File recovery software?

[The_Other_One]

I was given my grandmother's computer to check out. It's very obvious that the hard drive's on it's way out. I started to run CHKDSK, but go almost nothing but errors. I went into A43 explorer (using BartPE) and I can only see one directory on the drive with no files anywhere to be found. However, it does show about 27GB worth of data on there...

So, does anyone know of some good software solutions that can at least pull files from the drive? I'm still unsure if the drive has hardware issues or simply some software problems, but regardless, my grandmother has tons of photos she would like to have recovered if possible.

 

[Vipernitrox]

download ihavethepassword (probably an iso file) i'm not entirely sure if it's for free you'll have to check (no official file mirrors at least, you'll have to use some p2p program). Burn the iso, and boot from the cd.

first try teh HDD Regenator 1.51, it checks for damaged clusters and if it finds one it tries to copy the data to a good cluster. This is a very very time consuming process though.

Next try slim rescue disk there are loads of other programs in there you can use to try and get back your data. If i were you i'd get a second hard drive and try to clone the contents to the new drive. That way you'll at least have a complete backup.

You can also boot from cd into Windows 98SE from this disk (haven't tried the option though). You can also just use a ubuntu live cd for that.

If you can get into windows try something like activeundelete to try and get back your data. This one is free for sure.

 

[cohen]

Recover my files - have a look at - http://cohen-vk3fcll.webs.com/freewaresoftware.htm and the link is in there if not i can post the actual link.

It is a file that doesn't need installtion and no $$ involved

 

[TGHighRockLakeNC]

There's a nice program that has always worked for me called TestDisk and its free for download from the website and it dont just recover files it can recover whole partitions! Even damaged partitions can be recovered with it alot of times. I have actually recovered a partition from where someone ran this PartitionMagic and interrupted a "Move Partition" operation by shutting down the computer!