"a disk read error has occurred" .. data recovery

[phantasmagoria]

My PC froze a couple of nights ago and I was unable to shut it down so I just held the power switch down and went to bed, in the morning i got:

"a disk read error has occurred, press CTRL ALT DEL".

I tried going to the recovery console (which didn't ask for admin password?) and ran chkdsk c: /r which told me there were unrecoverable errors. fixmbr wouldn't work either as it told me the drive isn't formatted.

There are several files on this drive that I've been working on for the past few months as well as some config files I'd rather not lose, all my normal documents/pictures/videos etc are backed up on DVD, so there's only a tiny portion of data on this drive that I (really do) need back.

I've been running a program called GetDataBack for about 36hours now and it's only at 7%, which seems like a total waste of time for only a tiny tiny portion of data that needs to be retreived. Are there better programs you can reccomend than this to recover stuff and/or a possible way to fix the drive without having to format?

xx

[AmIdYfReAk]

What windows are you running?

[bork[e]]

36hours now and it's only at 7% - holy shit.

(sorry, no help here...but damn)

[phantasmagoria]

What windows are you running?

sorry;

XP pro SP2.

the drive in question is an 80gb Western Digital 3mb cache caviar thingy, it's getting on a bit now.

Not that it's of much consiquence but my cpu is a 2800+ Barton OCed to about 2.1 with 1.5GB pc3200 ram on an Asus A7N8X deluxe 2.0.

[AmIdYfReAk]

we'll the best thing that i could say is dont bother with those shitty apps ( Ie Getdataback and etc )

put the Sp2 cd in and run a repair Process, it will give you the option to basically reinstall windows, without tuching any of the installed app's and Settings that you have..

that would be the best option IMO.

[phantasmagoria]

It tells me that in order to continue, I need to format the drive as the current filesystem is unrecognisable.


edit:
Unless you mean the Press F2 to run ASR (automated System Recovery) thingy that comes up when you boot from the Windoze CD, in which case it tells me to put in my ASR disk, which is something I don't have. I'm at my parents and the only version of windows I have is a streamlined version of SP2

[AmIdYfReAk]

wait a tic, it says the File system unrecognisable!?

dude, that is not a good Sign, did you cancel out that Data Recovery app?

[phantasmagoria]

Yeah, it's inability to go fast was really annoying so I cancelled it for being incompetant. Literally, the files I need from this HDD are about 15mb out of 60gb. If I knew what sector they were in it wouldn't be a problem, as GetDataBack can search specific sectors, unfortunatly I tend not to make note of that sort of info

[AmIdYfReAk]

Uhhhh, well, you certanly did the worst thing that you could... considering those apps mes with the file system to try and recover things.. and by canceling it, you fucked it up Huge.

The ONLY option now is to format.. OR toss the Harddrive onto another ( working ) computer and See if some Recovery Apps' will work ( like Nortons recovery thingy ) But you need to know the file/folder name..

other then that, you sir, are out of options.

[phantasmagoria]

oh, I should have said I haven't touched the filesystem, I've put the fucked drive in question into my parent's PC as a slave and all getDataBack's been doing is scanning the drive for recoverable data. I haven't (and couldn't, anyway) installed or changed anything on the drive.

I guess I'll set GetDataBack running again, and look into aquisitioning the norton program of which you speak./

[Tormentius]

Get Easy Recovery Pro. Its the best I've used so far.

[PieceMaker]

Anyone have any LinuxLiveCd's with some hard drive recovery tools?

I know there are some out there and useable. I'm just not Linux-literate

There are a few listed here that could help
if you had some knowledge of Linux commands and such. LiveCD listing Rescue catagory

I know the above might be too much to try and figure out just to recover a few files.

Just thought I'd throw this in the mix.

[shadd_]

there is a liveXP cd around.

[glossy]

Yeah, it's inability to go fast was really annoying so I cancelled it for being incompetant.

but it only had 478 hours to go!

[phantasmagoria]

I got a program called Ontrack FastRecovery which allowed me to add custom file signates to a recovery scan and report when it found them, i found what the main thing i was looking for in a matter of a few hours. I'd reccomend this app to anyone.

Now I have to battle my harddrive into formatting.

[davison]

Hey why dont you try Stellar Phoenix Hard Drive Recovery Software which is an intuitive recovery tool which will give you an option for selecting your specified area or drive for your recovery.Give a try it will recover your data efficiently and quickly...

[axbaby]

i have had similar drive problems when overclocking.
set the cpu to it's proper speed and test.

[Fender]

ax... this thread is almost 4 years old
it was bumped by a spambot

[axbaby]

chit .. thanks