Data recovery ....age old question

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bradlesliect

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Hi,

I would like to recover missing/lost/formatted data from a notebook hard drive.

I use Easy Recovery 6.0 and select RAW recovery. The process starts, get to a point and then displays "Error encountered while scanning partition..." but it appears the progress bar below the message continues to move but very slowly. After a few hours the notebook switches off.

Question:
- What does that error mean?
- How do I check the drive for physical damage? - its a 160GB Hitachi Travelstar
- Is there other better and faster utilities for recovery that will work around this problem?

I've been at this for a few days now. I want to try file scavenger or Get Data Back but I dont know the software or if it will work.

Any help / advice is welcomed.
 
The error probably means that the drive is faulty, when this happens I usually give up and just chuck the disk (unless you really want to get something off it, which probably wont happen since the disk cant be read).

Try the Second (thorough) smart scan on Easy Recovery and see if it gives any errors. Don't know of any other utilities, but if you really are desperate then try enter the sector scan manually i.e. set the scan to start scanning after the sector that generates the error.

Of course any data on that sector is probably gone....
 
I think the drive may be faulty but I have been able to clean install of windows on the drive about 3 times and it was stable....but I still think there may be bad sectors. Do you think if I use a Win98 bootdisk and use fdisk from there perhaps it will mark the sectors and clusters as bad?...oh wait...win98 wont see 160GB ...or will it?

What about software that does low level format to mark the sectors and then try the recovery afterwards?

Will try the smart scan and see what happens...

The idiot who workd on this notebook before me removed the recovery partition which contains the OS recovery, drivers,etc. This notebook is supposed to be a diskless installation.

Some guys hey....gees
 
All disks have bad sectors and a format will mark these as such and not write data to it (XP or 98). Bad sectors are normal and the disk will continue to function fine. What happens, and I think it has happened here, is that the physcial disk gets damaged (i.e. more damaged than the usual bad sectors) and Easy Recovery is unable to read it at all.

The reason it works is probably because the system has not tried to write to the damaged portion. The disk in one of my notebooks was damaged so I formatted it to four gigs, thereby bypassing the damaged portion and it works fine. *Touches wood*
 
I don't know squat 'bout data recovery. But if you're looking for help (cause and solution) with a specific error message, have a look at http://bug.gd/
 
Conradl and Borrels - thanks for this information but I aint going to give up ...not yet anway....there must be something I can do...
 
bradlesliect said:
Hi,

I would like to recover missing/lost/formatted data from a notebook hard drive.

I use Easy Recovery 6.0 and select RAW recovery. The process starts, get to a point and then displays "Error encountered while scanning partition..." but it appears the progress bar below the message continues to move but very slowly. After a few hours the notebook switches off.

Question:
- What does that error mean?
- How do I check the drive for physical damage? - its a 160GB Hitachi Travelstar
- Is there other better and faster utilities for recovery that will work around this problem?

I've been at this for a few days now. I want to try file scavenger or Get Data Back but I dont know the software or if it will work.

Any help / advice is welcomed.
Click to expand...

Maybe plug it into the charger?
 
I think the notebook switches off cause the disk gets so hot trying to read and reread that the CPU craps out....

The three quick ones don't actually format the disk, it just creates a new file system. Good luck, I know the feeling of really needing to restore a disk....
 
Conradl said:
I think the notebook switches off cause the disk gets so hot trying to read and reread that the CPU craps out....

The three quick ones don't actually format the disk, it just creates a new file system. Good luck, I know the feeling of really needing to restore a disk....
Click to expand...

thats correct but for me it works with those five formats.I remember my install of windows7.I had to try something,and in the end it worked.....no more errors yipeee:D
 
remybfg10k

- if you trying to be funny...i hope trying to be comedian is a hobby as you not going to make very much with lame jokes.
- if you trying to be sarcastic.... sarcasm is the lowest form of wit

...so if you don't have anything valuable or constructive to add to fix the problem...then keep your comments to yourself... or if you bored ...go play in traffic somewhere...
 
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