What is Digg?52 Comments
- damentz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6SpinRite anyone?
n00bs don't even know where to look for apps before reviewing - estvir, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Good article though I'd like to see them cover more programs (Especially some free ones - actually, anyone know good, free ones ?).
A favourite of mine is "GetDataBack" from runtime [runtime.org] - There hasn't been much [if anything] I haven't been able to recover.
Anyway, most of us probably won't need thirty part apps with Previous Version [Vista] and Time Machine [Leopard]. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Uhm, I've used Restoration for years, and it does the job quite well. Best of all, it's free!
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Restoration.shtml - TimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hate how so many tech articles are done in this unescessary multi page format...
At first I thought maybe they changed the ads on each page but nope they didn't
One long page would be nice...thx - anoriega, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2EXReaction, I've used PC Inspector and not only is it free, it works excellently on NTFS and FAT32.
- trunkster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Last weekend I recovered information (sigh most of it was porn) off my friend's hard drive. A lot of programs were not keeping the original file names but I finally found a program that recovered everything. It's called FILERECOVERY Professional by LC Technology and it's pretty cheap looking but it got the job done with the original file names.
BTW second Western Digital I've seen fail. - MACaroni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just had my Lacie d2 160GB hard drive crash...the only thing that could restore ALL my files on my Mac is Data Rescue II. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for anyone on the Mac. The best, period.
- neo17262, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2no spinrite, no digg. I was hoping to see if Gibson's been lying or not, but I guess I'll have to wait.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I also have used this software, with amazing results. The drive has clicked, and clicked, and GDB was still able to recover everything I've needed.
- Kruncher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've tried freezing many hard drives (I work at a small PC repair shop).
It seems that 1/10 of the time it will actually work.
Case in point:
2 weeks ago we had a older gateway (running 98 :-/) come in. The hard drive was not reconized in the BIOS anymore.
We hooked it up to 2 of our tech computers and both had the same problem: it would POST and see the hard drive but before it left the BIOS screen it would say "second HDD error".
We threw it in the freezer over night (we wern't in a rush, but I recommend at least 4 hours) and to our supprize, we were able to get a clone without the BIOS coming up with an error.
Saved his data and saved him $700 (minimum) by not needing to send it into a service like OnTrack - beave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1On the Linux side of things, there's a nice little utility called "dd_rescue". It's very simple, and works a bit like "dd" in that it creates a image of the drive. Unlike your standard "dd", it breaks down "bad" areas of the drive and uses several methods to get the data off. It's interface is simple (like dd), but gives you stats on on the amount of data recovered/not-recovered.
It's help me out several times. It's simple, but that's a good thing, because it works. You can probably just use google to find dd_rescue ("linux dd_rescue"). I keep a archive at ftp://ftp.vistech.net/pub/linux/dd_rescue . - bennyboy371, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2OnTrack Easy Recovery worked for me, but it didn't pick up things that GetDataBack did, and vice versa. Would it make sense to recommend multiple?
- neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1In the 'testdisk' package, there's a program called photorec. It was designed to scan for image file headers inside an unknown file (or image of a damaged harddisk partition), but it can look for other file types.
I haven't been in a life-or-death-must-recover-this-file situation yet, though, so I can't vouch for it's effectiveness. - beave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not to knock it, because I'd hear other people say this works as well. The idea, from what I understand, is that you "pre-cool" the parts that overheat so you can keep the drive spinning long enough to pull the data off.
Personally, this has never worked for me. I've tried it several times. Maybe the types of failures didn't work with this method. Basically, I dont want to completely discount it, but it's always been a "non-working" solution for me.
On the other hand, If the circuit board is failing, finding a duplicate drive off ebay, and swaping out the circuit board with the work/ebay unit has worked. Granted, I'd still never trust the drive again, but it's worked my better with circuit board failure (if thats the problem) than putting it in a freezer. Oh, it should be noted! You want the drive in at least a zip lock bad (with as much air out as possible). If not, you'll pull your drive and plug it in with tons of condensation on it. You'll make your drive got from bad to worse. - mgillow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Good article. While it's true that most disk/file errors are repairable or recoverable through software, most hardware-based errors, I've found, are due to issues with the logic board on the underside of the drive. Problems with the logic board, like minute power fluctuations and whatnot, also cause file system errors. The leading cause of logic board failures? Faulty power supplies.
If your hard drive experiences hardware failure, swapping out logic boards from another drive is a viable and likely successful means of resuscitation so you can recover the files yourself. However, the primary caveat is that the logic board must come from a drive in the same model/series from the same manufacturer (obviously). I'm not sure how the newest SATA drives hold up to this method of data recovery, but most of the PATA drives I've worked with over the last few years haven't required approximate dates/model numbers/batch numbers/firmware revision/etc., just so long as they were in the same ballpark.
Preventative maintenance is key, though; don't just make regular backups, invest heavily in a good power supply. Over the last couple of decades of being a repair technician, that's probably the best advice I can give to anyone experiencing inexplicable system errors or those looking to build a new machine. There are a few things in life you can't skimp on, and power supplies are one of them. - EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I would like to see some comparisons with free ones as well. The only free one I have heard about is this:
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/download.htm
Though I have never tried it myself.
Coincidentally though yesterday was the first time I ever had corrupt drive problems(my Kubuntu install disk had a corrupt section and froze at 73%, so I had to do a hard reset which trashed everything). I have been working on getting my data back from my backup drive for the last 10 hours or so(its a slow process when you have 100GB of data and only a 60GB partion you can put it on). I was looking for this kind of info all day until I found out about GetDataBack, which I am using now to get all my data back, and I have to say it is doing an awesome job(wish I would have found out about that free one first though).
GetDataBack is even finding files I had deleted along time ago and completely forgot about(not that I want them, but it was still pretty jaw dropping). - DanaG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The difference between SpinRite and GetDataBack is that SpinRite tries to recover the data _in_place_; by that I mean it tries to recover the data and write it back to the drive. Whereas GetDataBack allows you to recover the data and write it to another drive.
If you need to recover data from a drive with only a few bad sectors, then maybe SpinRite is a good choice. If you need to recover data from a severely borked drive, then what you really want to do is try to recover the data and write it to _another_ drive.
I used SpinRite and then GetDataBack on a friend's severely borked laptop drive and was able to get everything important back using GetDataBack. SpinRite just tried writing everything back to the drive, which was useless in this case. I admit, maybe I just didn't find the right option to use in SpinRite, but GetDataBack definitely gets two thumbs up from me. - julielacombe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And if all else fail, just Shove your drive in the Freezer!: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html
- beave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Not to knock it, because I'd hear other people say this works as well. The idea, from what I understand, is that you "pre-cool" the parts that overheat so you can keep the drive spinning long enough to pull the data off.
Personally, this has never worked for me. I've tried it several times. Maybe the types of failures didn't work with this method. Basically, I dont want to completely discount it, but it's always been a "non-working" solution for me.
On the other hand, If the circuit board is failing, finding a duplicate drive off ebay, and swaping out the circuit board with the working/ebay unit has worked. Granted, I'd still never trust the drive again, but it's worked better for circuit board failure (if thats the problem) than putting it in a freezer. Oh, it should be noted! You want the drive in at least a zip lock bad (with as much air out as possible) _before_ you put it in the freezer. If not, you'll pull your drive and plug it in with tons of condensation on it. You'll make your drive go from bad to worse. - MACaroni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What? What does that do?
- keito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I recently had the misfortune of 2 hard drives failing within the space of a couple of months of each other. One disk refused to spin after obvious damage (gotta love those healthy click sounds -- mmm) and the other aquired bad blocks meaning the loss of 30GB+ of data.
I searched and found a free utility called PC Inspector File Recovery. It found all of the lost data and salvaged as much as it could (50%approx). I haven't compared results with any other similar applications so can't comment on how the weigh up, but I was impressed with the results.
I'll have to give the same drive a go with Restoration and post a review for future reference. (found out both SATA drive's are still in warranty so will be getting them replaced by seagate... which is nice) - bob645, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I too have had great success with this method. Usually if the drive is making loud clacking noises and there seems to be no access to the drive it is the logic board. When the drive partially works however, and you are getting many sector read errors, it is most likely a head crash and some of the above mentioned programs have been useful for recovery. Although I have never had any success with a windows based tool as windows seems to hang when attempting to access defective areas.
As far as the freezer method goes, I had success with this 20 years ago with floppy disks. I have not seen this work yet with HDDs. But I don't really try it that often. - TaeBoX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Agreed, that is the only reason I decided to comment. SpinRite is all they need. They can skip using all that other junk. http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
- Helicobacter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with the description. I once had a HDD with corrupt MBR. I forgot the name of the software, but with it I could restore all my files.
- mbthompson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Good article, but they missed one of the best file recovery tools out there, Bad Copy Pro. No it isn't free, but I've been able to recover more files with it than any other app. Sorry extremetech, no digg from me this time.
- julielacombe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1These guys have a article that cover additional solution here: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2005/12/hard-drive-recovery-utilities-when-you.html
If if you have a mechanical problem with your HD, you can always try to freeze it! :http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html (with pictures!) - kohno214, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I repair PCs and the freezer trick has worked for me 3 out of 6 times. Not bad. It really saved my customer's bacon those three times.
- adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1GetDataBack is an impressive piece of software. It has saved things that were beyond destroyed.
- grimstar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Undeleting a file still constitutes file recovery.
- martincrow1, on 06/29/2009, -0/+1i used stellar..
http://www.stellarinfo.com/file-recovery.htm
cheers.. - mirathi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1besides a legal copy of ERD, i've sometimes put a HDD into the freezer for about an hour.
- TaeBoX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1SpinRite works on mac as well.
- tranquilize, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0uh where's encase
- Ace128, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ontrack Easy Revovery is best since it has RAW support! However, it didnt have support for mp3 files using id3 tag v1.1, so I did a perl script that recovered those myself! Quite nifty!
- egh3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1How would spinrite recover deleted files?
In most cases Spinrite is dangerous, more than it is useful. - TaeBoX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Mac formatted drives that is.
- nater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't believe Helix hasn't been mentioned, it is by far the best Incident Response and Forensics Toolkit in existence. If the platters spin and the heads read, this will find it. If either doesn't work then you need to send it in to have the malfunctioning portion replaced, still costing only a few thousand dollars US.
However, Helix is Linux and requires knowledge of Debian-based Linux distributions for general use, Low-level file formats and filesystems for carving and datamining, and possibly some python or perl for automating some tasks (Maybe even shell scripting). That being said, I should mention that Linux is very commonly used for forensics. For example, at the recent SANS training on Digital Forensics, nearly everyone there used Linux in one form or another and the training centered on using Fedora (Core 4 I think it was) to acquire, carve, and mine data.
A major caveat is that Helix is a LiveCD and therefore is not intended to be used for the data-mining and datacarving portion in the case of very large amounts of data, you can however, learn to use the tools through it and acquire the data from the compromised/crashed/whatever system.
So use Helix to get all the data off of it into an image file then use an installed version of Linux to carve/mine the data. - exodus315, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I must go with Recover My File (RMF). It not only can get your deleted files back, also it can recover a formatted/corrupted HD. I wrote an article a few days ago after I successfully recovered files from a corrupted.
http://exodus.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/recover-my-file/
Cheers. - exodus315, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you have a WIN machine, try Recover My File at www.recovermyfiles.com. Use the Fast Format Recover function. One thing bear in mind, you can only save the file to another partition, say, an USB drive.
The free version let you search the drive, you can pay later if this program find the files you want. - tarjan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The trick is to use both GDB and Spinrite. If you have had a failure, you want to use the drive as little as possible, at least until you are sure you are safe. So to do that, load up GDB and try to copy off everything you can to another drive. Then evaluate how much you couldn't get off or is too corrupt to use and if it is worth a week or so to run spinrite.
In my case I had a large, very old pst that was on my system and the cd I had it backed up on was missing. GDB couldn't get it, so I started up spinrite and let it go for a week. It recovered the system just enough so that GDB could pull the pst off. If it was damaged at all after I ran spinrite, I cannot find it.
After that I formatted the drive and continue to use it to this day. Not a single problem, though I only use it for temp storage/media center stuff so I can replace it without any issue. - djtansey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anyone know how to recover an ext2 partition that has been mangled by having the hard drive die in the middle of a defrag (and having the defrag run a couple more times trying to recover it. lots of inodes deleted.) If anyone has any suggestions i would be very appreciative.
- streamx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Maybe somebody knows a good app that can recover files from UFS and UFS2 filesystems?
- RecentlyPinged, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0i just recently had saved over a 15 page work order contract that would have costed my company about $12,000. the contract took a month to put together and about one second for me to almost destory.
i downloaded diskeeper's undelete (http://www.undelete.com) and was able to recover the file using the Emergency Undelete feature. the software saved my butt....god bless technology! - coliv77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Spinrite, no doubt about it. For recovery and for maintenance.
- crossers, on 07/22/2008, -1/+0oh I like this article very interesting for me.
http://www.shpe-sac.org
http://www.ocflex.com/
http://www.trgovinca.org
http://www.chasr.org/ - postitnote, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0R-Studio is great if you accidentally deleted a file and want to recover it. Extremely fast and simple. It only takes a few minutes to populate structure of the entire partition, and recovery is as simple as going to the folder where you deleted the file and doing whatever you would do. And of course, it will also recover files from a corrupted drive as well. Highly recommended for times when you somehow shift-deleted vital files, and need to quickly recover it.
- northben, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0When I had a drive fail, a rep from a prominent data recovery company suggested the freezer trick. He said it had worked for him in the past.
Decrease thermal entropy... - TaeBoX, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2How does undelete software fit this at all? Can you RTFA pls?
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