Bad Drive Need To Repair

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ares

In Runtime
Messages
400
I've got a friend who needs some help with something, so i figured i'd post his problem here.

He has a hard drive that is damaged. From what he's told me the file allocation tables are messed up. He has some data on the drive that he wants to retrieve. He'd like to somehow fix the drive if he could.

Runing win98's scan disk it told him the drive had severe file allocation table problems and couldnt fix them. When he took the drive off and put it on another pc, to try to fix again, the other pc (also win98) told him the drive had a lot of bad clusters.

What could i suggest him try to either fix the drive to make it workable again, or to retrieve whatever data he could still possibly get from it?

Any suggestions?
 
Well

It's all about how important this is.A recovery can cost $ 500 and more.
Maybe you can learn from this,2 hd's or burn this stuff as you go,will avoid this next time.:D
 
Sometimes, you have to try drastic measures to fix the drive.

I heard if you put drive in a zip lock bag, and put it in a freezer for a few hours, then try to pull the data, the change of temperature helps the drive react.

I've never tried this before but, you never know!!
 
Yeah, Holocron. I've heard of that too. I've read that's good when your hard drive won't boot up or when it's about to just totally die on ya. I'll see if my friend wants to try that, although the problem he's having isn't mechanical. His data clusters are awry.

He doesn't back things up like he should and he's got a really old pc that needs to be put out to pasture. We'll see what happens i guess. Can anyone suggest any non-windows disk scanners that might help repair the damage?
 
WHat i would suggest in this case ..to first try data recovery with some thing like Easy recovery Pro ...or somethin'...
This i would do only if the data's really important...

To make the drive reusable ..i think a Low-level format would be the best thing to do.
Low level the drive then zero fill it ...Later u can reuse it
 
Try a recovery tool - like norton or something...
Next time, try that before letting scandisk muck up your drive. the results will be better....

Advise your friend to get some AntiVirus software . . . and to make backups of the data that he wants to keep around...
 
i don't think its cuased by a virus. it might be a hard disk physical failure. if he's going to get it fixed he needs to be careful and stop using it except to try to revover his data. and yes i think preet has the best solution. use data recovery software, there are several out there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom