mykkul Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Hi, I have my backup drive installed under Vista. Everything is working great, and I decide to try out Defraggler. So I run it, and it hung up after 68 percent...now, the drive was half full before Defragging...and now its unreadable. Vista 64 won't recognize the drive, XP won't recognize the drive...they want me to format it. There is some very needed data on the drive, so I really need to access it. What happened? I have no viruses, but something must have happened to the boot sector...and I can't afford 50 bucks for a program that recovers any of the data. I have years of writing and while I have some of the info backed up, not all of it is. How can I get my stuff back? The drive is a Western Digital drive, and 99 percent SMART status...a few of the so called shareware programs read the "lost" data, but want 50 bucks to get the key to recover it. Surely there has to be another way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators DennisD Posted June 13, 2009 Moderators Share Posted June 13, 2009 There may be some input from some of the other guys about what can be done with the drive, but in the meantime, try using Recuva, another free Piriform product. I don't want to give you wrong info, so I hope this helps for now. Recuva. Recuva Tutorial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykkul Posted June 13, 2009 Author Share Posted June 13, 2009 Thanks for the reply. Recuva doesn't recognize the drive...it says unable to read boot sector. So I can only imagine something happened while defragging that corrupted the boot sector...after doing some googling, there seems to be all sorts of software that rewrites a boot sector, but they all cost more than I can afford or involve far more technical knowledge than I possess. You would think by now Vista would be able to do such a thing, and perhaps it can, but I don't know how. Trying to populate or mount the drive under the Admin tools yields no results...Windows just asks me to format the drive, which of course, would wipe out all the data. A few other shareware programs can "see" the data, but they want 50 bucks or more to save it...which again doesn't help me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators DennisD Posted June 13, 2009 Moderators Share Posted June 13, 2009 You don't need to spend money as far as I can see. I don't have Vista, but maybe these links will be helpful. http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/bootsectexe-...or-not-the-mbr/ http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 Both freeware. And hopefully our more technically minded guys may have some positive suggestions for you. EDIT: This info is way down the page of EasyBCD. (Second Link) Automated MBR and BCD backups, boot sector restore kits, support for a dozen+ operating systems, detailed configuration of all boot entries, and award-winning guaranteed technical support is what makes EasyBCD stand out - all for free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykkul Posted June 16, 2009 Author Share Posted June 16, 2009 Thanks, the software kinda worked, but not fully. It did rewrite the boot sector, but Vista still won't recognize the drive without reformatting, and neither will XP. HOWEVER...it did make the drive recognizable to Recuva, which is good...it allowed me to finesse the majority of the important documents off the hard drive, so I won't lose anything majorly important. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators DennisD Posted June 16, 2009 Moderators Share Posted June 16, 2009 Thanks for posting back mykkul. Sorry I couldn't be of more help with the drive recognition problem, but I'm happy you can get at your stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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