Ok, so, I haven't written anything to this drive and I haven't committed any changes that the recovery softwares offered due to the promisse that maybe I can still recover my files. All apps keep saying that the disk has 54 megs used but the files inside the directory are not there. Yesterday I tried window's chkdsk on the drive and it turns out it gave me more information that any of the other tools I had used. At least it said that there's an error on the drive. This is the information I got from it: The thing is, I don't quite understand what this means. I mean what's gonna happend if I convert the directory into a file?!! Is that any good or what? I mean, can I recover the files from that file or what's the idea behind making the folder a file? I closed the DOS promt without making any changes, so I assume the drive is still as it was after the error happened. How bad is this? Is there any chance that I get my files back? Thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------
All the advice I have seen on data recovery suggests that the best way is to take it to a data recovery service. Anything you do yourself has the potential to make it harder to get your information back. If you are going to try more yourself: Caveat, I have not had to recover data and have not used these products. You could try booting the system with a floppy boot disk and see if you can then see files on the C drive. This is a free data recovery program I have seen recommended a lot in another forum: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm Here are two programs you have to pay for to recover data, they have a free trial to show you what they can see on your drive: Getdataback: http://www.runtime.org/ Ontrack easy recovery: http://www.ontrack.com/ If your operating system is win98, there is an old recovery program called Lost & Found I used to see on eBay once in awhile.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5301.html http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware/ http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/collection/collid,1295-order,1-c,downloads/files.html http://www.easeus.com/ http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm http://www.pcinspector.de/download.asp?language=1#file_recovery
One more in the above list Download the software from here http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm by Data Recovery Software - by Stellar
