Elessar wrote:So you weren't able to just slave it into another computer and browse it in Windows Explorer, there were like, faults or failures or something?
I did that. Slaved it into another comp which immediately shot up a warning that the new drive I had just slaved in had MASSIVE END OF THE WORLD errors on it.
Well, shit, I said. Shit.
I tried to browse it for my files, and only about 20 of them were there.
Actual, real-life DISK failures, like the kind I thought I would somehow never have (for some stupid reason).
Elessar wrote:See I've never actually done much with data recovery... most of the time you can spot hard drive failures coming and take precautions... but not always.

Yeah, well it TOLD me the disk was failing. It wrote it right out on the DOS screen everytime I booted up the old comp.
"SMART Hard Drive detects imminent hard disk failure. Back up your files immediately to prevent information loss, and then replace the disk." But then it would boot fine and work fine.
I thought, "Yeah, yeah, thanks Mr. 'SMART' warning". I mean, since when has a windows vista error message actually had ANYthing to do with the real-life cause of a problem, right? But after a day I tried to do an img burn of the disk, and it failed, so (tummy acids gently mounting) I do a chkdsk.....and it's repairing all these sectors, and then the shit really starts to hit the fan and the BSOD is up every 2 seconds, and I can only get it to boot every nine restarts or so.
And I totally forgot for like the last..... 8 years ....to back anything up.

(I MEANT to back up! I REALLY DID! But somehow, I forgot.)
After researching a lotta crap, I finally bought the
EASEUS software online, which scans your drive and shows up all your files for free, and will even recover 1 GB for free. To recover more than 1 GB you have to buy it for $60. (I had lost about 250 GB of photographs, websites, video (a lot of my own original stuff) so, $60 felt like a frikkin' HOT SUMMER DEAL!

) It worked GREAT. Scanned my whole drive, found EVERYTHING. (I had like, a religious moment, or something when I saw that ever-so-stuffed "Jennifer" filefolder reappear

I mean.....all my Triaxtpolitan stuff!

And bank stuff, taxes, yada, yada.)
I paid the $60 and it saved all the stuff to my new hard disk. I'm gonna try to format the old drive and see if I can make it work again. It's only like 2.8 years old! However, I did have huge problems last year with my comp's temp approaching 200F and I'm betting I maybe smelted some circuits a bit at that point.
Moral: If you ever lose data, try EASEUS!