Damaged (?) external HD, help needed

[bojan]

Last month I had an accident - external WD HD fell on the floor while it was powered... and as a consequence, some sub-directories with pictures were lost (they became empty). :sadeyes:

My first reaction was - OK, lets try to recover it.

PC Inspector File Recovery (freeware) recovered a number of them (after 3 days of scanning !!.. well, it was 1TB drive), but subdirectories and names of the files were lost.. together with the information on the length of the file (I ended up with whole clusters) so I had to repeat the procedure with different default file size set to end up with pictures in 2-3x larger files than necessary... sort of OK, but not quite...

Then I tried Pareto Pro ($50), and it managed to find only a small subset of files (?). The scanning process took 2 days. :shrug:
The subdirectory, name and date info was also not there.

After this was done, I connected this HD to my AKAI digital TV set top box, that has USB interface for external memory device... and to my biggest (and pleasant, bot not entirely unexpected) surprise, all "lost" files were there, perfectly readable in couple of seconds !!! :thumbsup:

So much for all that file retrieving (Pro) software :mad2:.... (and for companies that charge you arm and leg to do it for you)

If the Akai Set Top Box can read them in full, with all info ( "lost" according to Windows XP OS), surely there must be the way to retrieve those files easily, without fuss.. Maybe if I try Mac? Or something else.. the problem is, AKAI box can read and display pictures but it can't save them on different media.
Any suggestions?

[michaellxv]

Try connecting it to a Linux box. Download one of the liveCD distros if you don't have one. You can run it without doing a full install.

[bojan]

Thank you :thumbsup:

Would this one be ok?
http://s-t-d.org/download.html
http://www.linux-live.org/

[michaellxv]

I was thinking something more mainstream like http://fedoraproject.org/ or http://www.ubuntu.com/ . If you want something smaller to download you could try http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ but it won't have all the included software that the others do.

[GTB_an_Owl]

try the ubuntu distro bojan - would be my pick

geoff

[bojan]

Working on ubuntu....

[ZeroID]

I use Puppy Linux. Simple install, can run from the CD loaded to RAM. Easaily mounts other dirves/devices, nice easy desk top to work from even if you're not linux friendly. Good way to recover data from virussed systems as well.

[bojan]

Done ! :thumbsup:

Thanks guys ...

Actually, I always wanted to install linux as my next OS... and this was the perfect excuse to that.

Now, in retrospect, I think there was nothing wrong with those subdirectories - that's why file recovery software was not successful here, because files were not actually lost.. just the folder content become invisible to Windows for some reason.

Still, I can say now with great confidence that PC Inspector File Recovery (freeware) is better (more successful) than Paretologic Pro (payware).

[DavidU]

That's great Bojan, all's well and ends well, and something is learned.

[michaellxv]

Been out all day, just got back. Good to hear that it all worked out for you.