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My old 13 gig Maxtor Hdd crashed. Scandisk shows 8 bad clusters.

Installed new 30 gig Maxtor Hdd and got it setup and running with W98se.

Set new 30 gig drive as master and old 13 gig as slave in bios.

30 gig has jumper for master and 13 has no jumper for slave.

Right click My Computer, click properties, then Device Manager.

Disk Drives show both drives as "Generic IDE Disk Type 46"

Clicked on first drive and went to settings, shows letter "C"

Clicked on second drive and went to settings and it does not show a letter.

Hooked slave up as master and used boot floppy to start. At one time it said FAT32 was not reconized. Tried to Fdisk, but I think I did it wrong as now it says I must format and if I format I WILL lose any hope of retriving files.

What can I do to open slave to try and save 3 1/2 years of genealogy files?

Thanks for any advice.

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A few ?'s and a bit of clarification for you.

First, refomatting does NOT remove any data, it has to be overwritten to be truly lost.

Think of it as a filing cabinet full of folders, and in the folders are a bunch of specific files. To find the files you need, the folders must have a tab that shows whats inside of it A-H I-L...etc.

Reformatting only removes the folder tab which essentially tells the OS that it's empty and ok to rewrite into it. In reality the files are still intact until the OS chooses to write over top of them, then they are gone.

So, by reformatting that drive and as long as you do NOT reinstall an OS on it, most of the files that are on it are recoverable using a good Data Recovery program.

Data recovery MUST be run from a different partition/drive other than the one you're trying to recover from or data corruption may result. The truly good programs are not free but thats why they're the best.

My recommendations (in order):

GetDataBack

R-Studio

LC Technology

Or try the free one - PC Inspector

Dave

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A few ?'s and a bit of clarification for you.

First, refomatting does NOT remove any data, it has to be overwritten to be truly lost.

Think of it as a filing cabinet full of folders, and in the folders are a bunch of specific files. To find the files you need, the folders must have a tab that shows whats inside of it A-H I-L...etc.

Reformatting only removes the folder tab which essentially tells the OS that it's empty and ok to rewrite into it. In reality the files are still intact until the OS chooses to write over top of them, then they are gone.

So, by reformatting that drive and as long as you do NOT reinstall an OS on it, most of the files that are on it are recoverable using a good Data Recovery program.

Data recovery MUST be run from a different partition/drive other than the one you're trying to recover from or data corruption may result. The truly good programs are not free but thats why they're the best.

My recommendations (in order):

GetDataBack

R-Studio

LC Technology

Or try the free one - PC Inspector

Dave

Thanks Dave,

This is my first time doing this. So far, I think I have done good considering that when I installed W98se on the 30 gig, my cable modem went bad and I reinstalled W98se several times before I figured out what was wrong. Then the next day my router gave me problems as I was installing drivers making me think I had done something wrong. Then one stick of memory went bad. But I got the 30 gig up and running and now I am trying to work on the 13 gig.

So, as I read what you have said, I need to go ahead and format the 13 gig and then "do not" install the OS.

Then, because of very limited funds meaning free is all I can afford, I will install PCInspector to the 30 gig master drive. I will use the one to recover files. Correct?

Is there anything else I should do or know?

I know this is probably very simple, but as I said this is my first time, but I am taking my time and learning.

Thanks

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Thanks Chappy,

PC Inspector show the folders for "My Documents" is there with everything still in it and "My Program Files" folder is still there with everything in it. I do have some lost files. But the ones I want still show.

Now how do I transfer them to the master drive?

Sorry to be so dumb about this

O.K.

I have transfered my files to the new 30 gig HDD. So far I have found only two very minor files that need to be replaced. I am running a scan for lost files now.

It's late and I am going to bed.

Thanks for helping me Chappy.

Edited by tman70
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Glad to be of help tman!

Good luck with that recovery, it sounds like almost all your data can be retrieved. If you have any more questions just ask.

Dave

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Chappy,

I have noticed that some of my pictures can be viewed by just clicking on them and others won't open at all. I've installed the photo program, but not sure how to get the file in it. I pulled the Gen. file from the C drive and installed it in the Genealogy program and it looks like all the information is still intact. But where I had pictures of the people next to their names are not there.

I'm still trying to figure out how this Pc Inspector works. So any advice on it and how to transfer the files would be appreciated.

Thanks

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