I have an IDE drive which I use as a slave drive in my Pentium 4. This is with Windows XP. When I try to access the drive via Windows Explorer, I get the message that it is "corrupt and unreadable." Or, sometimes the error message is "The parameter is incorrect."

I tried "Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional" which was recommended to me. It seems to be able to search out and recover huge quantities of files based upon file type, but they get renamed with generic names. Many of the recovered files seem to not work (.AVI's won't play, .ZIPs are invalid and won't open, etc.) and I have no idea if what I'm trying to open is important or not anyway.

I then tried "Active Partition Recovery for Windows." With this one, when I click on the hard drive in question, I can see the list of folders on that hard drive. This leads me to believe that all is not totally lost. But, this software doesn't seem to let me see the files, or give me the option to fix the drive.

I would really like to find a tool or a method to fix this so that the folders and files are intact...if I can get in, I can then lifeboat the important stuff (PDF files, family pictures, documents) and get myself a new hard drive. I am generally technically literate, but not when it comes to hard drive structure, and I don't want to screw around and do things which may end up damaging my data even further. Any guidance on this?

Give it a go with the demo version of getdataback (ntfs) or rstudio. They are usually pretty reliable. I would definitely try to image the drive prior to hammering away at it with a bunch of different softwares

If you don't wish to cause any damage your first step should be to clone the drive. This is what the pros do first. Work on the clone and you should be fine to try whatever you like.

R-Studio is really a powerful data recovery software, it will work without scanning each sector of your drive. Just open the drive with R-Studio and you will see all the folder and files, copy them to other media (of course)...

Cloning/Imaging is very important ...

Have you investigate your system for virus ?

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RAID/Server Recovery

Thanks, the Getdataback was able to see the files! I bought an external HD and am in the process of moving everything over....