Unfortunately, date recovery companies such as DriverSavers and the like charge a heck of a lot of $$ for their services, but if your drive was really hosed by viruses and/or spyware, the data is still most likely intact.

I'd suggest trying the following if you haven't already:

Install the drive as a slave drive in another computer and see if you can access and back up the data that way.

Hello,

You can also try booting an alternative OS. For example, if your computer was a Windows 2000 Server, try loading Knoppix on it, and use linux to access the hard drive. You can also try a floppy disk with DOS on it, and some network drivers, and an NTFS Read module. You will need to move the data off the drive, and then likely re-format it.

Now, if the fella who built your box was a good administrator, he would have partitioned the drive into a few partitions to isolate areas on the disk, and prevent the C: from filling and collapsing the device. It is possible that the other partition is available and functioning.

Dunno though.

Christian

I have yet to locate an affordable data recovery service. As long as you can access the drive, this utility should work. Keep in mind some of the files may have become corrupted:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

If it's critical data, you may need to spend the couple thousand to get it back.

Without knowing just what the status of the drive is ,if its still recognized by the bios,and dos ,this porgram is a good one .
http://www.grc.com/

Yo Caperjack,


I wish it was that easy. The drive is no longer with me, and the person who has it is not pc literate at all. He might do more harm than good, and since the data on the HD belongs to him all I can do is recommend a solution. He doesn't know how to backup either, so at this point I was wanting to send him to the professionals. He doesn't want to hassle with the alternative.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it for myself. If anyone has a personal referral I would definitely appreciate it. Thanks again!

Sorry to hear that that's the case, but I definitely understand everything that you're decribing about the situation.

1. Your assessment of "He might do more harm than good" is right on the mark. If he knows nothing about data backup and recovery, he could very well lose everything on the drive if he attempts any recovery procedures on his own.

2. If the data on the drive is truly important, I'd suggest that he call some of the local computer service companies/people in his area and see if they can help. If those people really do know their stuff, they should be able to do something similar to what Christian suggested- install the drive as a slave drive in another computer and access/recover the data that way.

I'm a freelance computer consultant, so I've done that a number of times, and for a few different reasons; massive spyware infections included. If it was truly a virus/spyware infection that crashed the system, then all of your friend's data is still intact and most of it, if not all of it, should be recoverable. It might involve using a computer running something like Linux (as non-Microsoft operating systems are immune to the infections) to copy the data to a safe backup location, but the process should cost much less that using the services that Drive Savers and the like offer.


In terms of a "personal referral"; you'd have to tell us where your friend lives. Those of us who help out here are scattered all around the globe, so there's a chance that we could actually give him some "local" recommendations.

Yo Double M!

Thanks for the response, and to be honest I didn't even consider the Linux option. That shows you how busy I've been rebuilding a website and all.. :mad:

The hd is now in Las Vegas, and I did have a local tech go there to check this out. All I got from him was that the drive would not boot up due to a virus. He stating trying to boot up as a slave, but that didn't work as well. So there you have it.

And don't worry, I wouldn't even think of trying to mail ya :p Thanks for the assist though. And btw, that comment "May the Wombat of Happiness snuffle through your underbrush." - That could be mighty uncomfortable :cheesy:

Take care..

Hmm, I see... and gambling away all of its free GigaBytes too, yes? There's the problem. :mrgreen:

Your post is strangely timely- I've just gotten back from a service call involving a corrupted Windows XP drive that contained all of a client's business data; contact info, billing info, the whole works. Nothing he had tried before I visited (booting into the Recovery Console from the XP CD, going through the computer's built-in factory diagnostics with a Dell support tech, etc.) had worked.

He had called to schedule the appointment a couple of days ago, so in the mean time I'd gone and downloaded the iso of the lastest version (3.9) of Knoppix Linux and burned it to CD. The CD is a "live" CD, meaning that the OS boots from CD and runs entirely in RAM. It doesn't use/need a hard drive at all, but it does support and understand Windows-formatted (FAT/FAT32/NTFS) drives

When I got to the client's site I stuck in the Knoppix CD, booted from it, and it automagically detected the crippled Windows hard drive. It also auto-detected and configured his network card, so I just set up file/folder sharing with another healthy Windows computer on his network and did a network copy of the data on the crippled system's drive to a folder on the good computer. No muss, no fuss, all data saved. Total cost to client: two hours of my time; a hot $90 USD.


Um... I really won't go too far down that road, but let's just say that it's a soft Wombat; a hedgehog, of course, would be a much more (*ahem*) prickly matter. :mrgreen:

So ,Im gessing that along with the knoppix cd [witch i have ]]you need a good drive to copy to ,right ,like if the computer is not on a network ,you would need to add another drive to the computer to copy the data to , right .
Don't meant to butt in ,just trying to learn how to do this in case i need too backup for someone .someday .thanks