Accessing a corrupt hard drive?

[PepeLePew]

Any hardware techies out there?
I've just had a new 250 Gig hard drive fail on me. Seems to be the result of an old twisted IDE cable. Which lead to NTLDR file becoming inaccesible. I've gone down the google search route to try and diagnose and repair it, but alas it has stayed dead. I've now installed Windows on a new hard drive; set that as master and the old drive as a slave. However I can't see that old drive in my computer, and have to assume that it is inaccesible to my efforts.

My question is, is it possible for a professional pc shop to gain access somehow?

I've recently had to replace this hard drive and retrieve the files from the old dieng hard drive, and I should therefore be able to restore most of the important stuff like music, vids and pr0n. But I will have lost about 6 weeks worth of emails if I can't access it.

[Elev8/Levit8]

When you say... dead...

Connected as Slave to yer new drive, does it spin up?
Does the BIOS autodetect it?

EDIT Also, I assume it's formatted NTFS & not FAT? /EDIT

[hsblvp]

Originally Posted by PepeLePew

Any hardware techies out there?
I've just had a new 250 Gig hard drive fail on me. Seems to be the result of an old twisted IDE cable. Which lead to NTLDR file becoming inaccesible. I've gone down the google search route to try and diagnose and repair it, but alas it has stayed dead. I've now installed Windows on a new hard drive; set that as master and the old drive as a slave. However I can't see that old drive in my computer, and have to assume that it is inaccesible to my efforts.

My question is, is it possible for a professional pc shop to gain access somehow?

I've recently had to replace this hard drive and retrieve the files from the old dieng hard drive, and I should therefore be able to restore most of the important stuff like music, vids and pr0n. But I will have lost about 6 weeks worth of emails if I can't access it.

There are free downloads to find your file PC Tools - Essential Tools for your PC you can down load off this website it will do a pc scan and should sort your corrupt hard drive 4 u, the links were off Microsoft Corporation were there r a few others but this software had won a gold award and seems ok. microsoft will also do a live pc scan and registry clean up which i have used before but was looking for something more suitable for your pc errors, i thought i'd better try it out first, so i had a try of the pctools scan last night and they do a deep clean scan - 149 errors it found ! lost and invalid files etc etc, hope this helps u out, if this dosn't solve/fix it or you need more help just let me know. Good luck mate

or you can buy it, £2 & p&p

Ntldr Missing
Find Ntldr Missing! Buy Ntldr Missing on eBay
eBay UK - The UK's Online Marketplace

[ruffers]

Put in the freezer for a day or two...apparently

Propellerhead: Top Tip

Seventh tip down.

[PepeLePew]

Thanks for the advice peeps. But nothing worked. I bought a new hard drive and chalked that one up to experience.

[Jiglo]

Not much help now and I know the losing feeling seeing as the same thing has happened to me in the past

You can actually prevent any future loss though by backing up your files automatically - including your emails - with Genie Backup 4 Manager and there's a free copy and a walkthrough guide in this months (October) PC Pro magazine

[MizzDeedz]

Originally Posted by PepeLePew

Thanks for the advice peeps. But nothing worked. I bought a new hard drive and chalked that one up to experience.

I take it you have also replaced the cable too and chucked the other in bin, lol

[PepeLePew]

Originally Posted by MizzDeedz

I take it you have also replaced the cable too and chucked the other in bin, lol

You assume correctly

[ruffers]

Did you try the freezer? Never tried it myself as I've never needed to but I'dwould be interested to hear if it works or not..

[PepeLePew]

Nope as I had already wiped the data.

[Stylee]

Originally Posted by PepeLePew

Nope as I had already wiped the data.

I can recover data from corrupt and dead disks.

Head crashes and data loss are reversable, unfortunatly many engineers now A) dont know how to or B) cant be bothered as parts are so cheap now, even if the controller on the disk is dead you can pull an identical disk apart and use its controler.

If you have formatted the disk m8 but still have it and have written over it PM me, as i can help you get the data back, the disk works in layers, and previous info will still be there even after formatting, all depends on the type of file as some are broken down when erased. mp3 and videos etc should be ok.

[PepeLePew]

Thanks stylee but I have no need to retrieve this data now. As someone else had a duplicate copy of my car cluib emails Everything else I can live without.

[RetroAndy]

Originally Posted by Stylee

I can recover data from corrupt and dead disks.

Head crashes and data loss are reversable, unfortunatly many engineers now A) dont know how to or B) cant be bothered as parts are so cheap now, even if the controller on the disk is dead you can pull an identical disk apart and use its controler.

If you have formatted the disk m8 but still have it and have written over it PM me, as i can help you get the data back, the disk works in layers, and previous info will still be there even after formatting, all depends on the type of file as some are broken down when erased. mp3 and videos etc should be ok.

Thats handy to know fella. I have done data recovery myself but i used a proggy called Ontrack Easy Recover Pro. Worked for me pretty well but i have had discs that i have failed to recover too.

Do i take it you know how to disect hard drives then ???

[PepeLePew]

Erm Is the offer still there stylee/turp?
I thought I had another copy of an outlook pst file which has ~1000 messages I need. I thought I had an older copy on the previous failed hard drive. But I moved that and didn't leave the copy in place
I'm hoping that the pst file I need is on a partiton that had become inaccessible. If I remeber rightly it showed up as a logical drive. I turned it into a primary partition of 40 gigs. Then I did a full format. Does it seem likely that anyone could recover that file?

[Stylee]

Originally Posted by RetroAndy

Thats handy to know fella. I have done data recovery myself but i used a proggy called Ontrack Easy Recover Pro. Worked for me pretty well but i have had discs that i have failed to recover too.

Do i take it you know how to disect hard drives then ???

Certainly do m8, can be a ballache like but if its urgent it can be done pm me if you need anything m8

Originally Posted by PepeLePew

Erm Is the offer still there stylee/turp?
I thought I had another copy of an outlook pst file which has ~1000 messages I need. I thought I had an older copy on the previous failed hard drive. But I moved that and didn't leave the copy in place
I'm hoping that the pst file I need is on a partiton that had become inaccessible. If I remeber rightly it showed up as a logical drive. I turned it into a primary partition of 40 gigs. Then I did a full format. Does it seem likely that anyone could recover that file?

PM sent m8y