Ed, et al, I did this and it works to some extent. I have a 3rd (clean) HDD and I kicked off recovery on the smaller of my two nuked ones last night using Ontrack's EasyRecovery Professional v6.0 (http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/). It is able to scan for partitions and recover files by looking at each sector checking for known file attributes (as well as many other features that I won't cover here to avoid sounding like an Ontrack ad). I recovered and successfully opened a couple of files so I know Ontrack's stuff works. I also know it's not a 100% recovery because some files wouldn't open.
It is worth noting that this software lets you try different methods of recovery without modifying a single byte on the damaged HDD which as most of you know is pretty damn important. It's also worth noting that every time I boot up with the good HDD that my BIOS warns me the boot sector is trying to be written to (yes this feature was off when I got nuked), so I don't think this method of extra HDD would work with a BIOS that doesn't offer boot sector protection. The software *does* allow creation of an EBD to run it off floppy, however. What's amazing is I had contacted two companies specializing in data recovery and they both told me "nope, we can get data back from almost everything else except that virus". This is one of those cases where knowing the underlying technology of how files are stored/accessed on a HDD paid off, as I was SURE you couldn't completely kill a 40GB HDD in 30 seconds (environmentals like speaker magnet's don't count!) because you can't possibly write to all the sectors in that amount of time. Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any questions. Film at 11. Dave "crash course in crash recovery" Lum - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Network Specialist - Textron Financial 503-675-5510 -----Original Message----- From: Ed Esgro [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 07:35 AM To: NT 2000 Discussions Subject: RE: [OT] Data recovery How about installing a second boot drive and try accessing infected drive as a slave? Or at least maybe you can run some utilities against it. I recall an old program called lost and found. Ed -----Original Message----- From: Lum, David [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 10:11 AM To: NT 2000 Discussions Subject: [OT] Data recovery Guys, I managed to nuke myself with an infected (OPASERV) bootable floppy in spite of A-V protection (long story). This virus has modified my partition information and possibly overwrote the first 8GB. System does not boot but I can get to BIOS. http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_OPASERV .R Has anyone used a recovery utility that won't create additional damage if it doesn't work? Recommend a data recovery service perhaps? Dave Lum - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Network Specialist - Textron Financial 503-675-5510 ------ You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp ------ You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
