Backup and Restore Files from Corrupt Drive

Hard drive corrupted and file and folders were also not backed up. What to do in this situation?

This situation makes you realize the importance of taking backups thus saving your data. If you have little bit knowledge of computers then you yourself can backup and recover data from the corrupt hard drives.

Here I will discuss the process which I followed while trying to recover data from corrupt drive of Windows 2000.

The first step to take in this situation is to try and repair the hard drive using Scan Disk (Windows 95, 98, ME users) or CHDSK (Windows 2000/NT/XP users). CHKDSK on Windows 2000 executes automatically every time Windows is booted if errors are detected on drive.

In my case after running the CHKDSK, I was unable to shut down and the hard drive would reboot itself. My data and files were not backed up, at this point of time I was only thinking to get my back my files and was expecting that hard drive could boot up so that I can copy my files.

The last hope was to reinstall the OS again but if I would have installed Windows again after formatting the corrupt drive, the important files saved on the corrupt drive were gone. I then decided to install Windows OS on a new hdd after formatting it. I attached the new drive as Master and bad drive as Slave to copy my important files.

An important thing to be noted here is that one should never ever attempt to write to a hard drive which is corrupt. This also means that a virus scan should also be avoided to correct the infected files as this could lead to more data corruptions. Here, first priority becomes to backup data before trying to attempt anything on corrupt drive.

Now back to perform backup and data recovery. I ran Scandisk and corrected the FAT table on bad drive. I corrected the FAT table because if it is incorrect, it allows overwriting of existing data on bad drive.

After fixing the FAT table, I ran the virus scan for any kind of virus definition. After this I copied my important files to the new hard disk drive.

Were all files Safe?

This depends on the type and majority of corruption happened to the drive. If the drive is badly corrupt then it might become difficult to copy file(s). In some severe hard drive corruptions, you may also need to copy each file and paste to the destination.

The Repair Process

As the backup of files was complete, I booted my corrupt hard drive with virus free and write protected Floppy and used DOS utility – FDISK to format the corrupt drive. FDISK facility automatically checks for surface errors. The best thing to know about your hardware is the FDISK check. If there would have been any hardware failure, bad sectors; the operation wouldn’t have been completed.

FDISK was complete and I formatted my corrupt drive. But what if, it was not complete? Then I would have to go for disk recovery software. The data recovery software available in market is efficient enough to recover your data back.

But, I was able to repair hard drive and could get back my files. I then installed Windows 2000 and copied my important files back to my old drive. For a matter of precaution, I did not delete the copy of my files from the new drive until it was sure that everything was copied.

Alas, at last my data was safe, but wondered what would have been the situation if I was not able to repair my hard drive. There are many computer data recovery software which help you to recover data from the failed, damaged, corrupt hard drives but prevention is cure!!!!

Always backup your important data to be on a safer side. I learnt this when my hard drive became corrupt.