Help with Recovering Files!!

[JHEM]

Once again I ask the Forum's deep wealth of knowledge to address a problem.

I've got a client's desktop HD that took a dump over the weekend and is now bound back to Maxtor for a warranty replacement.

Before I speed it on it's way I've been asked to attempt to recover as much as possible from it and my usual toolkit is coming up empty.

Most of the files are still visible when I boot one of my backup desktops with a W98 BOOT disk, but all attempts to read the HD when attached to one of my XP or W2K systems fails utterly with a cryptic message that the HD isn't formatted.

What I'm looking for is an XP/W2K compatible utility that could possibly recover some of the files off this HD, so I'm asking for suggestions as to what has been found to work by the Forum denizens.

So far I've tried Acronis DiskEditor and Recovery Expert, an old copy of Disk Commander, PQ RescueMe and Lost and Found, all with no success.

All suggestions are gratefully welcomed!

Regards,

James

[jdhurst]

James,

Please go to http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ and read that (long) page about BartPE and PE Builder. You need an XP Pro SP1 CD with a valid Key to get started, but what this process will let you legally do is build an XP Bootable CD. Boot from it and you can read an NTFS hard drive. I have built one of these several months ago, so I know it can work.

Another think you can do is download and build a KNOPPIX CD. This is a bootable CD with Knoppix (Linux) and it can read NTFS volumes.

You need a place to copy the files to, and the best thing might be to have the bad Hard drive in a PC with another formatted Hard Drive so you can copy files to the good drive. Otherwise you have to figure out how to connect the bootable CD with a network. I haven't done that with Bart PE, but it is supposed to provide you with network support. (I have done it with Barts_Boot_Disk, but that is Windows 98 but that is not what you want.)

Hope that helps. ... JD Hurst

[JHEM]

JD,

Thanks for the quick reply, but I don't need an NTFS solution to the problem as the bad HD is formatted in FAT32.

I've got the dead 80GB HD installed in an extra desktop in my shop along with a bare 40GB /HD that should be large enough to hold all of his files and data.

I'm just in the process of burning a RecoverSoft ISO CD to check what might be recovered if I choose to spend the client's money on that solution.

Regards,

James

[jdhurst]

James,

I had already (some time ago) built the BartPE CD. It is an XP solution as you were looking for, and free if you can lay your hands on an XP Pro SP1 installation CD. I happen to have one on those on loan from a client, since I was doing the work for them.

I just tried it tonight on an old Windows 2000 machine I have in the basement. I booted the BartPE CD (after changing the boot sequence) and I selected the standard networking tools. Lo and behold, I was able to map to my XP desktop and move files from the 2000 machine to the XP desktop.

So it does work, the only two provisos are (1) the XP SP1 install CD and (2) the time to create the bootable CD. It's not necessary geared to recovery unless it can happen to read a good area on the bad disk, so if Recoversoft works for you, great, and I'll put that tool in my own quiver of tools. Thanks, ... JD Hurst

[ian]

James, don't know if this is of any interest, but I used 'Easy-Recovery' from Ontrack and was able to get back about 90% of a disk. This was not exactly the same situation as the disk had been reformatted, but they do seem to propose alot of solutions.