Hard drive crashed. Reformatted. Gotta get my files back!!!!

[Chalenge]

If his problem was just a corrupt boot then most likely he would have been able to fix his problem without spinrite, by going to windows recovery console and running fixmbr / fixboot free of charge. Or by reinstalling windows without format, free of charge. Or perhaps simply by running chkdsk /r on rconsole No need for spinrite there and no need to spend 80 bucks.

Looking forward to more reports Ranger. 

Circular argument Ripley. The problem is he has bad sectors or could have which is possibly why the drive wouldnt boot until it was fixed. Steve is correct in the video that the vast majority of people will not buy SpinRite until they absolutely need it and then they become converts. Until you panic about the potential loss of data you cannot understand and will continue to respnd the way you are. I have seen SpinRite fix a drive that Windows reported as unbootable. UBCD (Linux) and so many other tools were tried and failed. SpinRite fixed the drive and allowed access to the data. Having said that I will also say no the drive wasnt trusted anymore but it never would have gotten to that point if SpinRite had been used all along.

@cattb... chkdsk is junk and part of the systemic problem. It has its (limited) uses but it will not tell you if a drive is about to die. Good luck with that.

The entire point is that the more tools you have at your disposal the less likely you are to experience catostrophic loss of data and overall downtime. Not only maintenance tools but an adequate backup plan are essential. That includes onboard backup... external backup... and online backup (as a suggestion).

But dont worry it always happens to the other guy and not you. Right?  

[Chalenge]

Thanks for all the info folks.  I now have Spinrite & will give it a whirl this weekend.  As you can see from my lack of posts in this thread (or any other), I'm staying off the pc except for a quick visit to this thread once a day until I fix what can be fixed.

Ranger please make sure you do as I suggested before running SpinRite. You need to undo that restore if possible or you won't get much back.

[pervert]

Get a linux live cd I used Ubuntu to recover some files on a non booting OS it runs from the CD. Plugged my phone in to usb slot and copied the files i needed to there easy.

[cattb]

@cattb... chkdsk is junk and part of the systemic problem. It has its (limited) uses but it will not tell you if a drive is about to die. Good luck with that.

Your right, very correct ( except for the part of junk, it is a tool, limited). It has worked for me though, but not all the time through years and some of the problems I have had.

Not only maintenance tools but an adequate backup plan are essential. That includes onboard backup... external backup... and online backup (as a suggestion).

).

Yup, the backup plan....................

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Looking forward to more reports Ranger. 

I'm looking forward to the message where he reports that he finally did the only correct thing of buying a new harddrive and running data recovery on the formatted drive. Every 'report' untill then is DESTROYING HIS DATA MORE.

Circular argument Ripley. The problem is he has bad sectors or could have which is possibly why the drive wouldnt boot until it was fixed.

Circular how? The computer boots to system recovery just fine using the installation dvd. Chkdsk /r will fix bad sectors 99% of time.

The entire point is that the more tools you have at your disposal the less likely you are to experience catostrophic loss of data and overall downtime. Not only maintenance tools but an adequate backup plan are essential. That includes onboard backup... external backup... and online backup (as a suggestion).

With an incremental backup plan running no data will be lost unless both the backup media and the original media die (lightning strike, burned house..) But I'm sure spinrite will prevent even that, right? 

[Chalenge]

Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.

triple post

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.

Triple post

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Have a funtastic day Ripley. You are never going to catch on.

So you ran out of arguments. Which is understandable considering you're mainly self promoting instead of doing correct steps to prevent data loss for the original poster 

[Chalenge]

No Ripley. I came to understand that you are ONLY here for an argument since you seldom have any significant contributions without arguing. In fact... you usually circle back into agreement with contributions already given by others just like you did in this thread. You are irrelevant.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

No Ripley. I came to understand that you are ONLY here for an argument since you seldom have any significant contributions without arguing. In fact... you usually circle back into agreement with contributions already given by others just like you did in this thread. You are irrelevant.

You're out of your mind lol! All this after Your advice contained the cardinal error of not dismounting the drive to be recovered immediately?

[Chalenge]

Your right Ripley. I most be out of my mind because I continue to try to help people on this forum despite remarks from people just like you.

Here is your original advice:

My advice is to get a new hdd, install windows there and try to plug the old hdd in. If it won't show up in disk management then you're pretty much screwed. You can try to freeze the drive and see if you get lucky getting it to run one last time.

If the hdd is burned i.e. it doesn't even spool up (you can hear if you listen closely while starting the computer) then you still have the option of getting an another similar drive and replacing the controller board from the working drive to the bad one.

If the disk is just corrupt (you can hear it runs and it shows up in device management but you can't read anything from it), software like getdataback can help you but even then, install a new drive, install OS on it and whatever you do do not do anything but READ from the old harddrive. And forget about spinrite etc. harddrives come cheap just toss the old drive to the bin, just a question of now or later when it fails again.

This indicates that you did not even read the original post. Ranger said after his system restore that the disk was working fine. Giving advice the way you did after (again) clearly not even reading what he had to report means that you should keep your advice to yourself. You are doing nothing more than pontificating upon your great computer knowledge (great to you anyway).

Clearly Ranger had a disk problem. Probably he used something like an HP or Dell original day return feature. If he used Windows System Restore he should go the route I suggested. This is precisely what I said after Ranger clarified what he had done.

Im guessing you missed this reply:

I just tasted something really nasty after reading that Ranger.

If you used the regular Windows Restore to restore to a previous time I think you should undo that and then run SpinRite either from a CD or USB thumb drive. If you used an HP utility to restore from an image I think you are probably looking at great difficulty.

Clearly I thought at least that he has an HP (not sure why) however the indication here is that what others had already said would help him down the right path if he had in fact used something like an HP restore function.

For someone that is so enamored with his own significance you continue to make the most obvious mistakes. You are irrelevant.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Your right Ripley. I most be out of my mind because I continue to try to help people on this forum despite remarks from people just like you.

Here is your original advice:

This indicates that you did not even read the original post. Ranger said after his system restore that the disk was working fine. Giving advice the way you did after (again) clearly not even reading what he had to report means that you should keep your advice to yourself. You are doing nothing more than pontificating upon your great computer knowledge (great to you anyway).

Clearly Ranger had a disk problem. Probably he used something like an HP or Dell original day return feature. If he used Windows System Restore he should go the route I suggested. This is precisely what I said after Ranger clarified what he had done.

Im guessing you missed this reply:

Clearly I thought at least that he has an HP (not sure why) however the indication here is that what others had already said would help him down the right path if he had in fact used something like an HP restore function.

For someone that is so enamored with his own significance you continue to make the most obvious mistakes. You are irrelevant.

I admit I didn't read the full description at first. I made an assumption that someone who wants to keep their data wouldn't format their functioning drive and install stuff over it. Still my advice contained the only correct procedure for data recovery i.e. unmounting the drive and submitting it for read-only operations.

Your actions have caused the user to irreplacebly lose data by not stressing out he should not do _anything_ with the drive after the point where he realized he wants his data back after the format. Your suggestion to 'undo' windows restore in his situation is cardinal mistake number 2! It would cause massive writes again over his formatted data! You do realize that formatting the drive leaves all data on the drive intact unless you write new stuff over it?

For someone who doesn't seem to know the first basics of the topic at hand and claiming expertise on the basis of purchasing a software without even understanding what it does and how it works, you're pretty arrogant.

I'm done posting this stuff anyway. I hope the original poster has now stoped using the drive and bought a data recovery software to restore whatever there's left after the cardinal mistake of new windows installation and reading the false instructions given by a certain few in here.