[Thinkpad] File-recovery programs [was: problems with C: drive]

Hello all,

About 10 minutes after my last post (where the PCI File Recovery program had slowed to a crawl) it picked up again. Perhaps my theory of bad sectors was right.

Anyway, after another 90 minutes it presented me with a list, but for some reason all it was showing was folders (and some files) directly under "root" and nothing else. Maybe I just didn't know how to use it but I couldn't see any way to look deeper, despite it telling me there were >8000 files found.

I was going to try File Scavenger's deep scan but instead downloaded and ran OnTrack's ERDR trial version. It went away for about 2 hours and came back with lots of files. :) Many look quite recent, though of course I can't be certain how much I lost. And it doesn't quote a total size of files found, which would give me an idea based on lacking ~40Gb. Even with the "G" (good) filter being the only one showing, there's still a lot.

The Trial version doesn't let me recover. The Lite version ($95) will only recover 25 files at a time. The Full version ($199) will presumably recover them all.

Before I shell out $199 (and my data is worth that much, yes), does anyone have experience with the applications I've mentioned (File Scavenger, PC Inspector File Recovery [which is free], Win_Undelete, OnTrack ERDR) or another that works well and either costs less or is better than OT/ERDR?

I guess my next task is to get the notebook fixed, I tried running a couple of memory tests including the ones in PC Doctor, and inevitably the screen either goes blank or funny and the computer locks up. Since there's no HD in there (booted from CD) and no external SODIMM (removed it), this is a warranty issue.

If I can get all the data off the HD tomorrow, I wouldn't have to worry about them damaging it during service, but I'm not sure I want to take it in with all that data on it. At the same time I don't know if I have the original IBM release of WinXP it came with, I may have re-loaded at some point with another licensed copy. I can't do it while the RAM is bad anyway.

Thanks for all the advice so far, and for any more you have going forward!
=aw
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Received on Sat Jan 20 20:52:42 2007