HDD Corrupted

[Fiona]

If your computer was freezing it looks like your files system is damaged.
You can receive an error message and windows or testdisk might hang if it's trying to read memory errors on your disk.
It doesn't mean that you have bad sectors and they're physically damaged but a softbad and they're repairable.
As long as you want to recover data, you shouldn't try to repair your file system because it can increase damage.
Something what you can try too, would be using a LiveCD and test probably Linux displays your data and doesn't hang?
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd
In these Live CD is TestDisk integrated.

Fiona

[louiebh]

If your computer was freezing it looks like your files system is damnaged.
You can receive an error message and windows or testdisk might hang if it's trying to read memory errors on your disk.
It doesn't mean that you have bad sectors and they're physically damaged but a softbad and they're repairable.
As long as you want to recover data, you shouldn't try to repair your file system because it can increase damage.
Something what you can try too, would be using a LiveCD and test probably Linux displays your data and doesn't hang?
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd
In these Live CD is TestDisk integrated.

Fiona

oh okay thankyou for the info is it possible to boot this off a usb drive as my laptop doesnt have an optical drive?
im not sure which one i should download

[louiebh]

If your computer was freezing it looks like your files system is damnaged.
You can receive an error message and windows or testdisk might hang if it's trying to read memory errors on your disk.
It doesn't mean that you have bad sectors and they're physically damaged but a softbad and they're repairable.
As long as you want to recover data, you shouldn't try to repair your file system because it can increase damage.
Something what you can try too, would be using a LiveCD and test probably Linux displays your data and doesn't hang?
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd
In these Live CD is TestDisk integrated.

Fiona

oh okay thankyou for the info is it possible to boot this off a usb drive as my laptop doesnt have an optical drive?
im not sure which one i should download

so i downloaded gparted since it has a usb boot option,

my findings went as follows

i selected the disk and went to analyse it showed all the partitions as it did in windows (the images dont display right on the forum so ill just post the links)

http://i.imgur.com/wT3rA.jpg

after the searched it went here

http://i.imgur.com/uXyRo.jpg

and it didnt seem to have that overlapping thing with sector 1490 and 1491 which was on windows which was interesting and puzzling me

then before the write bit it displayed all the drives properly without the need for the deep search which wouldve hung in windows so something was going right for once.

http://i.imgur.com/RYCkA.jpg

Now i wasnt 100% about writing any partitions without your go ahead incase i ruin the drive so i went ahead and did the BS rebuild which ended up hanging even in linux too which was upsetting stopped at exactly the same sector it did at windows like in the image here


it said search mft 101711872/505644493 and the drive stopped being accessed according to my led and didnt change so its left me clueless what to do now whats the next step i should take? i feel like its getting there slowly but im not yet able to recover my drive

[Fiona]

Looks like that you need Datarecovery Software.
Could you test Photorec first?
Infos;
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step
Especially it's advisable to use File Opt and press s to deselct all file types.
Then select only desired file typed where you want to recover.
If PhotoRec hangs too, you should probably clone your disk or create an image.
Infos will follow

Fiona

[louiebh]

i attempted to recover with photorec and that hung up aswell what is the next step to take?

[louiebh]

Hey there me again ive managed to secure a spare drive to copy my disk contents over to, could you help me recover my partition through this method?

appreciate all the help so far

[Fiona]

Is your spare disk bigger than your affected disk?
The possibilities are to clone your disk or to create an image.

Please let me know.

Fiona

[louiebh]

My spare drive is smaller than the the full drive but bigger than the corrupted partition! is this fine it should be able to work i think

[Fiona]

Yes it's possible if you clone the partition only.

Fiona

[louiebh]

what is the difference between making an image and cloning the drive which is better and which should i do to recover the files?