Hdd failure

Lee, do a google search for a Data Recovery Utility or Program. There are
a few free ones out there. How good they are
I don't know. Recovering your XP Install is another story.
"LeeG" <lee.gorton(removethis)@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:30E98F4D-4E94-488E-A666-5F3AA19A1FCB@microsoft.com...
> Is there any possibility that I can recover my XP installation from my
> Maxtor
> hdd that has just failed. i.e. a application that can access the drive in
> a
> 'gentle way' just to recover any data on it before I bin it?
 >> Stay informed about: Hdd failure 

At POST I recieve the warning that the drive is faulty via the S.M.A.R.T.
system and it won't go past the POST. If I disable the S.M.A.R.T. then I can
get past POST to my multi-boot menu but if I select my XP installation then
the m/c sits there trying to retrieve data from the faulty HDD. If I remove
the faulty HDD then everything runs smoothly. I had started to notice a
couple of days ago that my XP seemed a bit slower but nothing seemed to
indicate that the drive was to blame. Dskchk's and defrags failed to detect
any bad sectors.

"Ted Zieglar" wrote:

> Are you certain your hard drive has failed? Really certain?
>
> Whether or not you can recover anything depends on how, exactly, your
> hard drive failed. For example: Does it no longer power up? If so you
> can bring it to a data recovery company, but be prepared to eat
> sandwiches for a few months.
>
> ---
> Ted Zieglar
> "Backup is a computer user's best friend."
>
> LeeG wrote:
> > Is there any possibility that I can recover my XP installation from my Maxtor
> > hdd that has just failed. i.e. a application that can access the drive in a
> > 'gentle way' just to recover any data on it before I bin it?
>
 >> Stay informed about: Hdd failure 

LeeG wrote:
> Is there any possibility that I can recover my XP installation from my Maxtor
> hdd that has just failed. i.e. a application that can access the drive in a
> 'gentle way' just to recover any data on it before I bin it?


The last time I had a hard drive start to fail and Ghost would not image
it I used Spinrite from grc.com to repair the drive and then used Ghost
to create the image. I transferred the image to a new hard drive and
everything was fine. Spinrite will not work if the drive has totally
failed but it will recover a lot of bad sectors that other programs
won't touch. I have been using it since the DOS era and never had any
problems with it.
 >> Stay informed about: Hdd failure 

Reading between the lines it seems that your drive powers up and runs,
but some of the data on it is unreadable. That's good news, believe it
or not, because as long as the drive is operational, you can probably
get at least some data from it.

The first thing I would do is to call the company that made the drive
and ask for their advice. They are in the best position to help you.
Even if you have to pay for the call, this is your data we're talking about.

The company may suggest you try this: Put your drive into a second
computer, so it's not the boot drive, and use the copy of Windows on the
good drive to read the data on the bad drive. If you can do that, backup
as much as you can from the bad drive to the good drive.

There are repair tools you can use, like Steve Gibson's SpinRite, but I
would not try any repair procedure without talking to the manufacturer
first. You want to be absolutely sure you're doing the right thing.

Rub Salt In The Wound Department: See my sig(nature).
---
Ted Zieglar
"Backup is a computer user's best friend."

LeeG wrote:
> At POST I recieve the warning that the drive is faulty via the S.M.A.R.T.
> system and it won't go past the POST. If I disable the S.M.A.R.T. then I can
> get past POST to my multi-boot menu but if I select my XP installation then
> the m/c sits there trying to retrieve data from the faulty HDD. If I remove
> the faulty HDD then everything runs smoothly. I had started to notice a
> couple of days ago that my XP seemed a bit slower but nothing seemed to
> indicate that the drive was to blame. Dskchk's and defrags failed to detect
> any bad sectors.
>
> "Ted Zieglar" wrote:
>
>> Are you certain your hard drive has failed? Really certain?
>>
>> Whether or not you can recover anything depends on how, exactly, your
>> hard drive failed. For example: Does it no longer power up? If so you
>> can bring it to a data recovery company, but be prepared to eat
>> sandwiches for a few months.
>>
>> ---
>> Ted Zieglar
>> "Backup is a computer user's best friend."
>>
>> LeeG wrote:
>>> Is there any possibility that I can recover my XP installation from my Maxtor
>>> hdd that has just failed. i.e. a application that can access the drive in a
>>> 'gentle way' just to recover any data on it before I bin it?
 >> Stay informed about: Hdd failure