how to get data off a HDD that says unallocated

[Soullessone21]

So I got a external drive here the board with usb and power are destroyed. hard drive is fine pulled it and plugged it into a usb enclosure and get "Unallocated Drive" cant change drive letter or anything but the data is mission critical is there any software to reinitialize the drive so I can get the data off?

[Nodscene]

The simplest and easiest would to just use recovery software to get the data off. Be careful as not all of them will recover from unallocated space. Reinitializing the drive will probably not help as you would need to format the drive and there is a good chance your data won't be accessible, once again requiring you to use recovery software. There are more complex ways to fix if it's just the partition structure missing but I'm sure you don't want to start using a hex editor :)

[chrisk]

Recover My Files might be a good solution. (blocked here at work) Give the free trial a run and see if its worth your while to pay the $40 to get the data off.

[Soullessone21]

Originally Posted by chrisk

Recover My Files might be a good solution. (blocked here at work) Give the free trial a run and see if its worth your while to pay the $40 to get the data off.

on block 100,000,000 of 3,000,000,000 haha

[Soullessone21]

I'll Necro my own thread, still SOL on this drive thanks chrisk the program sees the files but even the paid doesnt do anything but attempt to restore for days gave it a week then gave up. Any other ones out there?

[AkG]

Maybe give SpinRite a whirl? Or try DD_Rescue (ie use a linuix distro and mount it...which DD_rescue basically is)?

Edit:
Or maybe Testdisk?

[Soullessone21]

Originally Posted by AkG

Maybe give SpinRite a whirl? Or try DD_Rescue?

are any of these free or have "free" methods to download them?

[AkG]

LOL...I think I ninja edited you mate.

First thing I would do would be to mount it via Linuix distro....which DD_Rescue basically is. IF you cant mount it in nix enviro...then its time to 'find' the big guns. TestDisk is FOSS...SpinRite is not...but can be found. ;)

[Soullessone21]

Originally Posted by AkG

LOL...I think I ninja edited you mate.

First thing I would do would be to mount it via Linuix distro....which DD_Rescue basically is. IF you cant mount it in nix enviro...then its time to 'find' the big guns. TestDisk is FOSS...SpinRite is not...but can be found. ;)

awesome thanks time to fire up the backup rig tonight :)

[Nodscene]

I don't really see how spinrite is going to help although there is a small chance that the partition information is on a bad sector and spinrite will move it to a good sector. I guess it's worth a shot.