A little computer assistance please...

[Iowa_Card]

So I hve this hard drive that crashed but I'd really like to retrieve data from it.

Can someone recommend a free or even reasonably priced data recovery program?

[Turd Ferguson]

Get a mac.

[ItsOnlyTheRiver]

Is this even possible?

[Jeffro]

So I hve this hard drive that crashed but I'd really like to retrieve data from it.

Can someone recommend a free or even reasonably priced data recovery program?

What exactly crashed? Was it a HD failure or some other part of the system?

[Blues Fan in TX]

Call the NSA and ask them for your data back.

[hansolo]

Iowa -

try these folks

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

they are the ones that recovered hard disk data from the Columbia shuttle accident.

A friend sent his drive in - they couldn't recover his but they were friendly and quick.

[Iowa_Card]

What exactly crashed? Was it a HD failure or some other part of the system?

Hard drive. Long story short: I started the PC and the Windows XP Splash screen showed for a few seconds and then the computer shuts down.

The SeaTools program indicates that the "Short Generic" test failed. I think I have bad sectors on the area which contains the OS but I'm not sure.

[Turd Ferguson]

Can you plug it into another computer as a slave?

[Iowa_Card]

Can you plug it into another computer as a slave?

It's a SATA drive and my BIOS says that there is a drive read error on the disk.

I bought a SATA USB dock and have it plugged into my PC. It recognizes the drive but I can't access the data. It gives me an I/O error.

[Jeffro]

Iowa -

try these folks

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

they are the ones that recovered hard disk data from the Columbia shuttle accident.

A friend sent his drive in - they couldn't recover his but they were friendly and quick.

What the hell did your friend do to his hard drive?!

[Iowa_Card]

Iowa -

try these folks

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

they are the ones that recovered hard disk data from the Columbia shuttle accident.

A friend sent his drive in - they couldn't recover his but they were friendly and quick.

Thanks.

I'm not sure I'm ready to drop that much coin on a hard drive recovery. It's not worth that much to me.

[Turd Ferguson]

It's a SATA drive and my BIOS says that there is a drive read error on the disk.

I bought a SATA USB dock and have it plugged into my PC. It recognizes the drive but I can't access the data. It gives me an I/O error.

I bought some software at work that allowed me to recover data from a bum drive - I had the drive hooked up in an external enclosure as well. I'll be damned if I can remember what the name of the software was though...

[BlueBrained]

If the drive still runs try installing the new OS and mounting the old drive as a slave and getting the data that way.

[Iowa_Card]

If the drive still runs try installing the new OS and mounting the old drive as a slave and getting the data that way.

That's the first thing I tried.

However, I don't have any spare SATA drives laying around so the system BIOS reads the Primary and Secondary SATA busses first and the OS is installed on an IDE drive. In other words, the BIOS detects a read error on the SATA drive before it gets to the IDE drive.

[Turd Ferguson]

The software was called R-Studio - costs $50. You'd have to have a functioning drive though.