bad hard drive

andy2004

hi this a query to all techs.

Just borrowed my newphews 1.tb Wd external harddrive to move files off my 1.5tb WD 8month old drive, before sending it back to ebuyer, to get a replacement, uptil 9pm tonight everything was fine on the 1tb drive. foldername and filename perfect, then the my system froze, mouse wouldnt move, only option was to press the reset button.
I disconnected the power from the plug. Disconnected the external drive, then rebooted the computer everything fine, reconnected the 1tb external and everything is GONE. no files, but 4 folders, and all gibberish.
the 1tb drive external was formatted to Fat32 32kb clusters.

How the hell do i recover the files and folders.
The only thing i could think of is to run CHKDSK H: /F but all thats doing is listing files like this:

bad links in lost chain at cluster 00000 corrected.

where 00000 is a 5 digit number

or should i be trying a data recovery program like getdataback, recovermyfiles, filescavenger, recuvva.

before you ask no i was not trying to fit 1.5tb data onto a 1tb drive, i was moving the folders 1 at a time, and i was also using other drives to put files on,. I also had a 120gb and 300gb free from other drives, and there was space on the 1.5tb before it came back with a 0007 error code using WD own software to check it.

andy2004

The whole reason for moving the files and folders is because my 1.5tb WD drive is FAILING anyway and is being sent back to Ebuyer as its only 8months old. So I wouldnt have the data as a backup anyway.
WD error code 0007 in case your wondering.
I'm still able to access the 1.5tb drive, but slowly.
as i no longer have the space to recover the data from the 1.5tb i can see no point in trying to recover any more data. However i should be able to recover most of the data from the 1tb drive belonging to my nephew when i get my replacement drive.
I just need to know which recovery programs to use thats good on FAT32

ddoris

Regarding space- can't you burn data to dvd's ? Keeping a lot of avi's on any hard drive can lead to disappointment.

danthemoneysavingman

Then again, I've been disappointed by DVDs, so make sure you don't go CHEAP!

andy2004

I cant burn the data from the Hard Drive as its dieing and the speed drops when moving files, put it another way speed is between of 284KB/s to 800KB/s when it should be higher in the 22MB/s-55MB/s. I cant burn data from the 1tb drive i've been moving the files to due to the fat32 system screwing up and now i got no files on there at all just 4 folder with jibberish for names,so something got corrupted, system froze so i pressed the reset button, nothing worked no mouse movement, and the dvd+r i bought are CHEAP, I bought 10 boxes of 50 dvd+s through UKDVDR when they where on half-price sales £2.99 for 50, seem to be good dvd's aswell.
However only 5 boxes where for me, brother had 2 and my neighbour ordered 3, we combined are orders to save P&P,
And finally do you know how many dvd+rs it would take to burn 1.5tb worth of data, give you a clue 1.5tb is 1397GB x 1024 to get MB, /4482 <dvd+r 1, if you can fill a dvd to capacity, but as movies you download are usually the size of 1 cd, or 700mb you can only get 6 on there with 200mb spare. and do you really think i want to sit here and burn over 320 dvd's from just 1 of the 1.5tb. Which is the whole reason i bought the WD drive in the first place. I didnt want to sit and burn, and then you have the storage of those dvd's.

How long does it take to get a RMA from ebuyer? on the print out i did from the screen it says "To process your request to the next stage please contact our technical support team on 0845 121 0523 who will be able to review your request fully"
but when i phoned that number it said "please have your RMA number at the ready"
Talk about confusing. under STATUS management referral
do i have to wait for management to give me the RMA then phone, or do i phone and get a RMA

danthemoneysavingman

you could have a crack with power data recovery, for example, but it's extremely slow on scavenge-like setting.

Or poss active partition recovery. But you could spend a lot on software that won't solve the problem!

So, is it data you can't live without? how much are you willing to spend to (attempt to) get it back? etc

Hammyman

Boot with Ubuntu Live CD, use GParted to create a new partition on the external drive then copy everything over from the old drive.

Basil1234

i would suggest hirens boot cd has alot of recovery software/diagnositcs from most of the manufacturers of hdds.

click linky and then click free user
http://rapidshare.com/files/412099653/Hirens.BootCD.11.0.zip.html

weegie.geek

ddoris wrote: »

Regarding space- can't you burn data to dvd's ? Keeping a lot of avi's on any hard drive can lead to disappointment.

What on earth do you mean by that?

patman99

Fat32 can only create file systems up to 32Gb with Windows XP/2K, if you are using XP or 2k then you will need to format the external as NTFS (more stable than FAT32 anyway). Do this, then re-transfer your files across.

Richie-from-the-Boro

- Fat32 [ see #1 ] can only have a maximum file size of 4GB minus the header !
- are you copying to a Fat32 HDD ?

You know even if both drives are NTFS, copying / moving even small CD sized single files from an iffy drive or across an iffy bus is going to be hard.

If you are trying to copy *.iso's you will prolly be backing a looser. If you are copying anything bigger than 4GB the whole thing will hang. If you didi not switch off system restore / shadow copy / virus checker before you started this marathon you will be (1) compounding your problem. This would even be the case if they were contiguous, however in a fragmented HDD situation you will be further (2) compounding the problem.