data recovery from crashed hard drive

Crashed is the operative word here. That can mean many things. It could be very easy to recover the data or it could be impossible. Does the hard drive make the normal noises? Is it spinning up? Is it showing up in Windows at all? If it wont boot what message is shown?

Hi Greg,
it makes the normal hard rive noise and it shows the first Windows boot-up screen but then goes into a black screen than a blue screen that gives and error message regarding the missing or corrupt system32 driver. I went into diagnostics and it gave me an error message for the hard drive. I went into setup and tried to fix what is missing with the reinstall cd of the os. That didn't work. Then I tried to boot up from the cd using the boot-up menue. That didn't work either and now it doesn't give me the first windows screen anymore but still the hard drive is making the usual noise and the control light is periodically blinking as usual. At this point the message after boot-up reads:

"windows could not start because the following file is missing or currupt: system32\drivers\ntfs.sys

you can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original startup cd-rom.
select 'r'at the first screen to start repair."

So I put in the windows xp cd and nothing happens, there is no first screen and when I hit enter it reboots going back to the same message. If I hit 'r' it reboots again and then gives me a black screen at first and then the same message as mentioned above.
I also tried to reinstall the missing driver from the drivers cd but that didn't work.

I'm not sure what else I could try to recover the system and the files I need from this hard drive. Do you have any idea what I could do now?
Thanks for any suggestion.
Brigitte

Solarcat,

Based on your description, you may simply have some corrupt/missing files in your system32 directory. This can be the result of a virus, bad sectors, etc.

Here's what you can do…get another computer and mount the "bad" hard drive in it as a slave…you know, like a second hard drive. Make sure you set the jumper settings on the hard drive appropriately. Take a look at the label on the hard drive, as you'll want to use 'slave' or 'auto-detect'. Once you boot the system using the hard drive already in it, you should see the 'bad' drive as a second drive, like D:\. If things are working fine at this point, your husband can copy the data off of the system and then wipe the 'bad' drive.

Whatever you do, do not simply throw out or give away the drive when you're done. Wipe it first, or destroy it…

H. Carvey
"Windows Forensics and Incident Recovery"
http://www.windows-ir.com
http://windowsir.blogspot.com

Check your bios, it doesn't sound like your cd drive is in the boot order. Make sure the cd is in the boot order before the hard drive. Then you should be able to access the repair console. Although Harlan's idea will work fine as well.

Thank you Harlan and Greg,
I will try your suggestions today and report back with the results.
Hugs, Brigitte

I do quite a bit of data recovery work and would be happy to try to recover what you need from the drive as a courtesy to you from being on this board. All that I ask is that you would send another hard drive to put the data on, or CD's, and the shipping back to you.

Best wishes,

Darren

You can always download a free copy of NTFS DOS, which allows you to boot an XP or NTFS disk from a floppy. Once booted you should be able to read the original hard drive.

http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm

Darren,
thank you so much for your generous offer. By the time I read your reply I had already taken the laptop to CompUSA and they recovered the files. I was much to frustrated to try another attempt to recover the files myself. Yesterday I picked up the reformatted hard drive and last night I installed all the applications and recovered files my husband needs and he is now on his way to his assignment. Talking about a close call here ……
But again, thank you so very much. Next time I will email you directly.
Hugs,
Brigitte

Thanks craiginusa, I downloaded a copy and will keep it around, just in case.
Hugs too ….

Brigitte