!!!!!unrecognized files!!!!!

[lansdon]

i have a busted hard drive
well the drive isn't busted persay
just that all of the thousands and thousands of files read as unrecognizable
the underground gave it a good college try - to no avail
so I called a place called "data doctor"
who said it would cost 250 just to look at it
and then IF it could be fixed an additional 750 -2700 dollars
yikes
I am willing to spend several hundred dollars
(somewhere significantly less than a thousdand dollars)
does anyone know of any other buisness, or people
who posses the ability but not the pricepoint
I would be eager to know

[jharriso]

What kinda machine did the drive come from? Is it IDE? SATA? 2.5"? 3.5"? Disk warrior might be able to help, it's got some pretty amazing abilities. Let me know.

[lansdon]

The hard drive is a 3.5 inch IDE. The error message that I get is called Cyclic Redundancy Check Failure: Error data read.
What I have read about it suggests that there is software that may allow me to copy off the data on that hard drive.
I have tried running CHKDSK and Scan Disk features. Neither work and list bad sectors are unreadable. I tried your idea using Xcopy to copy off the files, but this did not work because it failed to recognize the bad hard drive. It mentioned the Cyclic Redundancy check fail.
I ran Partition Magic and it did not recognize how much of the hard drive was used. It also did not recognize the Name for the drive, it called it F: ?m?
I am just trying to see if I can recover the files off of this hard drive.

[dparm]

Short of professional data recovery software (the first that comes to mind is the $700 OnTrack Easy Recovery Pro), it's probably a lost cause. Sorry Jessica!

[rjhill1]

Hm, if you've got a hard drive bigger than the broken one in question, you might see what PhotoRec can do for you. It's supposed to be compatible with just about any filesystem and O/S, and it's free. It's supposed to be able to find and recover anything on this list (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec) of file types, but from my test, it looks like it goes after ANY file it can find on the drive. From the docs, it seems as long as the header of the file is ok, it can brute force the bad sectors to match the hash (that which your files are currently failing).

I can attest this thing is pretty good! I had an NTFS partition I botched a long time back, and PhotoRec just went in and started recoverin' stuff like there was no tomorrow.

[waltersp]

Try hooking it to an external usb enclosure and plugging into a linux box.

here are a few local resources, significantly cheaper: {none of these quotes are my quotes, they are from net managers on campus}
I charge $55.00 per hour, and my normal cost for this type of recovery is between $82.50 and $110.00 unless a clean lab is needed. I do not guarantee that data will be recovered, but if I cannot, the minimum charge of $55 is invoiced. If a clean lab is needed the cost is approximately $500.00 and the drive must be shipped. I only offer this as a last chance effort if the data is worth the cost.

Thank you

Kevin Robison
Computer Paramedics
520-744-3026
520-591-0020 cell
We use Data Recovery & Reconstruction here in Tucson, their phone number 742-5724.
I can second this, this guy is local, he's been doing it for a long time, his prices are reasonable, and if he cant fix it, you pay nothing.

Here's the website
http://www.datarr.com/

There are certain kinds of failures that he cant fix in-house, and he then refers to a big company with specialized hardware and clean rooms in california.

I have used Advanced Data Solutions, www.adv-data.com for non-u of a systems a few times, and have been very happy working with them.

They have a no-data no-charge policy.

[waltersp]

aw .. crap, just read that this thread is ... from ... 2004!

.... pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

[gruthar]

No, this thread is three days old... I think you were looking at the join date.

At any rate, if there are bad CRCs all over the place, I don't know how successful a program is going to be. Presumably some of your files are still recoverable (those without bad sectors), but others will be missing 512 bytes for every bad sector they contain. Those will have to be reconstructed somehow...

[rjhill1]

No, this thread is three days old... I think you were looking at the join date.

At any rate, if there are bad CRCs all over the place, I don't know how successful a program is going to be. Presumably some of your files are still recoverable (those without bad sectors), but others will be missing 512 bytes for every bad sector they contain. Those will have to be reconstructed somehow...

Actually, you might be surprised by how resourceful some programs can be. I don't know if you're familiar w/ the PAR2 system (used on USENET mostly), but you can regenerate several megs worth of data as long as you have more recovery blocks than damaged blocks.

But here's to hoping :)