Hard drive failing!! Want to use Acronis to Recover my data.

My hard drive failed a few weeks back, a SATA Maxtor Daimondmax plus 9 modell 160 gb. Windows would not open, and if I tried to plug the drive in via an external firewire device, windows would try to read the drive and then crash immediately.

After doing some Diagnostics on the drive with Maxtors bootable utility, it stated that the drive was failing and that I needed to migrate my data soon to avoid losing it. I bought another drive, this one 320 gb, on which to move my data. I did a little research and discovered Acronis True Image... I have since purchased the software, and would like to use it to get my data off the drive, but I am a bit unsure which utility to use.

I created a bootable recovery cd, and I booted with it last night with both drives attatched, and remarkably, it booted and both drives are showing up in both the bios on my machine and inside the utility. I tried to clone the drive, but Acronis reported that there were unreadable clusters on the hard drive, with the option to ignore, cancel ect.

I stopped the clone, because I did not want the bad clusters to transfer to my new drive. Is there another way to get back my data with this utility?

Your help is greatly appreciated!!

 

If it is only data you want to retrieve, better to make a BartPE bootable cd. It will boot your system and one of the features will bring up a Windows type explorer interface and if it sees the bad drive, it should let you transfer the data. Google for where to get the BartPE cd. It is free.

 

Boot with the recovery CD and make an image of the whole disk to the firewire drive.
If you have access to another computer you could install TI on it and MOUNT the external dive so that you could use explorer to see what you have managed to save. At this point you could copy and paste your data to another location.
You do not have to do the above but it will give some confidence to proceed further.
Remove the bad drive from your computer and fit a replacement for it. Boot from the rescue CD with the external drive attached and switched on. It should be now possible to run a restore to the new drive. There is a method involving resizing of partitions which will avoid the new drive inhereting the bad sectors.
Depending on what data was corrupted it may be possible to boot into Windows. If not a repair install should get the system up again.
Do not forget to delete TI from the second computer as to leave it in situ would violate the ELUA.

Good luck.

Xpilot

 

Thanks, I will look for it...

I tried to backup files and folders last night with the bootable acronis cd but it could not read directories on the drive. Do you think I will get the same thing with the bart disk? I will attempt it this evening after I get off work.

Thanks for the response!

 

To copy the image should I use the clone utility... or is there another utility that I should use?

 

What is the important data on the old disk that you are trying to save? The OS, downloaded files, files you have personally created that are available nowhere else, ....?

If it is the data files then I would install XP on the new drive from its installation CD and mount the old drive as an internal. I would then go through it with Windows Explorer to try and copy the very important files first, then the important ones, then the not so important ones. This will give you an idea of just how bad the situation is as well as getting some data back.

If this works reasonably well then you can backup what you have saved; it if doesn't work then you are going to have to consider a data recovery program. TI is not a data recovery program.

Once you feel you have your data recovered then you can fool around with imaging, cloning, repairs, etc to see if you can recover your original Windows and data configuration.

IMO, using programs that rely on a reasonably clean disk structure, properly functioning hardware and convert individual files into a monolithic container file such that something not stored as expected can render it unrecoverable is not the way to go at first.

 

Seek...

I am not looking to recover the OS... I would rather start from scratch anyways... I am after the data and files on the drive, which are not backed up in any other location...

I have another computer running xp with Sata ports on the motherboard...

When I plug the drive into one of those ports, windows will not boot, even though it is trying to boot off a different drive...

Just past the XP screen, the system restarts.. in a loop, but the os never comes up.

Windows also crashes and the pc restarts if I try to connect the drive as an external drive in windows while it is in a stable, up and running state.

The drive as I said, shows up in the bios, and TI sees it when I boot from the recovery cd, however, it does say that there are unreadable sectors on the drive... Are you saying that TI is not the tool of choice for my predicament. My hopes was to say image the drive to my good new drive, and then connect the new drive up in Windows, to rescue my files.

Hope that all made sense...

Joel

 

It sounds like Windows is having trouble reading the disk such that it can make enough sense of it to incorporate it into its list of vallid devices.

If TI will read the disk and allow you to restore what it can read then that may be your only option. You are naturally going to get bad sectors since the disk is bad. Just restore the image or the Files and Folders backup and after you have recovered the good files and saved them elsewhere just reformat the partition.

 

As seekforever mentioned this is a job for a data recovery tool not a backup system. Do a search on google there are lots out there. The positive thing is that most of them have a free trial which allows you to see if they can scan and find your data. You may have to pay for the full version which does the recovery part.

I found this one pretty good (and now have it plugged into Bart as well) and it is not that expensive : http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

F.

 

Well, I did some work with a file recovery tool that was on a Bart pe disk that a co-worker lent to me. Problem is, that after recovering a bunch of files with the tool, even though they have the right extensions (ie .xls, .jpeg, .pdf ect) They are all equally showing up as 1.43 mb in size, and none can be opened inside of windows. It appears as though I am going to have to try again with a different tool, probably this one that Seek suggested...

Can you tell me how to plug the tool into Bartpe?

Thanks.

 

Most importantly, STOP using the drive, as further use likely worsens matters.

From the description of the OP's problem, the only path to take is to use a data recovery service such as http://www.ontrack.com/.

Such services usually charge an evaluation fee to determine what might be salvaged.