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Hard drive recovery

Discussion in 'Computers & Technology Forum' started by Hope of Glory, Oct 27, 2006.

  1. Hope of Glory

    Hope of Glory New Member

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    Is there any software or hardware that you would recommend to recover a hard drive?

    When I turned my computer off last night, my hard drive that is in an external USB housing was working perfectly. When I started it today, I got an error message. It is spinning up, but that's all I know.
     
  2. exscentric

    exscentric Well-Known Member
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    You might unplug the drive, reboot and plug it in. If that doesn't work, go to start/control panel/system/hardware tab and click on device manager and snoop around. If there is a question mark or explanation point it is due to some problem. That might give you a clue.

    You might also try the drive on another computer to be sure it is the drive.
     
  3. Diggin in da Word

    Diggin in da Word New Member

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    real good recovery software that works with all windows operating systems is called Recovery98 and may still be available at majorgeeks.com. Been a couple years since last I used it.
     
  4. Hope of Glory

    Hope of Glory New Member

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    My computer cannot even access the hard drive to use a program such as that.
     
  5. El_Guero

    El_Guero New Member

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    while turned off, you will need to un-plug everything (cables) and then plug everything back in.

    Then go from there.
     
  6. preacher

    preacher New Member

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    Might also try going into the Bios at startup & see if it's reconizing the HD.
     
  7. Trotter

    Trotter <img src =/6412.jpg>

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    Another possibility would be to take the drive out of the enclosure and put it in your computer (unless you have a lappy).
     
  8. Hope of Glory

    Hope of Glory New Member

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    I just got my son's desktop working, so I will try installing it in there later today. My computer is a laptop, but I have seen cables that can run outside the case to access full-sized HDs. (However, I don't have one and won't be near a computer store for weeks.)

    I've already tried the unplugging thing, more than once. My laptop recognizes the drive is there most of the time, but when I try to open it, I get the message that a file is corrupt. (Or maybe file system.)
     
  9. LeBuick

    LeBuick New Member

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    That's not good, how important is the stuff on this drive? Do you have backups anywhere?
     
  10. Linda64

    Linda64 New Member

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    Try backing up your data on the HD and reformatting it.
     
  11. Hope of Glory

    Hope of Glory New Member

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    I have backups of some of it. My computer with the DVD drive conked out on me a while back, so this HD was my backup temporarily. But, it has home movies that I converted, and other things such as that. Many, many hours worth of work on stuff. There's some important stuff, but mostly time-consuming stuff. Now, I have my son's computer working, so I'm able to backup stuff, but I can't access the HD.
     
  12. Hope of Glory

    Hope of Glory New Member

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    I can't access it to back it up.

    I'm going to try installing it in my son's computer later and see if that works.
     
  13. LeBuick

    LeBuick New Member

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    Is it you can see the drive but anytime you try and access the data it says the file is currupted?

    How full is the drive?

    The good news is the information should still be there. You may have to pay a recovery company to get the ifo off. There are utilities that will try and rewrite the boot sector and file system. Again, it depends on the value when considering the approach to take. Like Linda said, if you don't care you can always FDISK and start over.

    Back in the DOS days you could repartition the drive without formatting which would sometimes save data but that is a very risky operation.

    See if you can run the error checking and defrag on it.
     
    #13 LeBuick, Oct 28, 2006
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 28, 2006
  14. Hope of Glory

    Hope of Glory New Member

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    OK, thanks! I have several things to try, including a commercial piece of software that reads it from DOS. So, after I try all this stuff, I'll talk to ya'll in about three weeks...
     
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