A friends hard drive as failed, with all of his work/ and pictures of grand children etc
(his wife is distraught !!)

can this info be retrieved, or has he lost the lot


regards

steve

Is it just that windows has become unbootable or is the drive totally defunct? If it's just windows that's gone then all the data can be retrieved by running the drive as a slave in another machine.

If the latter then there are specialist data retrieval companies that may be able to recover some data. However they are very expensive and usually charge by the gigabyte that they recover. Don't know any of these companies, i suggest googling hard drive data retrievel or something.

there is a half chance it can be retrieved,give hicost a call

Bob

I have given him Hicosts no already

thanks

steve

Yep, if the problem lies with the operating system (ie windows) there is nothing to stop you plugging it into another system and recovering the data.

Like olv says though, if the drive is at fault, data recovery is a lot harder. I have suffered this in the past and I was lucky enough to find a program called getdataback. It was the ONLY one that worked and recovered data from the majority of the HDD. Failing that, you wil be needing the services of a professional company.

Id give getdataback a go first version for NTFS file systems they also do FAT versions too.

Good luck I know how devastating it can be, I learned about backing stuff up the hard way......that reminds me Im off to back up.

Richie

Its a hard lesson learned when its info of importance,i know its been said before but allways best to back up

One trick worth trying take it out leave in the fridge overnight ---- a long shot but about 1 in 10 times when you stick back in it will run for long enough to get some data off.

The most you can expected an IDE HD to last is 3 years beyond that you are it bonus time.

For backups I recommend Cobian Backup it will even backup over an FTP conection -- above all it is 100% free. http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Thanks James

Its not for me, its a friend,
Dave Jakes has got your number and will call you, or drop in during the week

thanks
steve

If it still detects in bios you might be in with a chance. I've used the free programs on here a few times with very good results. Their smartmedia recovery program is invaluable and the hard drive file recovery has found stuff I deleted from the hard drive 18 months ago. It's worth a try and it doesn't cost anything. edit:- it performs better than some commercial programs my mate paid good money for.

[Edited on 15/1/06 by Peteff]