PC Laptop - want to salvage files

[InTheSand]

Hi,

A few others to look at are -

RIP Linux (RIP = recovery is possible) - has support for NTFS, FAT, FAT32, etc: http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip

SystemRescueCD - also has support for NTFS and FAT, as well as USB drives: http://www.sysresccd.org

BG-Rescue Linux (only 2Mb!) - minimal Linux system with useful tools: http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~giannone/rescue/current


Although SystemRescueCD is old, I'd be inclined to use this to start with as you can boot from the CD, plug in a USB key/drive, then use the included "PartImage" to make a copy of the hard drive partition where you can then transfer it elsewhere to attempt data recovery.

Given you've stated that the laptop now boots into part of Windows 98's setup, that means the drive is now FAT or FAT32, so if the drive has accidentally been reformatted from NTFS, the free tools may not be able to salvage anything...


As Orange states above, I'd also avoid anything at this stage that makes any changes to the hard drive's configuration or data content.


It might also be worth taking a look at commercial data recovery applications (e.g. http://diskinternals.com/ntfs-recovery) but I don't know how successful these are.


Ultimately, and depending on the value of the data / photos, etc, you will probably be able to send the drive off to a data recovery specialist but expect to pay lots if you do.


Good luck!

 - Ali