File recovery 1

[Present]

Linney at WindowsXP forum recommended I try here! Bit of trouble with my Maxtor 120GB - Here's the problem history so far:

Cyclic redundancy errors on my Archive partition (J (contains installers for apps, music, video etc - recently optimised by Norton).

Windows / DOS disk checker reports 'file sectors unreadable' in the 1st scanning phase but doesn't fix it ie. the problem is still there on a repeated scan.

I've also tried Norton's Disk Doctor which did the same thing. Ironically, I think Norton's Optimizer caused the problem.

Tried running chdsk from Recovery Console, it appeared to hang at 50% with no activity for an hour or two, just a repeated pattern on the disk 'activity' light. Wasn't sure what to do (this is the only PC I have access to)so I restarted the machine to have S.M.A.R.T. warn me to back up all data because my main HD is about to pack up!

Have now tried Ghosting drive (won't do it because of errors, even with 'ignore bad blocks' CL.
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I now have another problem too, to explain further - my HD contained my OS etc in various partitions, these have Ghosted fine onto a new drive. However, my Archive partition (J:/) is still refusing to Ghost.

My plan was to boot from the new drive that now contains a copy of my OS, but that refuses to boot (hangs on an XP logo on a blue background.) I've now tried booting onto Recovery Console (hangs), and I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get booting from this drive to work. (Haven't tried a Windows Repair yet).

Anyway, back to the dying drive, I've tried Imaging it with Restorer2000, but that seemed to get bogged down in the errors and had only managed about 5% after 24 hours!

PLanning now to attempt a Raw Recovery with EasyRecovery, but bit of a hassle as I have to set up loads of custom file signatures.

So to summarise -

1. How can I get it to boot of my new drive?
2. Please pray for my old one.

Thankyou

 

[Present]

OOOOK, copied this one over in case any experts here know what I'm talking about -

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Tried another Raw Recovery and got back after 34 hours to find it had completed about 5% and reckoned it had another 20 days or so to go so I've given up on that one!

What I need now I think is some kind of file copier that will just skip a file if it has a bad sector, doing this by hand takes FOREVER cos explorer crashes etc. All I've found so far is bincopy, but this is only really for single files and just skips the bad blocks in the file (leaving it useless unless it's a movie or whatever). Anyone know of anything?

 

[BeenThereDoneThat]

Present:

You could try this and see if it will help.

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~roadkil/unstopcp.htm

 

[Present]

Many thanks m8, it seems to be doing a stalwart job as you can skip a file when you notice it's not really managing to copy it ... be nice if you could do it automatically, but hey, I'm happier

Cheers

Bill.

 

[Present]

Oh, seems like I spoke too soon. Damn 'unstoppable copier' hangs and STOPS pretty much whole OS on certain files! (the ones with big data errors, it seems) Anyone else know of a program that will just SKIP them?

Thanks