Data recovery software

[biohazard_star]

Guys, can you recommend a good free (maybe not this) data recovery software? My HDD crashed a few weeks ago and I want recover my ePSXe game saves. I was already 100+ hours into FF8 and almost done with SH1, so it would be kind of a waste if I just start over again. The game saves are only megabytes big.

[Helegad]

Take the unit to a repair centre. I don't know what they do with it, but they can usually get some stuff off it for you. Other than that, I can't help you, sorry. If the drive can't get read by a computer, then what's the chances of any software being able to read it?

[Ridley W. Hayes]

GetData Back is a nice recovery software. But I don't remember if it's shareware and if it let you to check only one type of files, though worth to check if you're very needed.

[Project Omega]

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html

Can you run the hard drive at all? I heard if you freeze the hard drive in a plastic bag for a few hours and then hook it up as a slave drive to your computer, it would work for a few minutes, long enough for you to recover some important data.

If you can't run the drive at all then you would need to take the HDD to a professional which is pretty damn expensive since their clients are usually large companies that can afford to pay alot of money to get their data recovered.

[Helegad]

How do people find solutions like that?! It's pretty random: "Oh yeah, my HDD doesn't work, so I'm gonna try putting it in the freezer which should make it work again."

Um.

[Project Omega]

The freezing solution makes the metal in the hard drive contract a little which if the problem is hardware related might give your dead hard drive the boost it needs to work. Naturally as it heats up again and the metal expands it'll stop working, but it does seem to work in my experience atleast if you want to recover only a few files and not the entire contents of a 140GB hard drive

http://driverecoveries.com/mechanical-failure/freezing-your-hard-drive-short-term-recovery-solution/

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2005/12/hard-drive-recovery-utilities-when-you.html

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Hard_Drives/Q_22853480.html

http://digg.com/hardware/Freeze_your_hard_drive_to_recover_data:_Myth_or_Reality_

etc, etc

What inspired the first person to attempt to stick his hard drive in the freezer? Perhaps he was a physics professor?

[biohazard_star]

Well to be honest, I've already reformatted it. D:

There's absolutely no chance of recovery, is there?

[Project Omega]

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/undeleteplus.html

[Helegad]

Now that you've reformatted it, no.

If the hard-drive was physically damaged, there wasn't much of a chance.

But if the hard-drive crashed, you could have used DOS to get into the hard-drive (hooked up as a slave), and extracted the files.

What happened exactly?

[biohazard_star]

PC just suddenly stopped booting that's why I had to reformat. The program PO recommended didn't work. Oh well, I guess I just have to start FF8 again from the beginning.