I dont see that the fault you have had should have caused irretrievable damage to your hard disc to the extent that the "normal suspect" disc repair tools would be useless; so I'd get hold of Norton Utilities (part of Symantec Systemworks) or suchlike, load that onto a host machine and then install your hard disc as a secondary drive on the host machine and see what NU can find and retrieve.

The specialist agencies charge lots because if the internal hard disc driver card has gone a.w.o.l. they could be "mix and matching" hard disc internal components in a clean room in order to create a drive unit that can then be analysed.

Tony,
Your files are probably still there - it's just that you can't access them. There is a good possibility that your Master Boot Record has been mangled (MBR). Don't do anything foolish like reformatting, ETC because you then lose everything for sure.
go to www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-07-17.htm
and follow the directions to rebuild the MBR.
Since your computer wont boot, you will have to get someone else with a working computer to make a DOS boot disk for you.
Good luck,
Walt

[This message has been edited by Walt Meyer (edited 06-24-2005).]

I was told by a tech that the drive was reading at the time of the power outage and that the reader head must have touched the disc surface and destroyed the boot section
because it can't be read by any of the tools that we have tried including the Maxtor recover disc from the manufactuer... I have pulled the disc and installed it into
other computers as a main and as a slave and
iy can't be read by any means so far...in order to use the file recovery prograns mentioned above, they must first be downloaded into the hard drive and the drive can't be read..not as a slave drive or a main drive.....I am open to all ideas
and will try anything.....thank you to all..
Tony Rome

Walt...thank you for the link, that is what they say the MBR isd destroyed...NOW, where
do I find or download the FDISK program so I can try it..thanks again....
Tony Rome

Tony, check your Email.
Walt

Thanks Walt....I tried it all and so far nothing works...still open for new ideas...
Tony Rome

Tony, for Fdisk /MBR to work, it has to be a DOS boot and the system files and the Fdisk version all have to be compatible, preferably DOS 6.22 Also, only one hard drive can be present (the one with the problem).
Check your Email - I've sent a file that will create a DOS 6.22 boot floppy when it is run.
This is very easy so give it another try - you have nothing to lose.
Walt

I have used a Live Linux CD to access and recover a number of HDD's data in the last few months. Mepis and Slax are good, they run from the CD. You place the CD in your CD drive and reboot. If all the hardware is found, 9 times out of 10 it will see the files on the hard drive (NTFS or Fat32). XP/2000 is a little bit of a pain, but it is still possible to recover data. Since you have a 2nd HDD all you would have to do is copy the files you want to the 2nd drive, then nuke in pave the original HDD. The Linux interface is a GUI, so if you can use Win. you can use these versions of Linux.

Can you here the drive spinning up? And when you plug the drive in what is the error, i.e.. "No OS Found", "Invalid System Disk",etc, or does the system just try to start then reboot?

My niece had some kind of hatred for Linux, didn't want it around her system, yada yada......until she trashed her system and didn't have any backups....I saved around 89% of her files, so now I don't get yelled at to much any more! This is just a thought..............

Tony, sorry to hear about your recent computer woes. Unfortunately I don't have anything to offer in solving the problem, but trust that you'll have it resolved (with the help of the resident computer experts here) soon. - Scott

Hi, Tony!

Sorry to hear about your HDD trouble. Well, if so many help here didn't work for you then my little idea won't help you anyway, I'm afraid.

If the MBR is defect then you'll have to recover it with fdisk /mbr in DOS mode (like Walt told you). It could work for you to re-install Windows again because the Windows installer will try to repair your resident Windows without formatting the HDD or overwriting any datas.

You've mentioned a very good way - installing a new HDD with Windows and then connect your defect drive as a second drive. If the partition information is still there then it should be possible to read and copy your whole datas. Don't get panic as long as it's nothing lost!

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)