regarding my previous post - Done the unthinkable

[Richp]

Hey guys..
Sorry cant find my previous posts…..

You may remember me posting last week about my S5M, which I had managed to put a powerful magnet on the bottom of and half destroy my hard drive.
Windows would not load and all my files were on the c: so a recovery was not possible until I can try and retrieve my missing files, since stupidly I have never back up my computer and have lost a years worth of work from my business and personal stuff.
Just thought id run an update to see what everyone thinks …
I was trying to get a copy of spin rite, which was kindly suggested as the way forward to try and retrieve what ever I could from the files.

However I haven’t tried this yet as my friend gave me a copy of ‘on track’ which I believe is a similar system. Using this and a copy of knoppix, I have now managed to recover some of the drive and link up my laptop to my pc and am currenty transferring what files are left on there, some are going across sucessfuly but some are obviously corrupt. its taking a long time since it keeps stalling because the drive is so corrupt, currenty its been going for 5 days and is a 60%.

Anything I get back is a bonus now I guess, but I just wandered if people thought I should still try this 'spin rite' programme afterwards to see if it pick up any other files….. my friend who gave me 'on track' told me its not the right software as it looks at the drive in a different way. Any thoughts appreciated and a big thank you for everyones help at the start of this week, at least it a slight success story in the fact I am getting a few files back!!
Note to self: back up Laptop and keep magnets away from harddrives!!!!

Rich

[Thalamus.]

Hey guys..
Sorry cant find my previous posts…..

Here is your previous post ..

[Richp]

Your a genius Thalamus!!

i couldnt find it lol !!!

cheers bud

[Thalamus.]

You're welcome..

[jammold]

Hi - sorry to hear about what happened but I have done similar things myself.

Anyway to backtrack on something you asked in your previous post:

could this spinrite software mentioned before run in the knoppix system ? ? ? 

I have a copy of SpinRite 6 - its standalone software that runs either from a floppy disk or a bootable CD-ROM. You need to run SpinRite first BEFORE running Knoppix - this allows for SpinRite to work well - let SpinRite work at level 5 - It'll use DynaStat to rebuild and recreate data - you may loose 512KB blocks here and there with corruption but I had a similarly damaged drive with a 13000 Gauss magnet (a neodynium magnet too!) which almost totaled the drive. SpinRite did restore most of the drive - around 94% I remember.

Steve Gibson is a genius with this tool its well worth the money - even if you only get some data back it will be something

When you come to recover data using Knoppix you might need NTFS-3G - its the Linux project which needs Libfuse and Linux kernel 2.6.X to install. NTFS-£G will allow read and write support from your drive - however the native kernel mode driver may be enough - and besides some write operations on the drive may render it even more susceptible to corruption.

If you need NTFS-3G for whatever reason and need the packages I will obtain them for you.

Good luck with your data recovery - if you need some help with SpinRite or the linux disaster recovery process let me know