[Ham-Computers] Using GetBackData

[Jim Hill]

Forgot some details: I'm running a Dell 4600, a 3 
GHz P4 with Win XP Pro, v2002 SP2 with current updates, and 1G of RAM.

At 11:27 AM 7/27/2008, you wrote:
>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
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