Corrupt USB drive

donny-gal

I don't know if with the forums going down last night this was overlooked? Can anyone help?

I can get a screen shot of the results and put it into Word, but don't know how to put it on here.

DG

bookduck

If it is a usb drive, you need to remove it from the box and attach it to your ide controller on your pc. Use the cd drive ide connector

The connectors probably won't fit so you need a cable from maplins (£4.99 - bought one yesterday) IDE to 2.5 laptop cable Model zv01.

You will only be able to perform basic tasks keeping the drive in its box - like undelete and chkdsk. You will probably loose information by keeping it in its box.

The ide box contains its own controller and intercepts and translates all the commands, so you can not do any clever low level functions. It also often intercepts the error messages from the drive when they going wrong, faulty or not saving.

There are various SMART utils and drive checkers, but these are only of use when your drive is not in its ide box.

Also the ide box interface my be duff and your drive ok?

donny-gal

Thanks BookDuck - off the find the screwdrivers.

DG

ormus

sorry i misunderstood something here. if the drive is corrupted and inaccessable via windows, then the knoppix disk will help you retreive the data files, in 90% of cases.
it dont matter if the drive is usb or not. knoppix linux will usually be able to access the data, assuming the puter can recognise the drive.
as its a live disk, you dont even need the C: drive connected. this helps sometimes in cases of corruption between hdd,s.

i would certainly try the other methods suggested here first though. ie swapping the hhd direct to the ide cable inside the pc.

bookduck

Browntoa wrote: »

I suspect you are physically going to have to look for the files you need, make sure not to save ANYTHING to the USB drive as I suspect this will overwrite the filespace

Best advice on the page! This also includes chkdisk /f - don't do it.

I disagree with ormus (sorry) on using linux (or windows) on usb for recovery: if the drive is usb then many controller functions are blocked by the usb controller of which the one below is popular http://www.alcormicro.com/products_detail.php?main_id=6&p_id=53 . You just don't get that bios/software/os interaction as it is bridged by that controller chip. Also Linux is set to read ntfs but i do not think it is designed for recovery. Without a c: drive you are going to have any where to recover to.

I've never user pcinspector, so can't comment. However, whatever you use, make sure it does not modify the hdd (call it d: drive - just for the sake of it) in any way at all.

Make sure you have enough free space on your c: to copy off all the files from the d: drive. Don't delete, don't move, don't modify, don't repair in situe - just read the d: drive - read only and copy off onto the c: drive. Modifying/recover on the d: drive will overwrite something.

If the media is corrupt/overwritten/damaged, then expect rubbish back.

I've used a few but the most recent is GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/faq_gdb.htm . If a disk that was regularly unfragmented and who's empty space was erased - I got all back. Heavily fragmented disk got me some back, but huge files were crud. After running chkdsk /f on the disk I got little back. By getting back means more than just the titles appearing . In my case there were mostly rar files, so could test them easily.

If the data is REALLY important, don't play with it, but send it of to a recovery company. It does cost, but some things in life are irreplaceable.