ok...this is a long one, and somewhat complicated, but here goes. I have a hard drive that was working perfectly and doesnt seem to have any errors on it at all - except for all of a sudden the drive shows up as 0 bytes capacity. When you go into the Windows XP storage manager (as it is a second drive) it shows that the the partition type is RAW. I need to get the data back on this drive - it is a customer that has no backup and I know the data integrity is there - just have to get it back. Please Someone recommend a software/Guide to make my Hard drive not raw. The file system of hard drive is gone but i did download some software which did a scan of hard drive and it does show that all data is still in their. I just need a software that will recover my whole HDD and its filesystem to NTFS . I am in so much trouble if i loose the data !
Don't know it it works, but Partition Magic can convert filesystem-types... I know it is possible to switch from FAT to NTFS without losing data, but I don't know if it supports RAW... worth the try I think...
Is it a Maxtor drive by any chance? I have a dead 160gb maxtor sitting in my draw that has the exact same problem. Have you tried a program called 'get it back'? It may help (if it does it will cost you about £50 i think) but it didn't help me. It finds the files on the drive but locks up as soon as it tries to move any of them. I've googled for god knows how long to try and get my drive back but to no avail. It won't even format. I even tried the 'freezer' trick. I hope the drive in question isn't as dead as mine. Good luck!
I've heard tales that booting with a Linux CD (Knoppix) will sometimes show files on a dodgy drive and let you copy them to safety. Anybody tested this? Some similar claims here.
I have tried that before, twice (Once on a SATA and once on a PATA) and both times the data would appear perfectly fine, but I did not have the capeability of copying the file. However it could be down to the distro I was using - Knoppix Live. I can verify that files do appear ok on Linux.
Try using the "ubuntu" live cd distro and using "sudo" command to allow coping, formating .etc -Fr4nk
thanks alot Thanks guys . I bought this software online "Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS" and it solved all my problems. IT scanned my raw Hard drive then it let me recover all the data but i had to store it on another hard drive so i ran down to my local computer shop and bought a external SATA to USB case + a awesome Western Digital Raptor 74GB . Thanks again You guys saved me crap loads of money and client . I have also learnt my lesson back is must every day for me anyways. I usually backup once a month. Anyways it would have been nice to recover the hard drive filesystem.
