Drive recovery

  • Thread starter Thread starter sodaman
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sodaman

I'm trying to recover hard drive data. I'm running something now called
Restorer 2000. As I'm trying to research what is needed to recover, web
searching proves tedious, because it keeps turning up sites offering
'services' for recovery, and want you to send your equipment to them. This
is most uninteresting to me, maybe more appealing to people writing movies
or something, with dosh to throw around. So I am trying some software. I
believe the disk has a fair few read errors. Problem here is what software
I try is doing a pretty poor job providing the type of the error
encountered on the disk media. 'Unknown error' is a classic. So I wonder if
you can recommend software that will better report the actual error
descriptions provided by the hardware.

I also am seeking better targeting for recovery. So far, whenever I tell
the software to Go, so to speak, it seems to sail all across the disk
surface for a very long time. I'd like to try and direct it to some area,
and scout there for a short survey, and report then how much content
appears to be found.

Right now, one directory I hope to recover seems to turn up completely
empty. I am not sure if this has been always, or just since I started
trying recovery software.
 
sodaman said:
I'm trying to recover hard drive data. I'm running something now called
Restorer 2000. As I'm trying to research what is needed to recover, web
searching proves tedious, because it keeps turning up sites offering
'services' for recovery, and want you to send your equipment to them.
Click to expand...

Well there's plenty of recovery software around: "data recovery software" on
Google and you find plenty. To limit to software only seach a software
archive like download.com.
This
is most uninteresting to me, maybe more appealing to people writing movies
or something, with dosh to throw around. So I am trying some software. I
believe the disk has a fair few read errors.
Click to expand...

Then there's your first problem that you have to tackle: Copy the disk
first.
Problem here is what software
I try is doing a pretty poor job providing the type of the error
encountered on the disk media. 'Unknown error' is a classic.
Click to expand...

Again, a good indication for physical damage, clone the disk first.
So I wonder if
you can recommend software that will better report the actual error
descriptions provided by the hardware.
Click to expand...

And how would that help you?
I also am seeking better targeting for recovery. So far, whenever I tell
the software to Go, so to speak, it seems to sail all across the disk
surface for a very long time.
Click to expand...

That's normal, the software has to build a virtual file system.
I'd like to try and direct it to some area,
and scout there for a short survey, and report then how much content
appears to be found.
Click to expand...

The amount of data that can be recovered depends upon how well the software
can build a virtual file system. It cannot base that upon only the data you
want.
Right now, one directory I hope to recover seems to turn up completely
empty. I am not sure if this has been always, or just since I started
trying recovery software.
Click to expand...

May very well be. In case of physical defects the drive may very well be
pushed further to the edge every time you experiment with it. Clone it
first.
 
The amount of data that can be recovered depends upon how well the
software can build a virtual file system. It cannot base that upon
only the data you want.
Click to expand...

The file folder structure looks fine. I can dir. It just can't access
everything. You get the faint idea from Windows that areas that were
frequently accessed have most problems.

A main other problem is I can't get a relation between what sector errors
may turn up by 8 or 9 digit identifiers, and the actual file space usage on
the disk. Any suggestions here? Sort of a map of where that fits on the
disk surface would help.
May very well be. In case of physical defects the drive may very well
be pushed further to the edge every time you experiment with it. Clone
it first.
Click to expand...

I got it cloned. I think that's what you call it. But my directory contents
do not appear on the clone. And they don't appear when I go to that
directory on the drive itself.

Having nothing appear seems like just reporting very little about what it
finds. You know, like Windows.

Can someone recommend a tool to let you probe there more closely?
 
I've tried three recovery programs. The first had difficulty reading
the failed hard drive, and told me it was going to take 4,000 hours to
retrive the data. Scratch that one - I believe it was Media Tools
Pro or something like that - it's been a month since I began the
recovery process, so I've already forgotten what didn't work.

DFSee is the one I wound up using. It takes a lot of reading to
understand how to make it work, and I still had to email the developer
for advice, but it is getting my data back. The process is very slow
and time consuming, but it works and it costs only $50. DFSee is
fully functional as downloaded, but with a time limit. What you're
really paying for is the advice of the author, who will give explicit
instructions on what to do.

If your drive isn't in too badly failed, Stellar-Phoenix is much
easier to use - you probably wouldn't have to read the documentation
to put it to work. I don't know how it would be at extracting the
data from a failed drive though, since I had already cloned part of
the failed drive to my good drive when I tried it. When reading the
recovered data (which was still invisible in WinXP) it found all the
files and it used their full long file names. I got to try a full
working copy of the software and was disappointed by its reassembly of
what it found. Many of the files it retrieved were corrupted.
Depending on your situation, it still might be the better choice since
it's easy to use. The cost however is $150. DFSee recovered all the
files intact, but it was a very time consuming process.

Others in the list have mentioned a few other programs. One was ZAR.
Another is a series of small programs written by someone here on the
list. Like DFSee, it looks like you'd have to do a lot of reading to
learn how to use those, but I believe they're freeware.

This has been my experience. YMMV There might be an easier and
faster way to do this, but Googling didn't turn much up for me either.
Good luck.

RWL



I'm trying to recover hard drive data. I'm running something now called
Restorer 2000. As I'm trying to research what is needed to recover, web
searching proves tedious, because it keeps turning up sites offering
'services' for recovery, and want you to send your equipment to them. This
is most uninteresting to me, maybe more appealing to people writing movies
or something, with dosh to throw around. So I am trying some software. I
believe the disk has a fair few read errors. Problem here is what software
I try is doing a pretty poor job providing the type of the error
encountered on the disk media. 'Unknown error' is a classic. So I wonder if
you can recommend software that will better report the actual error
descriptions provided by the hardware.

I also am seeking better targeting for recovery. So far, whenever I tell
the software to Go, so to speak, it seems to sail all across the disk
surface for a very long time. I'd like to try and direct it to some area,
and scout there for a short survey, and report then how much content
appears to be found.

Right now, one directory I hope to recover seems to turn up completely
empty. I am not sure if this has been always, or just since I started
trying recovery software.
Click to expand...

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I got it cloned. I think that's what you call it. But my directory contents
do not appear on the clone. And they don't appear when I go to that
directory on the drive itself.
Click to expand...


That's how my data came over when I cloned the bad drive with DFSee.
You couldn't see a thing with WinXP, but the data was there intact on
the targeted partition on the good recipient hard drive nonetheless.
Download the trialware version of Stellar-Phoenix and see what's
there. You may be amazed. DFSee of course will recover the data too,
but it's a longer process.

RWL

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