File Recovery

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad O
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Brad O

I have an NTFS drive that recently quit booting. It seems to have a
corrupted partition. I am looking to find some software that will let me
salvage as many of my files as I can in an XP environment.

What would I use for that situation?
 
Brad O said:
I have an NTFS drive that recently quit booting. It seems to
have a corrupted partition. I am looking to find some
software that will let me salvage as many of my files as I
can in an XP environment.

What would I use for that situation?
Click to expand...

That happened to me a few months ago. I bought SpinRite 6 (version 6
is NTFS-compatible) from grc.com and ran it at level 2 (recovery) from
a DOS boot disk. The first time there was an unrecoverable cluster in
the partition boot record. I ran SpinRite again, and was lucky second
time - it recovered the cluster, and the machine booted up into XP
again.

Of course, I backed up the data and got a new hard disk (under
warranty, fortunately).

SpinRite has a money-back guarantee, so you wouldn't lose out if it
doesn't work for you.

BTW I have no connection with SpinRite or GRC other than as a
satisfied customer.

Phil
 
That happened to me a few months ago. I bought SpinRite 6 (version 6
is NTFS-compatible) from grc.com and ran it at level 2 (recovery) from
a DOS boot disk. The first time there was an unrecoverable cluster in
the partition boot record. I ran SpinRite again, and was lucky second
time - it recovered the cluster, and the machine booted up into XP
again.

Of course, I backed up the data and got a new hard disk (under
warranty, fortunately).

SpinRite has a money-back guarantee, so you wouldn't lose out if it
doesn't work for you.

BTW I have no connection with SpinRite or GRC other than as a
satisfied customer.

Phil
Click to expand...

What's the largest HDD Spinrite supports?
 
I am pretty sure that my partition is lost, because I have tried some other
software. What I am hoping for is a way to salvage my files. I cannot do
not know of any software that will let me salvage individual files from
another system. The file recovery software that I tried needed to be booted
to in a DOS platform and so I had no way of getting the files to another
system.
 
Brad O said:
I have an NTFS drive that recently quit booting. It seems to have a
corrupted partition. I am looking to find some software that will let me
salvage as many of my files as I can in an XP environment.

What would I use for that situation?
Click to expand...
I have used active undelete by Lsoft for similar situations.
It can be installed on an XP desktop.

This utility is relatively inexpensive.

I have No affiliation with Lsoft.


someone2
 
I have an NTFS drive that recently quit booting. It seems to have a
I have used active undelete by Lsoft for similar situations.
It can be installed on an XP desktop.

This utility is relatively inexpensive.
Click to expand...

I do not to get these files re-established on the drive that they are on, in
fact, I believe that I cannot do that. What I am looking for is a way to
salvage them to another drive. The software that I have been able to get my
hands on or read about so far seems to either try to recover a partition or
re-establish the files to the partition that they are already on. The
partition is bad and does not seem to be recoverable as a bootable
partition. So, I need a way to access my files from Windows, not as that
last option suggested "within" Windows. These differences may seem like
sematics, but they are much more than that. To simply see my files in a DOS
window and be able to do nothing with them does not help me. However,
having full access to them, enough to be able to move them to another drive,
is what I am looking for.

Does anybody have any suggestions for that? Or a way to figure out what to
do? I am usually pretty good at tracking down how to figure this stuff out,
but I seem to be at a complete loss.
 
Hi Brad,

I do not to get these files re-established on the drive that they are on, in
fact, I believe that I cannot do that. What I am looking for is a way to
salvage them to another drive.
Click to expand...

That is the best method in most file-recovery cases anyway ...
The software that I have been able to get my
hands on or read about so far seems to either try to recover a partition or
re-establish the files to the partition that they are already on. The
partition is bad and does not seem to be recoverable as a bootable
partition. So, I need a way to access my files from Windows, not as that
last option suggested "within" Windows. These differences may seem like
sematics, but they are much more than that. To simply see my files in a DOS
window and be able to do nothing with them does not help me.
Click to expand...

OK, makes sense ...
However, having full access to them, enough to be able to move them to
another drive, is what I am looking for.
Click to expand...

Hmm, apart from mis-interpreting your "full access" perhaps, I think
there
are ways to copy the files over to a different filesystem
(partition/disk).
By simply recreating the file theres, and copy over the data.

This may fail for very special files, with critical
security-attributes or compressed
ones but will work fine for most of the data-files used with
applications.

And I guess these are what matter most ...
Does anybody have any suggestions for that? Or a way to figure out what to
do? I am usually pretty good at tracking down how to figure this stuff out,
but I seem to be at a complete loss.
Click to expand...

You can use my DFSee utility to locate and copy files from many
filesystems, including NTFS. Since there is a DOS, OS/2, Windows
as well as a Linux version in the same package, it should be possible
to find a setup where you have a destination filesystem to store the
recovered files.

In your situation, I would think having an operational Windows system
and mount the 'bad' disk in that would be the best option.

You could then recover selected files from the damaged/inaccessible
partition to another NTFS partition.


That said, I must warn you that DFSee is NOT an easy to use GUI
program,
it is text-based, and the file-recovery is based on finding all files
matching
a certain filename-mask, and then recovering from that list using a
more
powerfull wild-card mechanism. Paths are retained as much as possible.

In general, this works fine to recover data-files, but is almost
useless
if you need to recover a bootable Windows system itself.
(But you could just re-install that, right ? :-)

To get an idea, you can download the package which will allow
at least 30 days as a trial period (not crippled in any other way).

Check out the information on FILEFIND in DFSNTFS.TXT that is in
the package, and RECOVER in DFSCMDS.TXT.

These commands are also made accessible through the
menu-system, in a sequence like:

File -> Open Partition to work with -> ... select bad partition ...
Mode=NTFS -> Search normal files => list
Mode=NTFS -> Recover files from list ...

The last one will present you with a file-dialog to select a
destination (on any accessible drive-letter) for the
files to be recovered, and it will prompt you for a
wildcard selection as well ...


For specific questions, you can always constact:

(e-mail address removed)

The complete package is in the download at:

http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee.htm#download


I am sure there will be more programs that are able to do this, but if
you
are not afraid of a text-mode program DFSee could be of help :-)

Regards, JvW
 
Jan,

I will try your program. It sounds like it is exactly what I am looking
for.

Thank you,
Brad
 
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