inquiry for data recovery

my friend requires help with data recovery. from what it sounds like its a pagefile related issue due to it detecting the drive but when he goes to open it, it wants him to format the drive.
he cannot afford to format the drive as it has 12yrs of business records backed up on it and irreplaceable family pictures (that he luckily backed up a few mths before his house caught fire while he was at work and his kids at school).
was wondering what data recovery software you guys recommend for this type of job? theres about 100GB of valuable data hanging in the balance and i dont want him unnecessarily blowing money on a data recovery service unless absolutely needed.
all help from you guys is greatly appreciated
Answer #1
FYI, This has nothing to do with the pagefile!
What you’re describing is a file system corruption, This is usually caused by a failing HDD, Virus or disconnecting the HDD without safely removing it first (If an external)
Your friend should get his HDD checked out with the following app in order to determine if it’s in good health:
http://www.google.com?t=14769892&start=0
Now before I answer the main question, I’m gonna point out a few basic facts about data recovery which you should be aware of:
1. Data is only recoverable til overwritten (Replaced by other data)
2. Due to #1, You cannot recover the data to the same HDD or Partition it was deleted/corrupted from! (As doing this will render it completely useless!)
So basically, If it’s doable, Your friend would gotta have another HDD (To recover the data to)
There is simply no way around it! Anyways, I recommend this data recovery app;
http://www.google.com?t=18461279
Have your friend do a long scan (And choose No when it asks if to search for deleted files) and if it manages to find his data (And he doesn’t have another HDD with enough capacity) then he’s just gonna have to shell out money for one in order to get the job done!
For your friend’s sake, I hope things will go well!
Set all that aside, You should really remind him that no HDD is bulletproof and that any of em can go bad at random (Which is why it’s important to maintain regular backup into an external HDD using a backup app, Online backup can also be used as an additional measure) Overall, Maintaining backup is significantly cheaper than professional data recovery, So it’s well worth it!
Answer #2
Roberto: i read on a few sites that it could be the pagefile, but not for sure…
thank you for the suggestion. gonna try this out for him in a few hours when i go over to see him
have a great finish to your weekend!
*hands u a beer*