[Hidden-tech] PC hard drive data recovery

[Chris Duncan, GISmatters]

The word "crashed" can cover a pretty broad range of scenarios, so I'm 
not really sure what you are up against. Perhaps it is your boot drive 
and you can no longer boot Windows? Perhaps it is an external drive 
and you can no longer "see" it? Perhaps the computer rather than the 
disk drive has suffered some breakdown? These and other scenarios may 
be far less catastrophic than they first appear.

I have often been able to recover data from disks by installing them 
in another enclosure or in an empty bay on an otherwise healthy and 
bootable PC - then, they can often be read directly (plus or minus 
some bad sectors), or repaired or salvaged with data recovery software 
such as GetDataBack (http://www.runtime.org/).  I'm no expert -- I 
found their software through Google, and they information and software 
they provide has been very helpful.

If you post further details of your problem, I or others may be able 
to provide more specific advice, but for now I'd say try pulling the 
disk and putting it in another PC or external disk enclosure to see if 
you can read it.

Good luck,

Chris

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> 
> I have a PC that crashed but have critical information on the hard drive 
> which I think can be recovered.  Does anyone know of an experienced 
> technician who might be able to do this on an emergency basis, ie: 
> tomorrow?
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-- 

Chris Duncan, Ph.D.
President
GISmatters

duncan at GISmatters.com
http://www.gismatters.com/

1 Tuckerman Ln
Amherst, MA 01002

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