Recover bad sectors?

[DaiShan]

Hey guys I've been searching all day for a free-ware app to recover some bad sectors on a hard drive, but I've come up empty. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[EagleKeeper]

If a sector is bad, why do you want to use it. Even if it can be re-used, there is the good chance that it will act up when you least can afford it.

Most manufacturers used to have utilities that could attempt to recover questionable sectors.

Check their sites first

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
If a sector is bad, why do you want to use it. Even if it can be re-used, there is the good chance that it will act up when you least can afford it.

Most manufacturers used to have utilities that could attempt to recover questionable sectors.

Check their sites first

It's a laptop I'm doing some data recovery on, the drive is unmountable at present, and since I'm doing a freebie, I don't really want to shell out the cash

 

[Looney]

If it's unmountable, then the problem isn't just bad sectors. Looks like the MBR is bad or bad disk geometry (incorrectly reading heads, sectors, etc)

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: Looney
If it's unmountable, then the problem isn't just bad sectors. Looks like the MBR is bad or bad disk geometry (incorrectly reading heads, sectors, etc)

*sigh* Please stay on topic guys. Yes, I know the drive is on its way out, I'm NOT looking to put this drive back into service, I just need to recover the bad sectors to grab as much data off as possible before it goes under. I'm really just looking for a free alternative to spinrite, as I've used it fairly extensively on my current client contract, but they own the license, and the computer that I'm working does not belong to them.

 

[Looney]

Have you tried the tools in Ultimate BootCD?

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: Looney
Have you tried the tools in Ultimate BootCD?

I have not, thank you very much. I booted with Knoppix and ran some of the NTFS utils such as ntfsfix, but it was of no help. chkdsk /R from the recovery console also was of no help. I found a decent program called hddregeneration and it has been recovering sectors for me, but the demo version will only recover one sector at a time!

 

[Nothinman]

ntfsfix is just to help the filesystem recover from known damages provided by the Linux NTFS driver, it's not chkfsk or fsck equivalent. If it was me, I'd probably just use something like dd_rescue to copy as much data as possible and count the unreadable sectors as casualties.

 

[camara120]

You could try HDD Regenerator. The trial only lets you fix one bad sector each time you boot up with it, but at least you could see if it will work or not.

The site also says theres a 30 day money back guarantee if you buy it and dont like it.

 

[mzkhadir]

if the hard drive is not mountable. I would try slaving it if possible.