Hard drive recovery - the basics

[WeZona]

I have something embarrassing to admit. I'm a (freelance) computer tech and I've never recovered a hard drive. I need sort of a crash course in hard disk recovery because I have a client with loads of sensitive, work related data - not to mention several gigabytes of porn - that will cause both he and I distress if the data has in fact been lost.

Here's the long and short of it. I'm running XP Professional, and I have the laptop hard drive in question hooked up to my desktop with an IDE adapter. The drive is visible, but I can't access it. When I click on the drive icon it asks me if I want to format. Looking at the drive properties shows both the free and used space at 0.

I'm not ruling out drive failure, but I want to go through some basic recovery before I do anything else.

- I need some recommendations on recovery programs.
- I need some direction, aka where to start.
- I need to pray to Jebus.

So can anyone help?

[g33k]

getdataback for ntfs

[leSLIe]

might try EasyRecovery Pro from Ontrack, but your problem seems to be beyond this software, there are 3 kinds of problems that could happen on a HD: Logical, Mechanical or Electronic. Might just leave it to the pros, like www.drivesavers.com, u are only human ;)

[leSLIe]

check out their Hall of Fame

http://www.drivesavers.com/fame/images/Family_Guy_POP.jpg

nice !

[ChingChang]

ontrack EasyRecovery Pro is the best recovery software I've used. It is also the most expensive! :eek:
Some good cheaper alternatives are Acronis Disk Director, or GetDataBack.

[nick8571]

Another vote for GetDataBack for NTFS, it's pulled me out of the fire a couple of times.

Having said that, if some of it is really critical work-related data, you might want to avoid messing with it and hand it over to a data recovery firm. There's no shame in that - they have specialist tools and knowledge way beyond any normal computer techie, and they'll almost certainly recover all the data intact.

It's quite expensive though, and of course there's the prospect of much hilarity when they uncover the other contents.. :)

[bbz_Ghost]

I've been a loyal EasyRecovery user for many a year now, but on the advice of someone I have some level of respect for I gave R-Studio a shot recently at doing some real-time data recovery on a hard drive with some rather nasty booboos on it. EasyRecovery flinched, and R-Studio did a near 100% flawless recovery - it only missed properly naming 3 out of 1500 files - so R-Studio has now become my recovery app of choice, with EasyRecovery running a close second.

Worth checking out, as very rarely will one tool for such situations be 100% effective 100% of the time.

[WeZona]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I used GetDataBack and created an image of the recovered files. Is it possible to just image the hard drive and get my client back to his original configuration, or is that option impossible at this point?

I'm also trying out R-Studio right now also, because GetDataBack wouldn't let me copy files without a license. Once I get the files I can reinstall windows and then copy them over.

[Asgorath]

Just be glad you got the files. Do not try to run windows from system files from the computer that just crashed. That sounds like a world of pain (blue pain, but pain).

Keep that drive as is...make sure your image works.

[coolrunnings]

GetDataBack rocks. I've used it on countless drives and been able to recover the data nearly 80% of the time. For an app that's less than a hundred bucks, that's impressive in my book.