Need help recovering files from drive with corrupted boot record & partition table.

[MGood777]

I had Vista installed on my Dell PC when the boot record & partition tables became totally corrupted by some disk partitioning software. It had something to do with all the additional partitions that Dell uses for system recovery, but nonetheless the drive won't boot right now. Trying all sorts of repairs to the boot record and file tables haven't worked. Everybody I've talked to seems to think that the Vista disk signature is toast because the drive isn't even recognized after POST.

However...My files should still be there. If I boot to any kind of rescue media, it knows the C: drive is there it just can't read anything on it. I have a copy of "Active Boot Disk" and it can scan the drive and find files for me to recover one at a time, but it's totally tedious and I lose the file name and the directory structure in the process. Basically it looks like I'd have to pull them off one at a time that way, which would take me years.

Anyway...

I needed a new HDD anyway, so I'm going to install a new drive as the master and reload Vista onto that and use it as my C: drive. The drive that is now corrupted will become the slave and just a spare drive for backups, but before I format it I need to recover the personal files that are there (pictures, documents, etc.).

I know that I have a better chance of recovering that stuff once the drive is installed as a slave, so does anybody know of a good application I can use for that? If I can use an application installed in the Vista environment on the new drive, and then hopefully recover the files and the directory structure off the old drive (or at least the file names if not the directories), that would be ideal.

Any thoughts? Is there anything out there that can help me?

[trulad]

I would set both drives to cs (cable select) and if you can see the drive in Windows Explorer you can just right click any files you need to save and with the "send to" menu,send it to the C drive. After you have everything off you can format that drive for extra storage.
trulad

[MGood777]

I don't understand the significance of setting the drives to cable select. Once I get to the point where I have both drives installed, the new one will be master and the damaged one slave on the same SATA cable. How does setting them as cable select make the recovery any more possible? That's the part I guess I don't understand. If they are set as master & slave and plugged in that way, isn't the end result the same thing?

[trulad]

Yes, I was thinking they were IDE drives, in that case with 80 wire cable they would both be cable select, the position on the cable determines master or slave.
trulad

[MGood777]

OK...Another question comes to mind...

It's been a while since I've built a PC and I've only ever done it with IDE drives. Are SATA drives different in terms of how they are jumpered? Do they not get jumpered as master or slave like IDE? Are they always cable select?

[trulad]

I'm not up on sata drives that I can tell you with confidence what settings you need but you could go to the manufacturers web site and check their recommended settings.
Maybe glc or some of the other more knowlegeble people can help you.
trulad

[sgtspector]

Sata drives are not jumpered at all. The sata header they occupy on the motherboard will determine the order in the bios but does not necessarily determine the boot order or priority. Any drive could be the boot drive in a sata setup. For best results you should install the new drive only first and then install your OS. When that is completed successful you can shutdown and connect the spare sata drive and attempt data recovery. HTH

[MGood777]

Hey sgt...Thanks for the advice...Sounds good.

After I get all that done, know a good application for the data recovery?

[pam123]

Hey sgt...Thanks for the advice...Sounds good.

After I get all that done, know a good application for the data recovery?

Several good ones starting with this free but does most things program (It's good.) :

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

and following, in ascending price,

a solid citizen : http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

and the ultimate that law enforcement uses : http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

[glc]

Some SATA drives (notably Seagate) do have a jumper that you need to be aware of - the 1.5 jumper. Remove it if your controller supports 3.0.

[MGood777]

OK...So here's the update...

After trying a few different apps that "supposedly" worked to recover files from a drive that was damaged like mine, GetDataBack that pam123 suggested was the only one that came close to working. (BTW...Thanks, pam123. Great recommendation. Worked much better than any others I tried.)

So...My files have been copied from the damaged drive to my new drive, but many are unusable. Interestingly enough, some of the MP3 files now play, but their filenames have been mixed up. (i.e. Play what you think is a Brooks & Dunn country song, and you get Red Hot Chili Peppers instead.)

Anyway...All I really care about are the JPEG pics. A small percentage of them are totally fine, but most are corrupted in some way. The files don't open.

Is there some kind of application that can restore corrupted JPEG files or maybe even a tutorial for looking at the files in a hex editor and trying to fix what might be broken?

Any thoughts???

[pam123]

I have used this on one occasion and it worked : http://www.officerecovery.com/pixrecovery/index.htm

but that's hardly a recommendation.
Fortunately it has a trial so you can know if it will work for you before you shell out any cash.

I've never had to repair mp3 files, yeah I know that my turn will come, so no recommendations but when you're looking for programs you need one that will repair tags so check for that in the description and chose a program that has a free trial.

[1life2live4]

This is why I keep all my data on two external 500G drives. Both spinning the same thing keeping data fail safe. Never store all your data on your C drive.... I see people cry all the time.....