[edge2022]

Thank you Cilix and Artellos for the helpful info. I have to look into Testdisk now.

Hope everything works out, and you are able to recover data. Please post the results, and good luck!

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I was able to recover my friend's c, d, g drives (docs and settings), photos, movies, music, etc. Could not recover anything from the drive that is wanting to be formatted (e). I used RoadKil file copier and sent the files to an external Maxtor USB drive. I have not tried Test Disk yet because my Dad (helping repair the disk for our friend) is afraid using Test Disk may further damage the disk and its contents. We are getting ready to reformat the new drive and partition it and will install Windows. Then my friend can copy the files she wants from the external drive to her new drive.

I don't know what Test Disk does or how it does it so I can't argue with him that it won't do any damage to the disk. There were only 100 unreadable files on all of the data I transferred. I am thinking that the disk might be repairable.

Thanks for all of your help.

[tizzyloucat]

I was able to recover my friend's c, d, g drives (docs and settings), photos, movies, music, etc. Could not recover anything from the drive that is wanting to be formatted (e). I used RoadKil file copier and sent the files to an external Maxtor USB drive. I have not tried Test Disk yet because my Dad (helping repair the disk for our friend) is afraid using Test Disk may further damage the disk and its contents. We are getting ready to reformat the new drive and partition it and will install Windows. Then my friend can copy the files she wants from the external drive to her new drive.

I don't know what Test Disk does or how it does it so I can't argue with him that it won't do any damage to the disk. There were only 100 unreadable files on all of the data I transferred. I am thinking that the disk might be repairable.

Thanks for all of your help.

[edge2022]

This disk should be formatted and Windows reinstalled, if you don't have any other data you need to recover first.

You can try TestDisk. It is a utility to fix a bad partition table, and recover lost files. It should not do any physical or logical damage too your disks.

[Artellos]

Hello tizzyloucat,

Why not, before you format, try Test Disk? You don't have anything to loose data wise if you're going the format route anyway
Physically, Test Disk will -not- damage the actual hard drive. If you follow the exact instructions I posted then the only thing you'll be doing is trying to re-create the partition with the data on it.

P.S. Thanks for getting back to us, we like to know how things end, good or bad. We learn from it too

Regards,
Olrik

[tizzyloucat]

Thanks for the reply. I will tell my Dad that running Test Disk will not physicall harm the disk and see if I can convince him to run it. His plan is to use the old disk as a backup to the backup. I think that may be overkill...but crossing him is like crossing my Mother -- if I do something and he says it is a bad idea, something usually goes wrong somehow...I still want to try Test Disk and will try to convince him it is ok and won't hurt the disk...

[edge2022]

It is physically safe, and it could potentially get your data back. There is no harm in trying. Using the old disk as an extra backup gives you extra safety, so there is no harm in doing that either.