data recovery - any tips?

liquidmonkey

liquidmonkey

Member
long story short, have a Maxtor HDD that puts my PC into a BSOD reboot loop so i ran powermax and it determined that my drive was screwed and gave me 'diagnostics error - de9aa975'. i found this page
http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=538
on the error codes and that code above is not really an error code at all, only a reference.
in powermax i did the following,
checked the 'installation confirmation' - that passed
checked the 'basic quick test' - full read scan was recommended
checked the 'advanced test (full read scan)' and after 10 seconds it came back with the diagnostics code and said that 'this drive is failing and must be replaced, if you do not have a recent backup, then you should make one now blah blah blah'.
so now the question is, is there anyway that i can use data recovery software to get any data back? otherwise its 200gigs of stuff gonzo.
any recommendations?
 
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Depending on the error, you may or may not be able to get your data back. If you can boot your computer to say BartPE or some bootable CD like that, you MIGHT be able to copy stuff to a CD or USB drive. If Powermax says something's wrong, though, it's probably pretty serious. Sooo, about all you could do is send it off to have the data recovered which apparently costs a few grand.
 
Need hard drive for data recovery!!!

There are several companies who can do this for you if the software option has failed. I've recently lost my hard drive and am working with one. I was quoted up to $3,200 for the service, but found a company who does forensics and recovery that would do it for $500. These folks actually take the drive apart and replace the bad parts with good so data can be reovered (that is- unless the platters themselves are damaged). This option isn't working out so great for me since my drive is a little older and "rare"- that is to say Dell put in a cheap dirve. They have to match the drive EXACTLY to make it work. The more expensive options are able to somehow get data directly from your platters, damaged or not.

Thought I'd put it out here and see if anyone has or knows where to find my drive. I need an Hitachi Travel Star Model #HTS424030M9AT00, P/N 13G1495, MLC #DA1091, Mfg between Sept '04 and Jan '05. I know, I know, I will forever more be a backer-upper.

If I should post this request on another thread, please redirect.

If you're interested in this route, I can hook you up with these folks.
 
thanks for your replies. i'm trying a few things now and will let you know how it goes. the data recovery firms do charge a very high amount of money for their services and fortunately my info is not that important. only a few movies and so forth that was lost but am working on it now.
thanks!!
 
ok, here's what i have done now.
went into the power maxx program during boot up, did a 'quick format' which then told me it would relpace the first 300MB with zero's and then the last 100MB with zero's. i'm not even sure what that means?
now i'm trying to recover the data using PC inspector and a few other programs.

@sirkenin - will check out stellar phoenix
 
OH NO!!!!! You zeroed the drive? Shit!! Good luck recovering your data now man... Ooooooops. I really wish you would have asked us first. That just did a low level format on your drive. :( I doubt you will be able to recover anything now, but I do wish you the best of luck with it.
 
yeah, i was afraid someone would write that :(
ah well. it was seriously my only option as the computer would not boot into windows or even safe mode before i did that. otherwise i would have done a 'quick format' and not a 'low level format' OR are they the same? i'm new to this whole HDD recovery stuff as you can tell :)
i ran PC inspector last night and it returned nothing, then i mounted the HDD using Storage Management and now i'm running 'recover my files v3.22' and it seems to be working. its found almost 400 files but i fear that its only pieces of files due to the 'zeroing' of the drive.
looks like another 2 - 4 hours of scanning to go but i'll let ya know.
 
the problem is solved!!!! thanks to a few forum posts, some great advice and A LOT of screwing around with recovery programs. :crazy:
the one that worked for me is called 'recover my files' and it works very very very well if anyone is in a similar situation. :clapping: :thumbsup:
it took about 25 hours to do a complete scan of the 180gig drive for picture and movie files. was able to get about 80% of everything back, EVEN things that i had 'deleted' many months before the drive crashed. this being my first experience with data recovery i was super impressed at the amount of things one can recover months after a deletion. some of the movie files recovered were 150gigs in size and i'm not sure what they were so i just ignored them.
otherwise, i'm pretty happy and want to thank you all for your help :clapping:
 
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