Hi, does anyone know and good free disk recovery software? The SMART feature on my internal drive has been detecting it as "bad" for a while now, but I've been using it. I knew I should have backed up my data - but I didn't!! Well, tonight I turned it on and it said after the post: A disk read error occured Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart If I boot with a CD, and try to go to the C:\> drive, it lets me in, but then when I do a DIR it says: Invalid media type reading drive C Abort, Retry, Fail Any ideas???? It worked this morning. I really don't care if the HDD is shot, jst as long as I can get all of my pictures off!!! Any Help????? Thanks!!

that does sound kinda bad. nice work on booting from cd, that's definitely the first thing i was going to suggest. it sounds like there's probably a formatting issue (like your normally NTFS partitioned HDD is now FAT16 or something nutty), in which case your photos are pretty much toast without a major $$$$ investment to a "specialist." if you're REAL lucky, there's just a problem reading the partition table, in which case i would try one, and then both of the following: 1. from the c:> line, run fixboot and fixmbr 2. try connecting the physical drive with a different cable to a different controller on the motherboard. good luck!

"like your normally NTFS partitioned HDD is now FAT16 or something nutty" As scenarios go, replace 'nutty' with 'impossible' - there are lots of ways a drive can go bad (that just isn't one of them) Depends on just what failed (and you were warned) Spinrite is one of the best, but it's not free - as well, file recovery can be an arduous process. Sure, try those basic 'fixes' (chkdsk too) as there's a slim chance I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

Have you tried ubcd4win? This has a list of free recovery tools. http://www.ubcd4win.com/contents.htm or hirens boot cd http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hiren.... Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.

I recently put a HDD in the freezer overnight that had stopped working. The next day I was able to spin it up and retrieve all the data. The HDD is still working (about 2 weeks) but I don't put anything on it that I can't afford to lose.

vwchappy: Try this:http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm It's not free though.

Spinrite you say? Hmmm - I see you don't waste time reading the whole thread As before, it depends on just how bad the drive is - Spinrite can 'bring it back' if anything can, but the other route is to run specialized recovery software, preferably from a bootable source, and in a machine that also has a working drive to copy your salvaged files to If the drive won't spin, (even after the freezer 'trick') then there's little else beyond paying an exorbitant price for forensic recovery I've had good luck with Winternals, but there are a variety of considerations, and every case can be different - it's one of those "prevention is worth a pound of cure" situations I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.