Failed hard drive file recovery

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Antares 531

What is the suggested recovery software for trying to retreive the files
from a failed Western Digital hard drive. This hard drive seems to have lost
its partition information but still shows up in Computer Management - Device
Manager - Disc drives and also in Disk management, but only as an
unpartitioned, unformatted?? hard drive.

This computer's OS is Windows XP Pro SP2 and this hard drive is not the main
hard drive. I have been using it as a storage hard drive, with my documents
and image files on it, but the OS is on another drive and is working well. I
looked as some software packages at Best Buy, but none of them seemed to be
oriented toward trying to recover the files from a hard drive that had lost
the partition information.

Thanks, Gordon
 
Antares said:
What is the suggested recovery software for trying to retreive the
files from a failed Western Digital hard drive. This hard drive seems
to have lost its partition information but still shows up in Computer
Management - Device Manager - Disc drives and also in Disk
management, but only as an unpartitioned, unformatted?? hard drive.

This computer's OS is Windows XP Pro SP2 and this hard drive is not
the main hard drive. I have been using it as a storage hard drive,
with my documents and image files on it, but the OS is on another
drive and is working well. I looked as some software packages at Best
Buy, but none of them seemed to be oriented toward trying to recover
the files from a hard drive that had lost the partition information.

Thanks, Gordon
Click to expand...

Try TestDisk from http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk I used it to
rebuild the partition from a disk showing the same symptoms as yours.
 
Google
most have a free download which will give you a suggestion of what they may
be able to recover
And did you try the WD hd checking utility, available from their site?
 
Antares 531 said:
What is the suggested recovery software for trying to retreive the files
from a failed Western Digital hard drive. This hard drive seems to have
lost its partition information but still shows up in Computer Management -
Device Manager - Disc drives and also in Disk management, but only as an
unpartitioned, unformatted?? hard drive.

This computer's OS is Windows XP Pro SP2 and this hard drive is not the
main hard drive. I have been using it as a storage hard drive, with my
documents and image files on it, but the OS is on another drive and is
working well. I looked as some software packages at Best Buy, but none of
them seemed to be oriented toward trying to recover the files from a hard
drive that had lost the partition information.

Thanks, Gordon
Click to expand...

Googling "data recovery software" will show you a number of possibilities.
They will generally have a demo mode that shows what they think they can
recover; if it looks good to you, you buy the key to unlock it.

The key to using things like this, though, is to recover to *another* drive.
So, you have to have more than sufficient drive space to hold the recovered
files. Also, turn off System Restore monitoring for the failing drive.
Once you've got the files back, consider retiring it. It may be OK, but it
may not be, and drives are cheap now.

HTH
-pk
 
Antares 531 said:
What is the suggested recovery software for trying to retreive the files
from a failed Western Digital hard drive. This hard drive seems to have
lost its partition information but still shows up in Computer Management -
Device Manager - Disc drives and also in Disk management, but only as an
unpartitioned, unformatted?? hard drive.

This computer's OS is Windows XP Pro SP2 and this hard drive is not the
main hard drive. I have been using it as a storage hard drive, with my
documents and image files on it, but the OS is on another drive and is
working well. I looked as some software packages at Best Buy, but none of
them seemed to be oriented toward trying to recover the files from a hard
drive that had lost the partition information.

Thanks, Gordon
Click to expand...
Thanks for the responses. I downloaded the TestDisk software and it worked
well, but as the folders and sub-folders were being examined they all went
kaput. I guess the hard drive read/write mechanism has failed and when it
tries to read a data bit on the disk it wipes it out.

So, I must just suffer the loss and get on with life. I should have had
multiple backups but who would think that the working hard drive and the
backup hard drive would both fail just a few days apart?

Gordon
 
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