best free harddrive recovery software?

[sam111]

I am looking to recover the most data possible for a damage harddrive.

I would like to get most of the pictures and music i had on this harddrive.

It is an ntfs file system and I did a check disk chkdisk command on it and I got alot of the sectors saying either unreachable or corrupt.

I am wondering if their is still away to recover some files.
Using some sort of software.

The only catch is that it has to be free downloadable software.

I am wondering what your suggestions for the best free software would be?
I have tried fcsk , dd in linux but those don't really work very well even conv=notrunc,noerror ...etc
Currently I am in microsoft os but I can switch over to a linux os if the software is specific to a certain os.

[oz]

Hello

Take a look at TestDisk and PhotoRec to see if they might help:

TestDisk - CGSecurity

You can find instructions for using them on their website, and both apps are available on the Parted Magic LiveCD:

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=news


Foremost might be another workable recovery option:

http://foremost.sourceforge.net/

[Haze]

Hi

PhotoRec and would be my first suggestion as well. dd will only help you if you need an exact bit for bit copy of your hdd that you can work with. It ensures that you don't damage important data on your harddisk while recovering them.

An expert tip:

MEN, I know it will not help you in your situation BUT create backups before it's to late. This ensures that you're not running in this unconfortable situation again

Br
Haze

[atreyu]

I used a combination of ddrescue and testdisk (via System Rescue CD) yesterday on a disk that got zapped by too much voltage (many I/O errors, no more partition table, etc.) and it worked perfectly for me.