Help! Data recovery needed

[gavstar]

Following a power cut, the primary master hard disk appears to have been damaged. It will not boot but when installed as a primary slave, Windows detects it as a hard disk, but it does not show as a drive letter, and so the data is inaccessbile.
How can I get to the very important data on this drive?

[rich1231]

First things first.

XP Pro? If yes see if you have Administrative tools in your start menu or programs menu.

Select computer management and then look for disk management and you can sometimes reassign a drive letter to the disk that you think windows hasnt found.

Then copy off all the data before rebooting if it works.

Good luck

[gavstar]

Hi, yes XP Pro. Disk Management tool does not see the disk unfortunately. The only place Windows sees it is in Device Manager. I am thinking the only option we have is to employ the services of a professional data recovery firm.

[zaktoo]

Depending on how critical the data is on the disk - do not do anything further until you take it to specialists. Also, make sure the specialists are reputable. Any further powering on of the drive could possibly make things worse.

HTH

Ciao

Zak

[puggit]

You can buy USB devices which plug in to your HDD - allowing you to effectively use it as a removable drive...

If you can then see the data you can recover it

Nothing works as good as a backup though

[BliarOut]

restorer2000

If the data is there, it'll see it. You can download a freeware version to check what's on the disk, but you can only recover <64K files. If your data is there, buy the full version. Only £20 to £30 and has saved quite a few potentially dire situations

[mcflurry]

Does the damaged disc have the same operating system and file system?

If XP has changed the format to NTFS then a FAT32 operating system won't read the drive without changing some settings...

[gavstar]

BliarOut said:

restorer2000 If the data is there, it'll see it. You can download a freeware version to check what's on the disk, but you can only recover <64K files. If your data is there, buy the full version. Only £20 to £30 and has saved quite a few potentially dire situations

Cool, OK I may give that a go.

[gavstar]

puggit said:

You can buy USB devices which plug in to your HDD - allowing you to effectively use it as a removable drive... If you can then see the data you can recover it Nothing works as good as a backup though

I wouldn't have thought this would make any difference as whatever connection method used, Windows cannot recognise there is data on the disk.

[malman]

"ontrack" do some DIY tools if you don't want to pay for their recovery service and the other name that springs to mind is "vogon"