Any recommendations for data recovery?

[Bert Latamore]

Can anyone recommend a data recovery tool for Windows XP? Do to an as yet unidentified glitch in iTunes, my iTunes library, several GB of music, has disappeared from my attached SATA drive. I am sure it is still there as I looked at it through WIndows Explorer just before opening iTunes and it was right there. Then iTunes gave me an error message that the library was on a "locked drive or one you do not have write access for", and it disappeared. Rather than rebuilding it, I would prefer if possible to recover it, which will take less time and be more likely to get the entire thing. I have shut the Sata drive down in the menatime (disconnecting it from both power and the computer) to avoid having anything overwrite any of the data.

Thanks,

--
Bert Latamore
IT Industry Freelance Writer
ComputerWorld Online blogger

[Ian Barton]

You might want to try the ddrescue live cd from
http://sysresccd.org/Main_Page

You can then use ddrescue itself to recover the data onto another drive.
Here is a page about ddrescue itself:

http://debaday.debian.net/2007/12/12/gddrescue-a-tool-for-recovering-data-from-damaged-media/

The other thing that you can try first is to make an image of the entire
partition onto another disk. You can do this using a Knoppix live CD and
partimage. In fact Knoppix probably also has ddrescue.

If the drive isn't actually damaged you can then work on the copied
image to try and fix things. That way you if you mess up, you still have
the original drive and all its data intact.

Ian.

[Bert Latamore]

Thanks, Ian!

[Bert Latamore]

So I reconnected the SATA drive to my desktop computer this afternoon, and the computer told me the entire drive was empty. That didn't make any sense at all since besides our music libraries it contains the backup of our C drive on that computer and other old data that I wanted to archive.

So I disconnected the SATA and brought it into my office to connect it to my T42. And what do you know, everything was on the SATA, including both our music libraries. That is a huge relief as it would take weeks to reconstruct that 35 GB of music.

Since we own three SATAs (Moire got a little over -enthusiastic in ordering them last year) I am now copying the music libraries to the disk I normally keep connected to my T42. When I finish that I may also make backup copies to thethird SATA, which we don't use much.

Then we are going to take the desktop computer apart. We want to clean it out of dust and physical bugs, whatever. And I suspect that the problem is the USB port, so I am going to replace the USB card. Then we will see what we get.

So Ian, thanks for the help. And if anyone has any suggestions, I will be very glad for them. But it now looks like my latest adventure with the gadgets will work out okay.

Bert

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Ian Barton <li...@manor-farm.org> wrote: