Data recovery from XP drive that is being seen as UNFORMATTED.

[PDR]

I have a computer that was running XP Home. The drive stopped working, spins but will not boot. I removed it from the system and replaced it with a new bigger drive, set up with the same XP Home O/S. I then put the drive back on as a slave with the intent of copying the data off it, hoping it would be recognized now that it is not the boot drive. when I try to access it the O/S reports it as unformated, do I want to format.

Can you give me an idea as to the best procedure to follow for the best chances of getting some of the data from the user's folders.

Thank you.

[Joep]

Hello,

Well done sofar.

There are two paths you could take from here:

1. Run iRecover and recover the data from the unformatted drive.

2. Use DiskPatch to see if the unformatted drive can be repaired. If we could see a logfile (http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/dp_manual/guide_supportanalysis.htm) we can make an educated guess if this is possible: A damaged boot sector can result in the 'not formatted' message, this can be repaired. It is however possible that the damage is beyond repair if other file system structures are damaged.

[PDR]

My assumption when a drive fails is that while there is a chance it is just a corrupt file, there is also a chance the drive is failing and the faster I get the data off the more chance I have of getting it at all.

In this case I really am far less concerned about fixing, as long as I get the data and then I will look to fix the drive if possible.

As such, am I better off to start with iRecover which sounds more direct, more just get the data off, or is it better to try DiskPatch anyway?

[Tom]

My assumption when a drive fails is that while there is a chance it is just a corrupt file, there is also a chance the drive is failing and the faster I get the data off the more chance I have of getting it at all.

You misunderstand. In your original post there was no indication that the drive was failing. To us (and to most of the world) a failing drive means that the drive is deteriorating physically. That does not seem to be the case in your explanation. BUT, if indeed the drive is having physical troubles, your assumption is correct, though a more likely course of action would be to clone the disk.
You can check the disk's physical health by running a SMART analysis (check the manual for details).

As it is a repair (with DiskPatch) can be quicker than a file recovery operation (like iRecover), and, if it works, the better choice; you can most likely use the drive as before after a successful DiskPatch repair. However, if a DiskPatch repair is not successful you will most likely need to use iRecover to copy files from the drive. Please note that a failed DiskPatch repair does NOT make matters worse (there is an undo, and a failed repair only means that the structure that was already damaged is still damaged, things do not get worse from that).

If you want us to take a look, post a support analysis log. The link was provided earlier.

Using iRecover is a direct approach, in a sense that it doesn't change anything on the disk (which is good), and thus the situation can't get worse.

The choice, in the end, is yours.

[Joep]

Hello,

You can use iRecover to salvage the data, no need to get DiskPatch as well:
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/forum/index.php?topic=368.0

[PDR]

I've run DiskPatch and iRecover and within iRec I see lots of unnamed directories with files, many repeat names. Would sending you the ZAR file from iRecover allow you to direct me?

[Tom]

No, that's not what the file is for. Just recover as much as possible and sort out the good data from the bad data later.

Why did you run DiskPatch AND iRecover? Was the explanation we gave earlier not clear enough? Or did the DiskPatch repair not get you the right results?

[PDR]

Diskpatch ran through the steps, and set up to repair, I ran the repair but there was no change. I ran iRecover and it shows 1,000's of files in too many directories, but most does not appear to be valid.

[Joep]

Hello,

For DiskPatch repairs that didn't do the trick we'd like to see logfiles.

iRecover will almost always find many files and folders it can not link to a parent folder and that is where all the generic folder names come from. Apart from all those there almost always is an entry called ROOT. If you expand that, almost always you can find the directory structure as you more or less expect it to be in the Windows explorer.