peers are still writing software.

In fact, it's probably a testament to his skill and desire to help people that he has NOT been bought by anyone.<!-- NO_AUTO_LINK -->