I have a damaged Maxtor 4R080J9 80gb hard disk. One morning a few days ago, I turned the computer on and the main partition was unreadable ("Drive is not formatted..."); the other partitions on the hard disk seem to be fine. I tried running various tools to fix the problem (fixmbr, chkdsk, partition magic, etc.), but no luck; the partition is unreadable. I had noticed some bad sectors / unreadable files recently, and was just thinking it might be time to backup everything on the hard disk - of course I acted too late... So, next I tried to recover the data using hard disk recovery tools (such as RunTime GetDataBack NTFS). While these tools can scan the damaged partition and begin to pick up files, every single tool I've tried freezes when it tries to read certain parts of the drive - sectors 19600-19800 are an example of this; there's another section around sector 55800000 (I'm not sure if that's the right number of zeroes... It's about 45% into the drive anyway). Let me explain what I mean by 'freezing' in this case: the entire computer stops responding for very long periods of time, maybe half an hour to an hour. Sometimes it recovers after this, but after this point the entire hard disk is inaccessible until I turn the computer off and on again; it won't even be detected by the BIOS if I reset. I've tried this drive on two computers so far, this one (Duron 1400, ABit NF-7 nFORCE 2 mboard, 512M RAM) and a older spare computer (Celeron 433Mhz with an Intel FJ440ZX mboard). Anyway, there's some data on that drive that I would still like to have, but as I said I've had no luck recovering it. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I might be able to recover this data? Maybe there's a recovery program that can be instructed to skip certain sector blocks? GetDataBack can make partial scans of the drive, but it can't really be of much help without the MFT, and the bad section is either near the end of or just after the MFT, so I can never scan a block that contains both the MFT and the data it references. It doesn't support multiple blocks. The one thing I haven't really tried yet is making a clone of the disk - since I don't currently have another hard disk big enough to store an image of the drive - but as far as I can tell (by trying a split-to-volumes clone), cloning programs freeze in the same places as the disk recovery tools do. Thanks in advance for your help. - NV

Not that it's likely to help, but I would suggest running: chkdsk /r /f That will try and find any bad sectors, make then unavailable to the system and try to find alternate places on the hard drive to move the data to. But it sounds like your hard drive may be too far gone. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!!!

well, did you say you have multiple partitions on this drive, if so and even if you dont still try this I had had a lot of success, download slax onto your computer and burn the iso onto a cd)this is a bootable linux!) and boot your computer with cd into it, It should boot, if not change your boot settings in system bios. let it boot all the way up and when you see it asking for a username type in root then press enter, the password it toor. then press enter after the password has been typed, after that type xconf then hit enter to configure your video card. when done type startx then hit enter, it will now load into linux. once loaded click on home and EXAMPLE: hdd1 or hdd2-one of those hdd are it. double click on it. it should show all the files on there. if so the click on the button where the start menu normally is and click on networking and click on samba home network, (make sure you have a home network first with a windows computer) then you will see your network and one of the networks computers. just drag and drop the files you want to save to a networked computer and then once done saving all information click on the start menue thing again and click logout. once there you should see a black screen, type in poweroff then hit enter, your computer will now restart back into windows as long as you take the cd out. network back to the computer with saved info and drag and drop onto your computers good hardrive! lol that it all done, if there are any question on how to do anything then let me know!! please dont be afraid to ask, I have saved plenty of info on many hdds, I also have other methods, this is the safest so try this first! let ne know how it goes and Good Luck!!! ;) _-=EMUSE=-_

Slax won't mount the drive. It gives me this error: "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb1, missing codepage or other error In some cases useful info is found in systelog - try dmesg | tail or so Please check that the device is plugged in correctly." I checked the dmesg | tail; it reads like this: "NTFS-fs error (device hdb1): ntfs_read_inode_mount(): Couldn't find first extension of $DATA attribute in attribute list. $MFT is corrupt. Run chkdsk. NTFS-fs error (device hdb1): ntfs_read_inode_mount(): Failed. Marking inode as bad. NTFS-fs error (device hdb1): ntfs_fill_super(): Failed to load essential metadata." I have, of course, tried running chkdsk on the drive several times, but all I get now is: "Corrupt master file table. CHKDSK aborted."

Im sorry to hear the bad news, But I do have a backup solution (i.e. you have to spend $70) to buy this software at http://www.highergroundsoftware.com/ This bad boy does it all. Im not joking it works 99% of the time. Its worth the cash!!! Trust me, I tried all software and this sucker did all. Well go and get r Done!! Good Luck!!! _-=EMUSE=-_

I've tried that program, and it has pretty much the same effect as the others: I tell it to diagnose the disk and after a short time it freezes the computer, and the hard disk disappears from the BIOS until I turn the computer off and on again.

have you upgraded your system bios? _-=EMUSE=-_