[gred]

I have a 500 GB hard drive on a Windows XP Pro system as F: with over 400 GB of data on it. All of a sudden, I could not access the drive. When clicking on F: in windows explorer, it would say that "The disk in drive F: is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"

Ubuntu booted from CD could recognize the drive and its label, but could not mount it.

I ran CHKDSK /f, it marked some clusters, but could still not access the drive.

I installed and ran PC Inspector, and told it to find lost data. It spent a couple of days working, said it had found 74730 lost files. Then an error message appeared - NT_read error, error no. 23. I tried all three buttons, Abort, Retry, and Ignore, multiple times, but the same error always reappears. Now when I click on F: in windows explorer, it says "F: is not accessible, the parameter is incorrect".

Of course I want to recover as much of the 400 GB as possible, and PC Inspector was looking like it was going to do that, but any ideas on how to get past this error?

thanks - gred

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Try this freeware "TestDisk"

Read about it here
http://www.cgsecurity.org/

You can download from here
http://www.cgsecurit...stDisk_Download

[Alzeimer]

Try this freeware "TestDisk"

Read about it here
http://www.cgsecurity.org/

You can download from here
http://www.cgsecurit...stDisk_Download

[gred]

I am looking for something that can recover data, and will skip a cluster that windows gives an error for, rather than just stopping. Any suggestions?

[Alzeimer]

TestDisk will repair a Hard disk that windows cannot see or read and tells you that you need to format the drive. If it works on your harddisk you will be able to recover all your data.

It is your choice to use it or not but it is worth a try.

[gred]

I am looking for something that can recover data, and will skip a cluster that windows gives an error for, rather than just stopping. Any suggestions?

I bought Ontrack Datarecovery 6.2 Easyrecovery and it was able to recover everything, errors or not. Had to try the free one first, but this did the trick.

[SRX660]

I bought Ontrack Datarecovery 6.2 Easyrecovery and it was able to recover everything, errors or not. Had to try the free one first, but this did the trick.

You might have been able to install the HD into a external enclosure and save all the data to another drive. It doesn't always work but 9 times out of 10 it does.

SRX660