F*#@ng hell! I HATE M$!!!

[_xxx_]

Just wanted to reinstall Windows yesterday. I have two HD's, one for OS (C: ) and another one with two partitions for data/games.

So I rebooted with the WinXP CD and clicked me through to the screen where you get to choose the destination drive for the install. So I tried formatting my C: and it went all the way up to 100% and then broke up saying "the drive can't be formatted". I rebooted and tried again and got to the same screen. There, XP saw my C: again, but my data drive was there as "non-partitioned area". That totally freaked me out since I did nothing with the second drive! I broke up and rebooted again into windows and indeed, the data drive was GONE!

I started partition magic in order to see what happened and it also saw the drive as non-partitioned area. Trying the "Restore partitions" option got me a message box saying "No partitions found".

Does anyone know of a nice tool for restoring data from a f*#<x0red drive? I'd appreciate any help!

Another strange thing: when I disconect the mentioned drive and try to boot, it gets to the BIOS startup screen saying "detecting IDE drives..." and stops there. I have all my drives set to "Auto" in BIOS. I also tried fiddling around with enabling/disabling individual drives, but I could not get the machine to boot with only one HD connected until I explicitly disabled the second HD (in this case primary slave). Any ideas?

 

[suryad]

God man I really feel bad for you. MY brother went thru the same thing when he tried reinstalling the OS and it gave him the finger. The moral of the story is not good mate, fact is he lost everything. But that is because he pulled out the hdd and did something so the bios was confused and that will fuck things up. I really dont know how I could help especially if partitioning software dont see ur hdd. What you could try doing is maybe install linux and see if you are able to view your ntfs partitioning. I dont know if that is an MS fault or what. But best of luck to ya mate.

 

[_xxx_]

Thanks. The partitioning SW sees the HDD, as well as Windows, but no partitions. I'm going to try some recovery tools I just collected, though I have no idea which ones are good. Any experiences with recovery-SW anyone?

EDIT:
I feel like I'm damned somehow. First my gfx-card goes titsup, now the HDD. What's next?

 

[Guden Oden]

Have you looked at spinrite at gibson research? www.grc.com, or if it's .org... It's supposedly good, but I don't really know for sure; none of my current PC harddrives have crashed so far (touch wood).

 

[Druga Runda]

I have done a recovery once from a fcuked up drive (had to return it) but the data recovery tool picked up all data that was still OK...

not sure what the tool was anymore though

it was free for limited use as well IIRC... but not sure on that though... could take a look when I get home, as it is bound to be on some of my data backup DVD's, unless you find something similar that will do the job in the meantime...


send me a pm this evening if you won't manage to sort it out in the meantime, I might even be able to send you the tool as IIRC it was a relatively small program...

 

[MuFu]

GetDataBack is good.

 

[_xxx_]

Thanks guys, I'll try that. So far I've been through Active Partition Recovery and DiskPatch with similar results - they break up at about 95%.

I HATE M*f###ing*S!

 

[_xxx_]

MuFu, I LOVE YOU! If I was gay, I'd marry you! GetDataBack really did it!

PM me your address if you like, I'd like to send you a little thank-you present. I'm serious, you saved me lots of trouble!

Thanks for your input guys, I really appreciate your help!

 

[cloudscapes]

I fee lfor you. I've had that happem once as well, couldn't fidn a way to fix that. Since then, I always *physically* disconnect my data drive from everything when reinstalling Windows on my primary OS drive.

 

[Sxotty]

I think the moral of this is unplug the drives you are not messing with.

I am glad I saw your experience here so I will make sure and do that in the future as I have a data drive as well.

 

[nelg]

Have you looked at spinrite at gibson research? www.grc.com, or if it's .org... It's supposedly good, but I don't really know for sure; none of my current PC harddrives have crashed so far (touch wood).

Did you know that Steve Gibson's genetic code was written in 100% pure assembly language?

 

[vb]

EasyRecovery

 

[_xxx_]

Since I recovered every last bit of my data, I afterwards tested all the tools I found. The results:

Active Partition Recovery: failed
DiskPatch: failed
EasyRecovery: no chance in hell
SpinRite: failed

GetDataBack: success - clear winner here, I thankfully gave them my money.

I'll also be disconnecting the second drive in future. I'm also using an external HD for mirroring my data disk since yesterday.

 

[PC-Engine]

Does anyone know if GetDataBack can get info off of a BIOS security locked HDD. I removed a HDD from a dead laptop but cannot read it because the BIOS has locks it when you remove it from the laptop. :?

 

[_xxx_]

Does anyone know if GetDataBack can get info off of a BIOS security locked HDD. I removed a HDD from a dead laptop but cannot read it because the BIOS has locks it when you remove it from the laptop. :?

Haven't tried, but DiskPatch can do pretty much anything, up to manually editing the MBR. You can dl all these utils and try the demos, you'll see what they can do and can buy the one that suits your needs best.

 

[PC-Engine]

Does anyone know if GetDataBack can get info off of a BIOS security locked HDD. I removed a HDD from a dead laptop but cannot read it because the BIOS has locks it when you remove it from the laptop. :?

Haven't tried, but DiskPatch can do pretty much anything, up to manually editing the MBR. You can dl all these utils and try the demos, you'll see what they can do and can buy the one that suits your needs best.

Just want to give a little bit more info. When I hook up the HDD that I salvaged from the laptop, it says No Operating System.

I'll give DiskPatch a try and if it works I'll send _xxx_ a gift.

If GetDataBack works I'll send Mufu a gift.

 

[_xxx_]

Well, now we have it. My HD went titsup. Again.

In the last 4-5 years I had three Maxtor HD's that crapped out, this one included. All the other brands (WD, Samsung, IBM, Seagate) I own(ed) never let me down, in fact I still have my old Samsung and IBM drives somewhere and two WD's in my machine now working like a charm, as always the case with WD.

That's it for me with Maxtor. Never again.

Fortunately I can RMA it, it just 4 months old...

 

[BRiT]

I've had 1 Maxtor 250G unit die and then 3 months later 1 Western Digital 120G unit die on me. Fortunately, I was able to recover most of the data on them using GetDataBack. Not sure if this is all coincidental, but both seem to have been caused by a series of power-glitches (power cycling for 2 minutes every 5 seconds or so) while NewsBin was running the Spool/Chunk directory on them. The other drives were in sleep-mode and survived fine. Now all the external units are on UPSes.

 

[_xxx_]

These were different machines and no issues with power whatsoever. Maybe it was bad luck, but to me, Maxtor is a no-no from now on.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

These were different machines and no issues with power whatsoever. Maybe it was bad luck, but to me, Maxtor is a no-no from now on.

Supposedly the biggest cause of drive failure (especially early in the drive's life) is poor handling & shipping. Try buying your drive from somewhere that handles them carefully. Seagate are actually very good when it comes to packaging their drives for transport, but there's only so much that packaging can do if the store is sloppy.