I am trying to recover some data from a hard drive for a friend. It was an external usb hard drive that ther person very stupidly dropped and then it would register the USB device but not the hard drive inside. So once i got it from my friend i removed the hard drive, and attached it using IDE as a slave and it didn't register atall. Then i changed the logic board from a working same model as i have done this before, and now BIOS registers the hard drive, but when i get into Windows it isn't in My Computer. I went to disk management, because device manager sees the hard drive as working properly, and it says it has 250gb unallocated so the only options i have are to format the drive. What can i do to save the information that is on the hard drive? Windows Xp seems to be recognising it fine, but because it was a usb drive i have a feeling that is why it is unallocated. How can i keep the data on this hard drive now i finally have it powering up and working? There must be a way. I hope you can help me.
try these programs out for data recovery. try the bottom 1 tho i haven't used it yet. 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 http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
If it shows up as unallocated (raw) that is ussually a sign of file corruption from an improper shutdown. A simple chkdsk x:/f (with x being drive letter of hard drive). chkdsk can fix 90 percent of the corruption problems. You can also do a scandisk on the affected hard drive (make sure the box to fix errors is checked). Do not format the hard drive, all the data is still in the hard drive and can be recovered. If chkdsk doesnt work, you can use the free "testdisk" to recover the data.
i couldn't run chkdsk could i? because it is unallocated it doesn't have a drive letter atall. And i cant assign one without formatting the drive. Does chkdsk still work with hard drives without a drive letter assigned?
