My hard disk is dead.
Does anybody knows one good and free
data recovery tool?

Thanks

Hi DvD

Good to know from you. Long time no "see" you man.

I used to fight a lot with this kind of failures, I know some names.

But first of all, please tell me:

1. Operating system (would be a nice idea to boot from another disk and to repair the dead one)

2- Which kind of failure (dead slowly, you saw some errors u.s.w)

3- Actual status (you can hear at least the disk workind, the PC can at least register it or is 100 % dead)

Send me this and I'll point you to the correct tool

Changing the subject, I have Medion Navigator and I guess it contains Kroatia. I'll check and I'll tell you.

It is winxp with 3 NTFS partitions.

Windows are not bootable so I can only connect it to other notebook. I have outer 2,5 inch disk box and when I put disk there and connect it to USB, I can read in Explorer only 3. partition and I copied data from there.

When I use some recovery demo software I see first 2 partitions also. I saved everything from 2. partition but 1. is making problems.
1. partition is not shown as it was.
And this 1. partition is looking different on different recovery software.
Meaning the files that I have to save are still missing.
Maybe i don't have enough working memory to read whole partition data structure because partition has 60 GB and 50 000 files. It is being read for 3 days.
Anyway I have to save maybe 15 GB from this 1. partition.



Beside I thought to make image of this disk and copy it to a new one and than try fixmbr or something. Do you know any software to do hard disk copy?

Partition magic on windows.

Otherwise you can use a Knoppix CD to boot into linux and use some free linux tools.

Maybe you have link.

this tool can read NTFS and use USB extern hard disc?

Hi DvD

Well, clearly you had a phisical damage on the first part of the disk that destroyed the mbr of the disk and maybe some partition info and some directory structure.

In my opinion, would be clever to test/repair phisically the disk and then try to repare the partition table, mbr things.

I had really good experiences with Winternal Aministration Pack (ERD and Winternal Administration Manager) but I think this is expensive and big

But in this case, the best would be going to any kind of low level OS (DOS, XP Repair console) and it was an old but very very effective tool that called Spinrite. Spinrite works in a very low level and sector per sector tries to recover phisical errors. One run of Spinrite can take one day or more, but after that you will be able to read all the disk.

Check this http://www.kickstartnews.com/reviews/utilities/spinrite_v6.html

In addition, maybe is not a good idea to use it within an external case/usb connection. Any kind of deep hardware related task is usually in a dos/linux or similar environment and connected to a normal internal bus.

Good luck

I have only 2 notebooks.
I can not use internal bus.

I have a new hard disk now.
If the old one is not bootable any more (boot sector damaged) I could copy image to the new one and than try to get repare it. Right? Anybody knows what software could I use to make image of 80GB disk and to copy it to another 80GB disk?

As faisalm suggested try Knoppix.

Here is a link how to do recovery using Knoppix in Windows systems

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1207497,00.html

Knoppix is a free download and if you want it in readymade DVD version, buy the 07/06 issue of PC Welt Magazine.

http://www.knoppix.org/

Hi DvD

If you are not a Linux freak/fan you can use Partition Magic.

With this software you can take a whole partition and save it into another disk and later restore it.

Partition Magic have also a kind of "raw" module that works from any "DOS" like environment

You can also backup tue partitions/boot areas to recover from hypothetical disasters.

Take a look at the tools from Sysinternals:

http://www.sysinternals.com/FileAndDiskUtilities.html

They are just fantastic, specially NTRecover.