Got nothing back. All I would really like is my documents and my my outlook files (e-mails, contacts etc...) The drive was NTFS
aslong as the drive spins up everything should be recoverable that does not have bad sectors. do you have any unix experience at all ? check this out... http://ultimatebootcd.com/ the bottom has the ultimatebootcd full... that is what you want.
Hello, Active@ Undelete recovery utility might help you. It has the most powerful restore algorithm, so give it a try. Really great one. http://www.active-undelete.com/
When you do get whatever you can recovered and readable, please contact us to discuss a more robust backup solution. You never want to get in this situation again... Check us out at: - http://www.enigmaconnections.com/disaster_recovery.jsp
Last time it happened to me I used this: http://www.bitmart.net/index.shtml - restorer 2000 professional - the program was not clean - my binary was a debug version the crashed occasionally - however, I got back every piece of data I needed. If you are having trouble seeing the drive, that is worriesome. Try the freezer trick, or at least let it cool down for 24 hours, try a brand spanking new set of drive cables, and plug it in and see what you can find. If you still can't see anything, the cheap way of doing things is to find the same hard drive make and model and do a platter swap - but you may be screwed if there are firmware differences. It's not easy and you can totally make things even worse, but if you definitely will not end up paying a professional, it's sometimes worth the $100 to give it a shot. shoemoney's link above is golden.
As a precautionary measure to avoid this happening - what means or software do people recommend or use to back-up your hard-drive info and on what frequency do you recommend doing a back-up???
I use a two step procedure: 1. I regularly (for most folders, minimum weekly, typically daily, sometimes more than once a day depending on the folder, how critical it is, and how often the files are modified) use a batch file to create zip-file backups on a second hard drive 2. When I get time, I burn those zip files to a CD
Acronis TrueImage I use this to make a daily backup of my main drive and every few weeks of all my other drives. One thing, at least on Windows, is that it helps a lot to split things up into multiple partitions, and especially to put your boot drive on a separate drive. My boot drive recently died and I used the Trueimage backup to restore the partition to an old spare drive. The software is FAST, it manages a speed of about 25MB/sec sustained on my system (about 1.5GB/min). The image files it makes can also be mounted as a drive within Windows. It backs up stuff a paritition at a time. For file-level backups I just use xcopy set to run daily on my data folder
My eMac hard drive crashed recently. Fortunately, I had complete sets of CD backups and just moved it all to my iMac. I also called my local computer retail/service center. They said they had programs to recover crashed HD data, at a cost of about $175. You might look into that. I passed on it, since I was able to get it all going again on my iMac via the CD backups. "How to" backup is very much a personal preference. What works nicely for me is backing data up daily to a flash drive, and periodically to a CD, which I then take from home to the office (in case fire should destroy my home). Be sure to store some backups AWAY from your place of computer work, lest theft or a fire in one place take away both your computer and your backups.
I use Retrospect to do incremental backups to CDs. (I'd prefer DVDs, but have had trouble getting Retrospect to work with my DVD drive.) I set up a script that runs every day and rotates through two different backup sets on alternate days -- so I always have two backups of every version of every file on removable media. Plus I periodically back up to external hard drives just for the heck of it.
Maybe too old thread, but any online backup service now is a must have to feel safe. I use carbonite for 2 years, and even backed up all my email database for 10 years, works well.. Also, don't forget about any hard drive health monitoring software, like active smart by ariolic, or hddhealth or others.. 25 bucks for this kind of shareware worth it..
You should be careful about your next hard drive and make backs up of your data before facing these kind of problems.
Do you mean "get data back" not "get back data" ? if not then try it I was in the same position and it was the only program I could find that got back all my files, there is a trial copy you can use but cant remember if that only shows your files and you need to buy the full program to actually get them? anyway I would look at reviews and stuff as it really is excellent. And it saved my backside, my fingers are crossed it can save yours too. Good luck!