Hi all,
First post over here on AnandTech... I'm very active on other internet forums... I have a Maxtor 80 GB drive (Model #98196H8) which was on a Win 98 system as a secondary drive. On it I stored all my multimedia files... 7000 mp3s, 50000 pictures (Non-pron) and backups of my websites. It started giving access errors about 2 months ago, but when I retried, it would always work. Finally it stopped reading all together, and the next time I attempted to boot the computer, my BIOS (on the Asus P2B MB) told me that it had detected a boot sector virus on that drive.
I attempted to run various programs on it, including PartitionMagic 5, MagicRecovery and finally R-Studio FAT. MagicRecovery was able, after scanning the drive, to show my directory structure, however, it was a DEMO and would not save the files. R-Studio found multiple "Recognized" area, and showed individual files. I saved all the files to a new 200Gb HD and tried to open them... it recovered about 700 Megs of data, mostly pictures, but none would open because they were corrupted. R-Studio recovered about 20 mp3s, some of which still played but with interrupts.
So now I'm sitting here with a drive which appears to be completely corrupted. On it are pictures so important it's like lossing everything in a house fire and having to start from scratch. Does anyone know of any other programs or methods I should try to recover at least some of the data intact.
-Could PartitionMagic 7 restore the boot sectors and make the files readable?
-Would sending out the drive to a Recovery company be feasible, and how much costs are involved?
-Any other ideas...
Thanks in advance for your help... As a computer person this is one situation where I'm truly helpless.
Roger
First post over here on AnandTech... I'm very active on other internet forums... I have a Maxtor 80 GB drive (Model #98196H8) which was on a Win 98 system as a secondary drive. On it I stored all my multimedia files... 7000 mp3s, 50000 pictures (Non-pron) and backups of my websites. It started giving access errors about 2 months ago, but when I retried, it would always work. Finally it stopped reading all together, and the next time I attempted to boot the computer, my BIOS (on the Asus P2B MB) told me that it had detected a boot sector virus on that drive.
I attempted to run various programs on it, including PartitionMagic 5, MagicRecovery and finally R-Studio FAT. MagicRecovery was able, after scanning the drive, to show my directory structure, however, it was a DEMO and would not save the files. R-Studio found multiple "Recognized" area, and showed individual files. I saved all the files to a new 200Gb HD and tried to open them... it recovered about 700 Megs of data, mostly pictures, but none would open because they were corrupted. R-Studio recovered about 20 mp3s, some of which still played but with interrupts.
So now I'm sitting here with a drive which appears to be completely corrupted. On it are pictures so important it's like lossing everything in a house fire and having to start from scratch. Does anyone know of any other programs or methods I should try to recover at least some of the data intact.
-Could PartitionMagic 7 restore the boot sectors and make the files readable?
-Would sending out the drive to a Recovery company be feasible, and how much costs are involved?
-Any other ideas...
Thanks in advance for your help... As a computer person this is one situation where I'm truly helpless.
Roger