Member Avatar for ADDJ

I have a 40G I use as a secondary drive to store all my files..

I was hoping that segregating my data from my OS drive would afford myself a certain degree of safety, alas - after a power failure, XP reports the drive as a 4G "CDFS" partition, so the many utilities I've used to try and recover the data only work up until the 4G mark.

CHKDSK reports that it will not work with "RAW" partitions..

XP keeps asking me to format the drive, but I don't want to lose my data.

Does anyone have any suggested solutions? I have no floppies around and can't use the PMagic fix... I do have CDRs handy though!

Thanks in advance,

Rick the ADDJ

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Building on the replies from , and , here is a safe, practical recovery path that avoids further writes to the problem disk and gives the best chance to salvage files.

First principle: do not write to the affected disk. Use a bootable Linux CD (SystemRescue, Ubuntu live, etc.) and copy the whole device to an image on a separate healthy drive using GNU ddrescue. Example workflow (identify devices with lsblk or fdisk -l first):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gddrescue testdisk  # or use a distro with them preinstalled

# fast first pass (no retries)
sudo ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdX /mnt/external/disk.img /mnt/external/disk.log

# then retry bad sectors (use -r0 to skip retries, or -r3 to try 3 times)
sudo ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/sdX /mnt/external/disk.img /mnt/external/disk.log

Work from the image, not the original. Run TestDisk against the image to try to restore partition structures (Analyse -> Quick Search -> Deeper Search; press p to list and C to copy files). If partition recovery fails, use PhotoRec (from the TestDisk package) to carve known file types (MP3/WAV/ZIP/etc.) into a safe folder on the external drive.

Practical cautions: double-check device names before any dd* command; keep the ddrescue log so passes can be resumed; stop and consult a pro if the drive makes unusual noises (clicking/spinning issues). If this feels too risky, a professional lab is the safest route for important music or irreplaceable data.

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Member Avatar for Johnathan

I would drop it in hard drive enclosure and see if you can pull the information using usb. Its worked for us in the pase.

Member Avatar for cguan_77

can you access to that drive through DOS mode?

Member Avatar for Uriel

Stellar Phoenix Recovery Suite will be able to access your data

you'll have to find a download for it.. limewire/kazaa/torrent. (or buy it)

Member Avatar for ADDJ

Sorry about the delay responding, aahh stuck working alot, (and I found out we're having a new baby boy!) hehe!!

Anyways, I can't access the drive in DOS (it says it's a RAW drive)

I'm grabbing Stellar Phoenix right now, thanks for the advice guys - I'll post the results in here.

:)
(wish I'd added email notification to this thread...hope you guys are still around! I wanna salvage my old DJ sets!)

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