data recovery - any tips?

[liquidmonkey]

long story short, have a Maxtor HDD that puts my PC into a BSOD reboot loop so i ran powermax and it determined that my drive was screwed and gave me 'diagnostics error - de9aa975'. i found this page
http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=538
on the error codes and that code above is not really an error code at all, only a reference.
in powermax i did the following,
checked the 'installation confirmation' - that passed
checked the 'basic quick test' - full read scan was recommended
checked the 'advanced test (full read scan)' and after 10 seconds it came back with the diagnostics code and said that 'this drive is failing and must be replaced, if you do not have a recent backup, then you should make one now blah blah blah'.
so now the question is, is there anyway that i can use data recovery software to get any data back? otherwise its 200gigs of stuff gonzo.
any recommendations?

 

[Jamxx]

Do you have another computer that you could connect this drive to and make it the slave drive? You might could salvage some information off of it that way if Windows will recognize it.

There are ways to recover data, but I'm not too familiar with them. Sorry! I'm sure that some of the more knowledgeble members here on CF will help you out with that.

 

[Leroy]

"...use data recovery software to get any data back?"

I'm not sure about all of the variables that you may have in play in regards to your hard drive. I would however venture to say that if it is still functioning you should be able to use data recovery software. My recommendation would be to use Recover Lost Data by Stompsoft. ( http://www.stompsoft.com/recoverlostdata.html) I suggest this because you can run the software right from the CD so it doesn't have to be installed on your hard drive to work. Hope this helps.

Leroy

 

[liquidmonkey]

thanks for the tips!
is there any data recovery software out there that is free?

 

[prosser13]

Stick in a blank CD, put vital stuff into a folder, burn onto CD - repeat with all data.

Alternatively use CD-RWs or DVDs

 

[liquidmonkey]

nevermind, found some torrents

 

[liquidmonkey]

ok, here's what i have done now.
went into the power maxx program during boot up, did a 'quick format' which then told me it would relpace the first 300MB with zero's and then the last 100MB with zero's. i'm not even sure what that means?
now i'm trying to recover the data using PC inspector and a few other programs.
@prosser13 - that is some tip

 

[liquidmonkey]

the problem is solved!!!! thanks to a few forum posts, some great advice and A LOT of screwing around with recovery programs.
the one that worked for me is called 'recover my files' and it works very very very well if anyone is in a similar situation. :clapping:
it took about 25 hours to do a complete scan of the 180gig drive for picture and movie files. was able to get about 80% of everything back, EVEN things that i had 'deleted' many months before the drive crashed. this being my first experience with data recovery i was super impressed at the amount of things one can recover months after a deletion. some of the movie files recovered were 150gigs in size and i'm not sure what they were so i just ignored them.
otherwise, i'm pretty happy and want to thank you all for your help :clapping: