IT - Recovery help...

[Edition30]

Is it possible to recover data from an external HDD?


From what I understand from my sister when she plugged it in it said parameter incorrect and it needs formatting.

Shes a teacher and has her full terms worth of planning on there, should have backed it up but I guess she will learn from her mistakes.

Thanks.

[SeanyK]

Pretty much mate, there are some good free recovery utilities out there.

I would try something like getdataback, although that is paid software, there is a free version so you can at least try it and see if it will recover your data;

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

I would also be inclined, once/if you get the files recovered, to copy them, then format that external disk and run a drive checker on it to make sure the drive isn't faulty before you use it again.

Let us know how you get on.

[Edition30]

Cheers


Shes not all that computer literate and lives 80 miles away from me so I will report back when she tries it.

[Ifti]

Try 'Pandora Recovery'.
Its free software - never know your luck 

[Richn83]

And in the mean-time don't let her put any other data onto the disk, if new data is written to a segment then previous data will be lost.

[alexperkins]

I used some great recovery software recently...ill have to dig out the name of it for you.

One to look at is diskdigger though

[Edition30]

Cheers for the replies, she cant put anything on the disc anyway as its telling her to format it


Will report back when/if she sorts it out.

[darrenw]

try it in a different computer - I had one of these disc back up thingies that came up with a similar message - took it into maplins and the helpul guy said it had been reformatted into a mac format - turns out my daughter had tried it with her apple pc

once we worked this out it was easier to reuse the disk but we never did get the data back

hope it gets sorted

Rgds
darren