I didn't mean to do it. I dropped a printer on top of my computer and
it was happily computing at the time . I Have tried all I know which
is a bit but it seems the disk has about 30 bad sectors on it now
according to Disk Dr. It was running Windows 98. Somehow I got it into
safe mode..then lost it. I will buy a new one with Home XP. Much info
on the deceased I would like back. No..need back. Photos..e-mail
addresses and a few programs I no longer have disks for etc.


So my questions are:

I had Norton on it..does that help in the cause of trying to get a
last statement out of it?

If the info can be transfered is it best to have the drive installed
on the new computer to pull onto the new drive? Best way to go here...

You get the picture I'm sure. Please hurry. A wife and two boys
without e-mail may cause a real homicide..already I have to print
their e-mails at work and bring home..not to mention the having to
actually talk to each other with our lips...

---

Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 22 Sep 2004 17:07 PDT

Have you tried putting the hard drive into another machine as a slave?

SpinRite from grc.com is great at recovering data from damaged drives.
 You have to buy it, though, and it can take considerable time on a
large drive...Good luck

Norton won't help with anything unfortuneately.

Since it seems as though your drive may be damaged, don't bother
paying to have it installed on another machine.  I'd take you computer
into a Best Buy store and pay the $89 for the data back up service. 
They can only get information if the drive is able to read it.   They
will then burn it to a DVD for you.

-method

try http://www.stellarinfo.com/.  that is the most trusted serive.   
they will run a FREE test on ur HDD and let you know wether the data
can be retirved.  if yes, you will have to pay( noting comes free in
this world)
all the best

My advice would be to put the drive into another working system and
see what you can recover directly that way.  (You may need to rejumper
the drive to act as a slave rather than master).  If the partition
tables and FAT are allright you can probably just copy most of your
data directly off the unit.  If you have acces to a CD burner, you
could burn the data onto that.  Then replace the old drive with a new
working one.