retrieving data off reformatted drive

I have a hard drive that is acting weird. The PC knows it's there, but no properties and no access. I did the Seagate/Maxtor utilities test. It fails the long test, says it has gotten to 235degF or so, don't remember exactly. There are some recent pictures, that aren't backed up, that I need to get off of it.

I have been told that reformatting is the only way to revive it, and that you can still retrieve the data. I was told you could actually reformat up to 16 times and still retrieve that data.

Anybody know if this is true? Anybody have a better safer way to kick start this drive? Windows XP in a Compaq pentium III 700Mhz.

 

A quick format will not destroy the data on your drive. It just changes sector 0 so that it looks like there is nothing there. Once you write to the drive, the new data will overwrite the old non-seen data.

If you do a thorough format, all data will be lost as all tracks and sectors will be formatted.

 

Did you try to connect this drive as a slave in another computer running XP.

I have recovered data several times when my os went South.

 

Check for damaged partitions as well. Did you try run a chkdsk (if you can get a drive letter assigned to it)?

 

It's there, as E: drive. Just no proberties, can't access it. I'll try chkdsk, but not sure it will see it.

 

Whatever you do, don't format it as rbwest suggested. No sense making matters worse.

 

I didn't take what he said as a 'suggestion' for quickformat it, rather just an explanation. But agreed; do NOT format this drive. Do not run the thing any more than you have to. (Do not run long-running diagnostics "just to see".)

If Windows will refuse to recognize it you may have limited luck hooking it up to a linux box (and going through all the associated fuss FAT32-filesystem-wise). I have had to do that before and had some success.

Any strange noises coming from the drive? If the thing is _physically_ failing you could try the freezer trick, etc.

 

I've had situations where the power connection wasn't good. Either by a loose wire or connector in the Molex plug, to a bad solder joint on the drive circuit board. Check those out. Try squeezing the plug connectors slightly.

 

You are correct. It wasn't a suggestion. Just pointed out the facts of formatting and as other posters pointed out, do not format.

You could make it a slave drive as another poster said, and run a data recovery program. I did a search and found one site. There are many others that may suit you. Here is one.

http://www.datadoctor.in/