Series of power failure killed 1 HD...

I need some advice. I had a strange reoccurring power failure that most likely scrambled the partition table of one hard drive. Windows XP sees the hard drive but I can't explore it because it shows up as unformatted.

I tried a few free diagnostic tools and they were able to find the files on the hard drive but they are being extra stingy about file recovery. One won't do anything if the file is not any picture format (bmp, jpg, tiff, etc, was meant for memory card recovery) and another is allowing only 1 file recovery per day and what I'm getting back so far, I don't think that company will get the $60 for full version upgrade. I mean what's the point of file recovery if it "recovers" a 50MB MPG file that looks like a bunch of multicolored squares, no image at all.

I have probably close to 100 files that weren't backed up recently that I'd like to recover before I reformat and test the hard drive. Can any of you point me to a recovery program that will recover any type of files and will accurately show if it's fully recoverable, partial, or unrecoverable? Preferably a free or a decent and working try-before-you-buy programs?

After some more dead ends, I got Handy Recovery 3.0. (http://www.handyrecovery.com/) It is available as trial for 1 month, limit 1 recovered file a day but I got around that 1 a day limit by advancing the PC clock a whole day.

After recovering a few files, the result was very good that I went and bought the full version.

One nice thing about Handy Recovery is you can save a session for later time so you can go right to file recovery when you remembered one more file to salvage and not spend time scanning the hard drive each time the program's restarted.

With the unlocked version, I could select and grab multiple files in one go. The only complaint is the program can't save recovered files to networked drive, only to local drives. I had to move some files off my D drive to make room for recovered files.

As far as I can tell, the C and D drive were unaffected, only the E drive got blown up. (F drive is a dvd burner)

Considering I'm a tad pressed for space, I probably should get a new hard drive in the 750GB range and take out the old 200GB drive. If I multi-partition the 750 drive, would that prevent a wide spread corruption by limiting damage to one partition or would a trashed directory affect all partition on the drive?

IMHO if you would get a hdd and partition it and you had the same stuff happen... it would more than likely mess up the entire disk

Oh well guess it won't matter how I partitioned the new drive.

I've salvaged everything I needed and then tried to reformat it. 1% in one hour is bad for 200GB. So I chopped it to 4 partitions. the first partition is still appallingly slow to format. I don't know how many physical heads inside the 200GB hard drive but I would think one head is blown or something if the other partitions are formatting at normal pace.

WD diagnostic tool was spitting a lot of SMART error message before I did the reformat, and nothing changed afterward. the worst value for Raw Read Error Rate was listed at 1 and MultiZone Error Rate at 1. Also the drive when viewed is supposed to have 50GB partition but I was getting 30 to 40 GB each with the rest mapped out due to bad sectors.

Defiantly time to put "a new hard drive" on my shopping list. And if I can get a hold of certain someone, this POS will be going sky high in pieces.

Took the drive apart. Found 3 platters and 6 heads. One platter had a very noticeable concentric circle of gouged near the center. If that is where the MBR was stored, no wonder the drive crapped out as badly as this one did. Defiantly not safe to reuse.

Going to see if I can get this hard drive added to hardware destro thread. =)

During a routine backup of important files on drive C, Nero bombed and spit out a coaster. Turns out that I had some corrupt files on C as well. The drive C is used fore Windows and apps and has been in near continuous use since I got it. Date of mfg shows June 2000 so it is almost 7 years old, an impressive feat for most "cheap" hard drive to last so long without any problem.

I am now suspicious of my D drive's health. Drive D is also 200GB WD, same as my now defunct drive E and its mfg date is only 1 month apart.

Change the "a new hard drive" on my shopping list to "TWO hard drives" Now I need to work on transferring everything of value to DVD burners and find a way to get a few hundred dollars for new drives. Any suggestion for brand that I can get at B&M stores? I prefer local stores so I can return for exchange if there are problems. My PC can only do PATA drive, no SATA support onboard and unless it's that big a deal, I'd rather not buy SATA board and fuddle around the BIOS to make SATA a primary boot drive.