[Ham-Computers] Using GetBackData

[Jim Hill]

I have a few questions about GetBackData, which 
Aaron Hsu recommended to recover contents of 
damaged drives.  See the July 15 2008 post “RE: Flash card drive failure help”.

A little background info.
I had a USB flash drive failure while 
consolidating and removing duplicates from a few 
Excel files and a huge number of Word files in 
many folders.  The files were on three computers, 
and the flash drive was a convenient place to 
keep them. It wasn’t a total failure, as damage 
was only to some individual files, with the more 
recent files more likely to be damaged. The tree 
can be seen and the individual files 
accessed.  The flash drive seems to be stable in 
its current condition, but I copied everything to 
another drive and used the Word repair programs on the copy (see below):

There are many Word and Excel repair programs, 
and I tried the demo versions of some of 
them.  It was a slow process, and no single 
program fixed problems on all files I attempted 
to repair.  Word tables were a particular 
problem.  Data could be retrieved, but the table structure was missing.

GetBackData seemed to be a good choice, as I 
could use one application at the price of a less 
expensive Word repair program, and hopefully not 
need to access each file individually.

I downloaded the Demo version of GetBackData for 
FAT32 (NTFS files require a separate app), and 
ran it.  Interestingly, it listed two file systems for an 8 GB flash drive.

FAT32 starting at sector 30,712, cluster size 8 (7.49GB)
FAT32 starting at sector 30,758, cluster size 8 (7.49GB)

I selected the top listing and a directory tree 
was displayed, but when I used F3 to view a Word 
file, an exception warning appeared and GetBackData shut down.

I’ll try again, but have questions about Aaron’s 
suggestion to back up the drive and recover from 
the backup.  What approach should be used? I 
could use something like Norton Ghost or Drive 
Image to back up to a logical drive, then recover 
to a different USB drive.  Just copying some of 
the files to another drive would be much easier – 
I used this approach when using the Word repair 
app’s.   I thought GetBackData might have a backup option, but did not see one.

The flash drive is a PNY Attache 8 GB USB.  I'm 
sure it's not one of Aarons recommended drives, 
but I purchased it while on a driving trip to 
Alaska and NW Canada.  I had dropped my laptop; 
it was starting to act strangely, and wanted to 
recover my photo images before it was too 
late.  It was the largest drive I could find.  In 
retrospect, I should have just purchased more 
flash cards and used the computer as a backup.

Thanks, Jim