Accessing corrupt drive?

[mrtheshaggy]

I had a vista install on a Samsung 1TB drive that went haywire and wouldn't boot. I now have a new storage setup and wanted to access some data on the drive (mainly some save game files). Upon plugging it in again, windows cannot read it and wants to format it.

I had an issue like this many years back and used some type of software to fix the drive so I could access it again.

Anyone know what it or an equivalent software is called?

 

[fields_g]

First thing I'd do would be a bit-of-bit image backup of the drive. Using a linux boot cd, a second hard drive, and "dd" or "ddrescue" (if in that distro) will do this. Don't skip this step unless you can rely on some other backup or the data is not valuable.

Then, I'd connect the drive to a working windows machine (or Windows PE boot CD), and from a command prompt, do a "chkdsk <your bad drive> /f". This can fix drives even better than the windows GUI.

If chkdsk chews up your drive, we can always reload from your image and try another technique. Let us know if these steps get you anywhere.

Edit: Also want to mention that if you use any other tools, like EasyRecovery, etc. make sure it is read-only on the original drive unless you have done a bit-for-bit backup first.