Lost datas.

[MnM]

hello guys , Actually I my father is in a big trouble. his system has been corrupted or maybe his hard disk has been damaged so that all the datas he has storde for the past five years has vanished. I want to know how to retrieve it back. Few people have tried to get those back but in vain. Only few datas could be retrieved . System restore was also tried.. Any Ideas u guys?

[Alectric]

Ah, the ol' hardrive screw.
My suggestion:
If you have a spare external hardrive lying around, swap the external one for the corrupted one, and then plug it into a different computer and see if you can retrieve the files through that way.
If you cant, then you may have to do a system repair, which can be done by inserting the windows disc into the computer on startup and getting it to boot of the disc, and see if it gives you an option to do a system restore. (googling that would be more helpful that me right now ;P )

Hope this helps, many a times i've had a computer malfunction that i've needed to retrieve files off a near-dead hardrive. Good luck!

[Silverthorn]

That HD can be bugged in two ways.

Easy problem: only the MBR is broken; means: all your files are still uncorrupted on the HD, just the index went suicidal. There is some software allowing you to retrieve data. Helped me when my computer crashed like 8 years-ish ago. Don't remember what I used, though.

Hard problem: actual files are corrupted. Those will most likely be lost -- you can still try to recover the others.

Either way, I guess you guys should start creating backups once or twice a year to avoid crashes to that extent. Considering that external HDs are fairly cheap, this would be recommendable in the future.

Hope you get it sorted.