Recover lost data by formatting first?

[ponster]

A friend of mine has given me the HD from his laptop (Toshiba Satellite 2180CDT) hoping that I could recover some of the data on it as wasn't booting any longer.

I removed the drive and plugged it into an external 2.5" USB unit and managed to get Win2000 to 'see' it (XP refuses). Alas, I wasn't able to recover any data as I couldn't access any of the files.

I tried Spinrite (stuck at 0%) and HDD Regenerater (predicted over 5 weeks of work to finish!) without any luck.


Now I remember on other hard drives where I installed XP I was able to recover data on the disk, even after a format, as long as it hadn't been overwritten by XP.


Can I do the same thing with my laptop drive?
Can I install an OS so that my computer running Win2000 will be able to read it and then I can use a data recovering program to try and recover the lost files?

 

[eyec]

have you tired using Knoppix?

 

[dbData]

It sounds like the drive may have physical problems. I suggest starting by imaging the drive sector for sector to another like drive or slightly larger. (Desktop/Laptop drive it doesn't really matter so long as it's good) Then run an extraction tool on the image.

This stuff is outline at

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com

with links in the Data Recovery Software Guide to data extraction tools.

Recovery after a format is possible under the conditions you describe if the drive doesn't have physical errors and the reformat is the same file system as the original.



Rick

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com