MrDuke February 17, 2009 Share MrDuke Member February 17, 2009 I had a nasty virus kill my PC last year. I won't say how but it rhymes with mother-in-law. Anyhow, the data on that old drive is all of my pictures, documents and memories from when Danielle went through her cancer ordeal. I can't lose that. The local PC shop said the drive was bad and was kind enough to install a new drive, but they said they couldn't recover the data from the old drive. I don't believe them. There has to be a way. I'm open to any and all suggestions and, as mentioned, I'll ship it and pay you for your time. I'll even grovel if I have to. Let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stutters February 17, 2009 Share stutters GC Alumni February 17, 2009 what brand is it? one of my board members is @ seagate, and apparently they're doing free data recovery...on their drives (because the 1tb barracuda's have a 40% fail rate). not sure about all the terms, but worth investigating. does look like they have a paid service for other drives. do you remember the virus that hit it? edit: waiting on a 6:30 mtg. twiddling thumbs n killing time. http://seagatedatarecovery.com/data-recove...y-software.html windows-based recovery, free trial, $129 if it works. recovered in 2-4 weeks priority 2-3 business days Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrDuke February 17, 2009 Author Share MrDuke Member February 17, 2009 I believe it was kapersky. Grabbing the drive now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrDuke February 17, 2009 Author Share MrDuke Member February 17, 2009 It's a maxtor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stutters February 17, 2009 Share stutters GC Alumni February 17, 2009 I believe it was kapersky. Grabbing the drive now... isn't kapersky anti-virus? i don't think you got your money's worth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mookie February 17, 2009 Share mookie GC Alumni February 17, 2009 Forwarded an email for something I paid for but never made use of. Barring a hardware failure, it's likely that most of the data is still intact. Be careful though, since whatever virus got into your stuff will still be on there too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrDuke February 17, 2009 Author Share MrDuke Member February 17, 2009 I believe it was kapersky. Grabbing the drive now... isn't kapersky anti-virus? i don't think you got your money's worth alright jackass, it was 1+ yrs ago. maxtor=seagate... who knew?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrDuke February 17, 2009 Author Share MrDuke Member February 17, 2009 Also, it appears to be a physical problem with the drive, not related to the virus. That was just icing on the quiche. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroDamage February 17, 2009 Share ZeroDamage Member February 17, 2009 It depends on the condition of the drive. I was able to recover most of the data off of a drive a couple of months ago that was old and dying and did some "clicking" noise but not bad enough to keep it from working. If your drive is clanking and nothing picks it up, then you are out of luck for the exception of those expensive data recovery services and they typically cost a few thousand bucks or more. If the drive is working somewhat, you may be able to recover what you are looking for. This is the application that I recommend. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec There is a windows version and make sure that you go step by step through the configuration before you start running the app. Otherwise, it will grab every single useless file there is on that old drive and could damage it more as it will be grabbing stuff you do not want and putting stress on the drive. Configure it to only grab the picture files like jpg and png and gif files and what other files you need; skip all the rest. Make sure your current drive or whatever drive you use as the target is big enough to hold everything. You could also hook up a USB drive to your system, hook up the old hard drive, and boot up the computer with Ubuntu Live CD and recover the data that way. PhotoRec does not maintain the file names of the original files though. And depending on the condition of your drive, many of the files may be unrecoverable. What I also did which helped uncease the drive I worked on was put it in a air tight ziplock bag, and then I put it in the freezer over night. This tends to make a drive that would not function before actually work but you have to make 100% sure that the ziplock bag is completely air tight and you are ready to hook it up and go the instant you pull it from the freezer. It will get warm and may lock up again in a hurry. Worked for me on 2 occasions. Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek-Almighty February 18, 2009 Share Tek-Almighty Member February 18, 2009 I'll repeat what others have said. Connect to another machine and use any variety of freeware. I've done this successfully a couple times. I've tried Active File Recovery. Get Back Data for NTFS...Those recently. If the drive has a master boot record failure, or indexing failure, those might work. Good luck. You can always try professional help too...but it's gonna run you about $100. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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