I need a neo-Moses to help partition my harddrive

March 13, 2007 12:07 PM

I can't access 300 GBs of personal files on my external hard drive due to a file corruption. Is it possible to salvage the data?

My computer was beginning to freeze up, so I attempted to reboot, but right before it shut off, as it was auto-closing application after application, a blurb came up notifying me some file from my external hard drive directory could not be copied properly (can't recall the file-type). So my computer reboots, and the drive is no longer recognized.

I called up support, and after establishing there was some sort of partition corruption (accessing "disk management" opens up an "Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard" window), I was told I'd have to reinitialize the disk to have it recognized but that I'd lose all the data in the process.

Do I have options to salvage everything, or am I burnt toast?

And please spare the advice about backing up my back-up files; this was my back-up back-up. And just two weeks after my old back-up fizzled out. The timing sucks.

posted by Mach3avelli to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Boot up off a Windows CD, or some other external device, and run Windows harddrive diagnostics software. You might be able to repair the damage.
posted by chunking express at 12:58 PM on March 13, 2007

The key word here is recovery, not repair. Don't try to fix the drive, just get the data to a safe place first. Data Rescue is the app of choice on the Mac; they have a PC version too.
posted by jjg at 1:11 PM on March 13, 2007

I've used Handy Recovery with great success. It's the best file recovery program I've ever used, and I've used loads.
posted by ReiToei at 1:19 PM on March 13, 2007

As other's have said, you are doing data recovery now. Don't do anything that writes to the disk. R-Studio works great on the PC. You can install the demo and have it give you a list of files it can recover before deciding if you want to pay for it .
posted by Good Brain at 1:33 PM on March 13, 2007

Acronis Disk Director. It should be able to repair the partition table.
posted by mphuie at 2:51 PM on March 13, 2007

I had a similar hard drive failure a few months ago, and took it to Best Buy's Geek Squad (*hands head*). They weren't able to do anything with it. Does anyone know if they use any of the above suggestions and whether it might still be worth trying some of those now?
posted by claxton6 at 3:46 PM on March 13, 2007

A few years back I recovered a hard drive that was according to Windows, very, very screwed. The problem was that the partition table or file allocation table had become corrupted.

The solution was geeky but very, very simple. It all came down to changing something like -two bytes- in the FAT/PT (whichever it was) and bam, it all came back.

The software I used was called DiskPatch

It was a while ago, but I remember that if you can get something like Partition Magic to output diagnostics on your drive, and post them to the help forum for Diskpatch, they can tell you what is likely to be the root cause of the problem, and then guide you through the steps to take.

There may be a more user friendly solution, but as a geeky sort myself I remember being very reassured by the fact that these guys could explain, in detail, exactly what you needed to do and why. Many of the instructions for other products amounted to 'run the program and see if it works' which didn't fill me with confidence.
posted by BishopsLoveScifi at 5:06 PM on March 13, 2007

Download the R-Studio demo. Install and attempt a recovery. The demo only lets you recover a very limited amount of data, but it lets you see what IS recoverable. After that, decide whether it's worth the $50 or find alternate methods of obtaining the software.

I wouldn't recommend trying a repair beforehand, but if you do, and it doesn't work, use R-Studio. It's saved my ass many times.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 7:18 PM on March 13, 2007

claxton6 - try R-Studio (no, I'm not shilling for it..it's just really good - I also use Sleuthkit, but sometimes it's faster and easier to just fire up r-studio). It's definitely worth trying.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 7:21 PM on March 13, 2007