Paul,
This is directed at George Grimes because of his data loss due to a
Windows failure.  This is to help you recover your valuable data off
of a Windows disk (assumes the mechanics of the drive are
functional).  Use a borrowed computer (friend or family) that you
can burn a CD, and download this
ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy
-5.1/ (lupu-510.iso file)  Burn to a blank CD using the iso or image
option on your favorite CD burning software.  Then take the disk and
put in the computer with the crashed Windows drive and set the bios
to first boot off of the CD drive.  You can avoid doing this by
pressing the F12 or F11 key and choosing to boot off of the CD drive
if you like.  Just pick the default options, (keyboard, date, video,
etc)  and you should boot up to a Puppy Linux desktop.  Have a
portable USB drive plugged into the machine or a large thumb/flash
drive, if you have a limited amount of data.  You will see your
Windows "C" drive show up at the bottom left of the screen as sda1.
Other drives will have similar names.  Click on the drive and look
for your data.  You can then copy to your external drive and save
your data.  I hope this helps with data recover for you guys. Please
back up often as I know how much time you have in your work. Email
me if you have questions.

Jim Brewer

P.S.  Puppy Linux will extend the life of those older computers and
keep you virus/spyware free.  It can be carried in your pocket on a
flash drive to boot off of and store your work.


Paul & Group -

Also you can try putting a hard disk in the freezer , in an antistatic
bag - with plenty of silca gel bags around it - for about 20 mins.
This sometimes restores the functionality of the drive mechanics. If
you have an identical HD you can sometimes transfer the circuit board
over or try setting it as the slave drive, as the controller is on the
drive with IDE - ATA and SATA.

The other trick is restoring the partition table using particular
forensic and utility software. There are special forensic
distributions of linux you can download.

Fly & Build Good -
Mr.Bryan Wilkinson