Is this normal for Deep Scan?

I have an ancient windows 98-era computer that hasn't been used since around 2005 or so. I went and turned it on since it was still hooked up in the other room and I wanted to back up the data on it. It has xp on it since the old hdd with the 98 install died.

So xp loads up to the desktop just fine, but the computer was running really slow because it's old and had norton and a bunch of other crapware bogging it down.

I leave for about 5 minutes to let it finish booting.

Walk back in, an error box popped up on screen while I was away. I clicked ok, but didn't pay attention to the error. Instant blue screen of death; something about page file in non-paged area if I recall correctly.

The computer automatically reboots.

XP won't boot; disk read error.

I took the hard drive out of that computer and put it in another, more modern one. I tried booting from the hard drive, but got the same disk read error. I then set the hard drive as a secondary drive, and loaded up Windows XP from my primary (working) drive and let it run the default pre-boot disk check.

The drive scan completed overnight and XP booted up, so I don't know if the scan finished correctly or whatever.

When I got into My Computer, it recognizes the drive as being hooked in as a secondary hdd (in other words, an E drive) and a program that I installed on my computer shows that the drive is nearly full, which I'm assuming means that the files are still on it.

When I try to access the drive however, I get a "Disk E:/ is unformatted. Do you want to format?" box.

I clicked no and am currently running Recuva on it to see if I can get the files off it it.

At first, I did a regular scan on it to find files. That completed, and I backed up the small amount that it found to an external hard drive. When I went to inspect them, they all showed up as 0kb files. Obviously, none of them opened.

Then I put Recuva into Deep Scan mode and let it go.

I've been running it for just over 24 hours now. It's currently on phase 1 of 2, found 69197 files (the same amount as it found yesterday before I went to bed), but the progress meter has moved up from 0% to 1%.

The estimated time remaining? 36 DAYS.

The FAQ says that it should take over an hour on a large drive; 36 days is over an hour, but I don't think that's normal just to scan for files, is it? Is something wrong here?

If it helps, it's an 80GB hard drive, and the properties window in My Computer lists it as being RAW format.

You could use Microsoft Windows XP Recovery Console to fix either the MBR or MFT issue and "all data should be usable after the fix." Sorry I can't remember the command used to rebuild the MBR or MFT, however it's in the Recovery Console help. That's probably why Recuva is going to take forever to recover anything.

Instructions on how to install the XP Recovery Console are here.

I tried that to no avail.

Since windows keeps telling me that the disk is unformatted, if I were to format the disk to a blank state, would Recuva still be able to get the files off of it?

I only want to try formating it as an absolute last resort because I don't even know if that will work.

Before you format I suggest you get free downloads from

http://www.partitionwizard.com/

and also perhaps one of the free or paid versions on

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/power-data-recovery-compare-license-type.html

I have used PartitionWizard extensively for creating and altering partitions on my laptop.

When I lost all my partitions their free PartitionWizard Boot CD brought it back to life,

so now I trust their capabilities and have also downloaded powerdatarecovery (but not yet needed)

They also do Recovery Boot CD's, but the free version has demo limitations).

One day my laptop had no O.S.

My Acronis Boot CD saw no partitions - all gone.

I had backup images ready to restore for "essential" partitions, but nothing for my Work In Progress data partitions.

My PartitionWizard Boot CD saw the same empty HDD,

but it had a Partition Recovery Wizard that lived up to its name.

All partitions recovered.

All data accessible.

Did not Boot properly because I neglected to recover the Acronis Secure Zone which I never use.

Then I guessed Acronis had bodged my MBR to facilitate recovery (never needed since I bought an external drive), and the MBR required that zone before it would look for the System Drive.

PartitionWizard Boot CD had a "Rebuild MBR" wizard.

Perfect success - Booted up and into Windows.

I think all the NTFS partitions were perfect,

but on the first start-up Windows recommended CHKDSK for one of the FAT32 partitions,

and errors were found and fixed.

I guess the errors happened because FAT32 is not as robust as NTFS against partition destruction,

so assume the errors existed before the Boot CD ever saw the HDD.

Alan