Hard Drive Recovery? MAJOR CRISIS HERE!

[Nardz]

today my 230 gb hard drive failed. now every time i start my computer i get the blue screen of death after the windows login screen. if i unplug the drive from my raid card everything wroks fine. is their any programs i can use to recover files with a bootdisk while connected to my raid card? also is there a way to make a bootdisk on a cdr rather then a floppy disk?

[david02]

Hi, Maybe the program ''spinrite'' can help you. Surely you can find it somewhere :)

good luck



SpinRite is a commercial hard disk scanning and data recovery utility created by Steve Gibson. SpinRite is much more thorough in its surface scans than basic utilities, being able to recover data from damaged portions of hard disks that might not otherwise be read by the operating system. SpinRite uses 'DynaStat' to perform statistical analysis of bad blocks. When it encounters a block which which is hard to read, it repeatedly attempts to re-read it, and tries to determine the value of each byte. The data is then saved onto the same disk after re-allocating the physical block. The goal of SpinRite is to get the hard drive working as reliably as possible, for future use, in addition to recovering as much data as possible. SpinRite is able to operate on all Windows NTFS formats, all DOS FAT, all Linux file systems, Novell, Macintosh (if temporarily moved into a PC) or anything else - it can even be used to repair and recover the hard drive from an ailing TiVo! SpinRite v6.0 achieves complete operating system independence by incorporating the FreeDOS operating system. This allows it to be used on any and all Intel/AMD PC systems. SpinRite 6.0 can create a bootable diskette or generate a standard, CD-R burnable ISO file to create a "SpinRite boot CD". A bootable SpinRite can also be "installed" into any other motherboard bootable devices, such as USB flashdrives for easy, portable booting and use. If you hard drive is still accessible from your system BIOS there is a good chance SpinRite can get the drive to an operational state where you can get your Data off it. Simply put - "It Works"

[lynx]

First thing to do is download diagnostics from the manufacturer, some that will work in a dos or self-booting environment. That way you can find out exactly what's wrong with the drive.

It doesn't have to be hardware failure, corruption or viruses can cause the symptoms you describe. The data may be completely accessible, but you can't get to it because windows won't load successfully.

[limesqueezer]

I once fixed cyclic redundancy errors on my disk, when people told me my disk will die and i can buy another one, i still use it after more than 1,5 year. Than once norton disk doctor corrupted my whole hard drive, i recovered all with http://www.getdata.com/ You can always fix errors. Install another windows on another hard drive and repair it inside windows, you can always recover all files if you haven't formatted.
You could also visit http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ It has some nice tools for free, all you need.

[Nardz]

hey thanx limesqueezer! the ultimate boot cd worked perfectly :)