Need Data Recovery from HD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Crusty \Old B@stard\
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Crusty \Old B@stard\

With all you have done to the 80 gig drive, data recovery is now a "moot
point". You have already destroyed much of what you want to recover by using
the drive and performing a recovery on the drive.

When you lose data -STOP. Assess your options. The time for data recovery
software is "prior" to doing anything else with the drive.

You can use EasyRecovery Professional (expensive) from www.ontrack.com. If
you buy the program, and it doesn't work, they allow you to apply the cost
of the program toward their In House recovery service (even MORE expensive)!

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)
 
Your "new" motherboard might not be so new. It could be limited to the size
of hard drive it will recognize. A 32GB limitation is not unusual for some
older boards. What is the brand and model number of your motherboard?

BTW you mentioned that you ran CHKDSK from "DOS". Is the drive formatted as
FAT32?
 
Harry Ohrn said:
Your "new" motherboard might not be so new. It could be limited to the size
of hard drive it will recognize. A 32GB limitation is not unusual for some
older boards. What is the brand and model number of your motherboard?

BTW you mentioned that you ran CHKDSK from "DOS". Is the drive formatted as
FAT32?
Click to expand...

You dumb ¢ünt! How in the world can one get into DOS when there is none in XP. Even if he had the partition formatted in FAT32, and used a 98/ME bootdisk to get there (which I am giving you the benefit that you got this basic element correct), there is no CHKDSK command line in it. How in the fü¢k you got the MVP status is beyond me!
 
Nehmo Sergheyev said:
- Harry Ohrn -

- Nehmo -
Shuttle AN35N Ultra V1.1 .
http://www.shuttle.com/hq/product/mainboard/specs_m.asp?M_id=49
It accepts an 80 GB HD.

- Harry Ohrn -

- Nehmo -
The CHKDSK switch I used was /f, which fixes errors on the HD. (I gave
the an incorrect switch before.)
http://www.computerhope.com/chkdskh.htm

The drive had NTFS formatting.

Currently, I see the dirve in Computer Management as 31.5 GB Healthy but
unformatted. I have it jumpered as slave.
Click to expand...

Are you certain it is jumpered correctly? Some large hard drives have a
capacity limiter jumper setting so they can be used with older boards. I do
not know if that is true for your drive but if the jumper is set incorrectly
that could be one reason why the size is not being properly displayed.
 
For your information, chkdsk certainly DOES exist in Win98, if you use F8
and boot to the command prompt.

So, in addition to having a foul mouth, you are also quite stupid!

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)



Harry Ohrn said:
Your "new" motherboard might not be so new. It could be limited to the
size
of hard drive it will recognize. A 32GB limitation is not unusual for some
older boards. What is the brand and model number of your motherboard?

BTW you mentioned that you ran CHKDSK from "DOS". Is the drive formatted
as
FAT32?
Click to expand...

You dumb ¢ünt! How in the world can one get into DOS when there is none in
XP. Even if he had the partition formatted in FAT32, and used a 98/ME
bootdisk to get there (which I am giving you the benefit that you got this
basic element correct), there is no CHKDSK command line in it. How in the
fü¢k you got the MVP status is beyond me!
 
That is because the first checkdisk has screwed up the partition table and
it no longer coresponds with the formating map. NTFS works a little
differently from fat filesystems but the concept is the same. Do not
reformat it or anything. Get easy recovery profesional or r-studios recover
software. you will prpbably also need a larger drive to stor the old data
from it. you will be able to find most if not all the data like game info,
downloaded music or other files, word documents and such like that. you just
need to make sure you have enough room to store the stuff after it is
recovered and it won't (shouldn't) allow you to stor it on the drive being
recovered.

The windows XP repair install will only replace system files so you are
pretty safe in asuming that noting important was over writen unless you
attemped to reinstall after the partition table became messed up. Most data
recovery programs will cost around 100 -300 dollars if not more. If this is
the only time you think you might ever use it then you might want to just
send it off to a recovery lab. look for one that won't void a warenty on
the drive and they usually start around 2-3 hundred dollars plus a little
fee for whatever type of medium you have them place it on (like another
drive or cds or dvds).

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/
http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/
are a couple of links to some poular recover software options. I have used
both and found the ontrac offering a little easier to use for ther novice
but the rstudios seems to be a little more powerfull with the ability to
recover from other partition format types like ext2 and 3 and reiserFS.

After you are satisfied that you have all the data you need from the drive,
you should repartition it and then reformat it and it will regain the full
80gig back. It might be a good idea to visit the manufacturers website and
download a diagnostic utility to chach the drive for errors too. Do that
only after you have done your data recovery so there is less of a chance of
sending the drive to the graveyard if it does have a problem. Also if it
stopes being reconized by the bios or the disk management snapin, the data
recovery houses can usually still recover so if it stop spinning there is
still hope. It just get a little more expensive. Definatly do not write any
thing or format the drive until after you have don your data recovery.

BTW the checkdisk on the seperate mainboard probably misinterpreted the LBA
wrong because of the way it works and that is the reason it had the error.
If it was on the original mainboard, nothign should have happend. logical
block adressing is needed on most drive over a certain size. it creatres a
CHS (cylinders-heads-sectors) address scheame larger then what the ide chips
can generaly use and does it on 2 generaly different ways. IT runs a little
program that interprets it for the IDE controler and can have different
values with different mother board chipsets. This is why the chkdsk's forced
repair saw the partitioning differently on the new mainboard and is now
showing up as a 30 somethign gig drive instead of the 80 it should be. To be
truth full it should be real easy for a data recovery program to find you
data at this stage because it will ignore the partition and formating being
reported by the drive and attempt to apply it's own algorithm to discover
what apears to be valid data. Also there should be a backup boot sector that
has the partiton and formating information from before the chkdsk made its
changes. If you havn't ran the chkdks too many time it should be able to
pick up on that and find you data with easy. If it isn't there then it is
just a matter of applying different formulas unitl it comes upo with a
likely possablility based on what it knows about file systems.In other
words.. you should get most everythign back but will probably need to
reinstall the programs to use it.
 
Crusty said:
For your information, chkdsk certainly DOES exist in Win98, if you use F8
and boot to the command prompt.

So, in addition to having a foul mouth, you are also quite stupid!
Click to expand...

Also exists in XP and will quite happily check an NTFS disk. But if one is
being obnoxiously pedantic, then one would insist that it's running from a
"command prompt" rather than from "DOS".
 
Physical damage forced me to change mother boards. It was time anyway.
Prior to changing the m-boards but after the damage incident, the old
m-board worked for a short time without the keyboard or mouse
functioning; however, Windows XP came up and I saw the desktop. This
indicates the hard drive, an 80 GB Western Digital, was working at least
at that time and at least sufficiently to provide the Windows XP
desktop.

I installed a new m-board but soon found couldn't boot Windows XP off
the 80 GB HD. I happened to have a 15 GB HD on the shelf which also had
WinXP on it. I hooked that up, but still I couldn't boot XP.

I repair-installed XP (not from the recovery counsel) on the 15 GB HD,
and now I have a working XP machine with that HD, but, of course, all my
data is on the 80 GB.

I disconnected the 15 GB HD and tried the repair-install on the 80 GB
HD, but when the install completed, and I tired to boot, I got the error
screen saying I should check for viruses, unhook any new HDs, and run
CHKDSK.

I called MS, and the guy ran through another repair-install with me and
then had me run CHKDSK /R (if I remember correctly) on the 80 GB HD
(jumpered as slave) from DOS.

CHKDSK supposedly repaired some sections making the drive smaller. It
now comes up as 31 GB.

But I can't open the drive. When I try, a small alert comes up saying
the drive is not formatted and would I like to do so.

So...

Is there anyway I can read the (previously) 80 GB drive?

If I need some data recovery software, which one should I try?

And finally, was it a mistake to run CHKDSK?
 
a bunch of crap ... OP was not
that smart - MS Support was stupid - and Jazz finishes it off.

- Do NOT write to the victim disk at all, no more checkdisks or whatever.
- Get some read-only data recovery software (demo versions intially) and
have it scan the victim disk.
- If it doesn't find the data, simply try another product (again, a demo
intially). All products have their strenghts and weaknesses. Someone may
recommend product X because it helped this person out in *one specific
scenario* and another person may recommend product Y for the same reason.
You need to find the product that helps in *your case* and you can only find
it by simply trying.
 
- Harry Ohrn -
You will need decent recovery software. Some of it can be quite expensive.
One of the best tools I've used is Disk Commander from Winternals
http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/index.asp?pid=ap#diskcom
however it is definitely in the higher end price range.
Click to expand...

- Nehmo -
I just tired it. It said, disk could not be mounted. Maybe that's
because the victim disk is larger than the disk I'm running DC from. I
haven't read much about DC yet, but it seems any recovery software is
going to at least require a place to put the recovered data. I'm
shopping around for a 120 GB hard drive.
 
- Harry Ohrn -
Your "new" motherboard might not be so new. It could be limited to the size
of hard drive it will recognize. A 32GB limitation is not unusual for some
older boards. What is the brand and model number of your motherboard?
Click to expand...

- Nehmo -
Shuttle AN35N Ultra V1.1 .
http://www.shuttle.com/hq/product/mainboard/specs_m.asp?M_id=49
It accepts an 80 GB HD.

- Harry Ohrn -
BTW you mentioned that you ran CHKDSK from "DOS". Is the drive formatted as
FAT32?
Click to expand...

- Nehmo -
The CHKDSK switch I used was /f, which fixes errors on the HD. (I gave
the an incorrect switch before.)
http://www.computerhope.com/chkdskh.htm

The drive had NTFS formatting.

Currently, I see the dirve in Computer Management as 31.5 GB Healthy but
unformatted. I have it jumpered as slave.
 
Hi, Joep, and Nehmo.
OP was not
that smart - MS Support was stupid - and Jazz finishes it off.
Click to expand...

Agreed! Especially this line in the original post:
"I called MS, and the guy ran through another repair-install with me and
then had me run CHKDSK /R (if I remember correctly) on the 80 GB HD
(jumpered as slave) from DOS."

First, of course, Chkdsk /R "implies /F", as anybody can see by simply
typing Chkdsk /? at the Command Prompt. In other words, either /R or /F
writes to the HD. This is just what is needed if Chkdsk has correctly
diagnosed the problem. But, if Chkdsk is wrong - and it is wrong too
often! - then either /R or /F completes the job of making the volume
UNrecoverable.

That happened to me last year. I left the room while my computer was
booting. When I returned, Chkdsk was busily "fixing" the third volume on my
second HD, having already "fixed" the second volume there. These were the
first and second logical drives in the extended partition; both were NTFS.
My guess is that some cable glitch had caused the HD to report some error on
boot-up and Chkdsk had "taken the bit in its teeth" and proceeded to repair
the wrong problem. :>( Both volumes were unrecoverable, but only the
second one (Drive E:) was important to me. Fortunately, I had plenty of
unpartitioned space on my third HD, so I created a new logical drive there,
assigned it Drive E: after reassigning my original E: to Z:, and used the
new E: while searching for a solution.

After about 3 months, I found R-Studio, which I downloaded (for about $70)
from www.r-tt.com. With this, I was able to recover almost all my data from
Drive Z:, after which I reformatted Z:, moved back the data from the
temporary E:, restored the drive letter and continued. R-Studio may or may
not work in your case.

Of course, this whole problem would have been much worse if it had happened
to my System Partition or Boot Volume. Since all I lost was a data volume,
I could continue to boot and run normally while looking for an answer.

But, running Chkdsk on an NTFS volume while booted into MS-DOS from a
Win9x/ME boot floppy seems the height of stupidity! Are you sure that's
what the MS techie advised, Nehmo? Did the techie know all the facts
(WinXP? NTFS?) of your situation?

Just a couple of other points: First, in spite of our imprecise use of
terms like "drive" and "partition", we don't actually format a "drive", but
a single volume at a time on the hard disk. When Disk Management or another
utility shows only 31.5 GB on your 80 GB HD, be sure to check that it is
showing the entire HD and not just a single volume on the disk. Second, if
you plug in your new HD (or your old 80 GB HD - after recovering all you can
and are ready to wipe and reformat it) and reinstall WinXP on it, be sure
that you don't have any other HDs connected and enabled at the time - at
least not one that holds a bootable partition. If WinXP Setup detects an
Active (bootable) partition on ANY HD, it probably will assign C: to that
partition; you may find that WinXP on your new HD boots from F: or some
other letter. WinXP will be perfectly happy booting from F:, but it
confuses us humans so much that most users who find themselves in that
situation end up reinstalling once more so that WinXP boots from C:.

RC
 
- R. C. White -
But, running Chkdsk on an NTFS volume while booted into MS-DOS from a
Win9x/ME boot floppy seems the height of stupidity! Are you sure that's
what the MS techie advised, Nehmo? Did the techie know all the facts
(WinXP? NTFS?) of your situation?
Click to expand...

- Nehmo -
When the tech, Ron, answered, my first thought was that he spoke English
like a native speaker and that he must be here instead of India. He
turned out to be in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (This was interesting
because my wife and I plan to soon move to Calgary, the city south of
Edmonton. We're in Kansas City, Kansas now.) He worked for MS itself,
and he only handled XP install and XP related issues.

He said he had ten years in support. Now that I think about it, he also
said he was twenty-six. Maybe he started at sixteen. It's not
impossible.

I was on the phone for around an hour. Ron was clear I was installing
WinXP Home and that the file system was NTFS. I wasn't booted from a
floppy. I ran CHKDSK from the command prompt. I wasn't unfamiliar with
the program and didn't realize CHKDSK /F was going to write to the
drive.

I see my next step now as getting a 120 GB HD. Then I can try some
recovery programs.
 
Certainly chkdsk.exe exists in any MS OS, this is its native utility. OTOH,
DOS version prompts to use scandisk.exe instead starting from DOS 6.2 when
MS has purchased scandisk.exe from P.Norton. Experienced user would never
run chkdsk.exe in DOS environment, this is NT utility in conjunction with
chkntfs.exe.
 
- Harry Ohrn -
Are you certain it is jumpered correctly? Some large hard drives have a
capacity limiter jumper setting so they can be used with older boards. I do
not know if that is true for your drive but if the jumper is set incorrectly
that could be one reason why the size is not being properly displayed.
Click to expand...

- Nehmo -
After I send this post, I'll physically remove it and put the jumpers
off and then back on to make sure of the contacts. But if Western
Digital's literature is correct, then I have the drive correctly
jumpered as slave - 1&2 connected + 3&4 connected, both jumpers next to
the power connector.

The size of the drive showed up as reduced after I ran CHKDSK /F. While
I was running that, BTW, CHKDSK correctly listed the name of the drive
and it's size. Now I can't even get the name.

Since the drive is now listed as healthy in Computer Management, I
believe if I formatted the drive now, it would be usable at the reduced
size. But that's relatively not important. I want to retrieve the data.
 
If you have a network with another computer that has availible storage, you
should be able to transfer the stuff to it across the network. This might
negate the need to buy another drive if money is tight for you.(especially
after buying the recovery software). -Good luck with it.
 
After I send this post, I'll physically remove it and put the jumpers
off and then back on to make sure of the contacts. But if Western
Digital's literature is correct, then I have the drive correctly
jumpered as slave - 1&2 connected + 3&4 connected, both jumpers next to
the power connector.

The size of the drive showed up as reduced after I ran CHKDSK /F. While
I was running that, BTW, CHKDSK correctly listed the name of the drive
and it's size. Now I can't even get the name.

Since the drive is now listed as healthy in Computer Management, I
believe if I formatted the drive now, it would be usable at the reduced
size. But that's relatively not important. I want to retrieve the
Click to expand...
data.

Here's an MS article on CHKDSK.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx

When I now try to run CHKDSK on the (now labeled "f") drive (using the
/v switch; I think I'm doing it correctly), I get

C:\Documents and Settings\Nehmo Sergheyev>chkdsk f:/v
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.
 
But in Window NT/2K/XP, neither the command prompt or chkdsk are DOS programs.
Yes, chkdsk is the correct program for minor problems.

I doubt anyone has something better for NTFS. If it can't be fixed, you have
to copy with findntfs or a commerical alternative.
 
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