Hard Drive just Crashed, What do I do now?

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by mizt, Jul 17, 2005.

  1. #1
    My hard drive with everything on it just bombed out. Stupid me, have no back ups of anything. Just made a new hard drive the master with the crashed one as a slave. I put windows on the new one and was hoping to easily recover the files. Well its pretty fried. Anyone recomend any software to help me? EasyRecovery isn't helping me to much and keeps getting stuck of bad sectors or what not. I'm so screwed. Does anyones compnay specialize in this type of stuff. I'm backing up everything from now on. I swear my house only allows hard drives to be good for 2 years.
     
    mizt, Jul 17, 2005 IP
  2. dvduval

    dvduval Notable Member

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    #2
    It might be worth taking it to a data recovery center such as cherrysystems.com. Those places usually have a good rate of recovery.
     
    dvduval, Jul 17, 2005 IP
  3. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #3
    If it's "must have" stuff, I would look at Drive Savers. Not cheap, but very good.
     
    digitalpoint, Jul 17, 2005 IP
  4. mizt

    mizt Active Member

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    #4
    I'd really like to have alot of the stuff on there. Though a service like drive savers is way out of my price range for being young.:rolleyes:
     
    mizt, Jul 17, 2005 IP
  5. capebretoner

    capebretoner Well-Known Member

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    #5
    If you can't afford the help of professionals I would recommend putting the drive in a VERY safe place and do some research. I had a drive that crashed on me and found a couple small programs that worked very well. When I go home I will look them up and let you know. BTW, no matter what you read DO NOT freeze the drive unless it is absolutly the last thing you try.

    Most say it doesn't work, but those that say it does mention that you have only one chance and then your drive really toast. Not sure who is right since I never tried it, but I figure better safe than sorry if the stuff is really important to you
     
    capebretoner, Jul 18, 2005 IP
  6. stickman373

    stickman373 Peon

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    #6
    It might be risky, but I put my fried HD in the freezer for a little and then plugged in back into my system and it worked for awhile, long enough to get some data off of it.
     
    stickman373, Jul 18, 2005 IP
  7. mopacfan

    mopacfan Peon

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    #7
    You can certainly chalk it up to "lesson learned". I think we've all been there once before. Sometimes it takes something like this to make us realize that backups are an important part of any computer owner's responsibilty. I don't do mine as often as I should either. But I'll be doing one tonight since you've reminded me how important it is. Good luck recovering your data. I sincerely hope most of it is salvageable.
     
    mopacfan, Jul 18, 2005 IP
  8. focus3

    focus3 Peon

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    #8
    I would recommend at least calling the professionals and ask them for their advice. Try and squeeze as much info out as you can...because they dont want to tell you. But if your persistent enough, they will give or hire a hitman....depends on what you do ;)
     
    focus3, Jul 18, 2005 IP
  9. vprp

    vprp Peon

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    #9
    My only advice to you is to go to a professional data recovery service but if it's out of your budget, I really don't have much advice.

    I just wanted to post because I think everyone should backup their hard drive. Hard drives aren't very expensive these days.
     
    vprp, Jul 18, 2005 IP
  10. chachi

    chachi The other Jason

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    #10
    Well, I recovered a drive that I thought was toast. It had 6 years worth of Outlook emails, QuickBooks, etc. They have a free download to see if it will recover your data. It worked for me in a matter of minutes. http://www.runtime.org/ I used GetDataBack for NTFS.
     
    chachi, Jul 18, 2005 IP
  11. capebretoner

    capebretoner Well-Known Member

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    #11
    The problem with that solution is that it will only work once :)

    I agree 100% and a DVD burner and DVDs are even cheaper :D

    I have tried GetDataBack and it worked rather well, actually I only used it to see if my problem was a software or actually hardware crash. if it is a hardware crash you will need some serious help.

    The program that I used to get my HD working again was testdisk.

    This article will tell you how to use it http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1139&page=8
    and you can get the program information for here
    http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

    I hope that this helps, let us know how it works out for you
     
    capebretoner, Jul 19, 2005 IP
  12. mizt

    mizt Active Member

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    #12
    I'm screwed. Any professionals here want to take a stab at it?
     
    mizt, Jul 20, 2005 IP
  13. Solicitors Mortgages

    Solicitors Mortgages Well-Known Member

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    #13
    slave drive not being found?....is it spinning up?
     
    Solicitors Mortgages, Jul 20, 2005 IP
  14. chachi

    chachi The other Jason

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    #14
    Mizt, did you try using either of the applications recommended here?
     
    chachi, Jul 20, 2005 IP
  15. capebretoner

    capebretoner Well-Known Member

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    #15
    So have you used any of the things that I recommended? If not please do before wasting people's time. Like I said before if it is a Hareware problem then NO software out there will fix it and you will defintely have to bite the bullet and pay a GOOD professional to get it back, if it is possible.

    A hardware issue would be it not spinning up, no computer seeing it, it smells like smoke, etc....

    So please try something before posting again, there are probly people here other than me that can help you if they know the problem and what you have tried
     
    capebretoner, Jul 21, 2005 IP
  16. mizt

    mizt Active Member

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    #16
    I tried like 6 different programs. It must be hardware. Alot of time it would find messed up partions etc... and then after an hour of windows running it can't find the drive any more until I restart.
     
    mizt, Jul 21, 2005 IP
  17. ServerUnion

    ServerUnion Peon

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    #17
    This is what I have been looking for! Had a archive drive fail 2 weeks after installing. Didn't have time to back that up.

     
    ServerUnion, Jul 21, 2005 IP
  18. capebretoner

    capebretoner Well-Known Member

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    #18
    So what 6 programs have you tried?
     
    capebretoner, Jul 21, 2005 IP
  19. mizt

    mizt Active Member

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    #19
    Gees got a bad rep for this thread. Anyway

    GetbackData
    FinalData
    Recover My Files
    Norton Series of stuff (Disk Doctor, Ghost etc..)
    Easy Recovery 6
    Testdisk
    O&O DiskRecovery

    7 sorry.
     
    mizt, Jul 22, 2005 IP
  20. Shoemoney

    Shoemoney $

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    #20
    did you get back all your stuff?

    I have alot of experience with doing data recovery and forensics with linux utilities... is the drive ntfs?
     
    Shoemoney, Jul 22, 2005 IP