Data irrecoverable?

[Ryoken]

Earlier today I was unzipping a relatively large ZIP file with a few thousand files in it when my computer froze. After a reboot, checkdisk found the usual problems and fixed them, but froze after step 3 of 3 finished. Upon multiple reboots, the same problem persisted. Skipping checkdisk, I boot into windows (the drive in question is a slave). WD diagnostics fails, and the advanced scan returns too many bad sectors to fix.

So, I attempted ZAR. It seems to work fine until the "Raw scan: identifying..." phase, where it halts indefinately at about 35%. After reading the forums a bit, I decide to try writing a disk image. That worked just fine until 38.3%, where it has stopped.

Is there anything I can do to recover this data? I was in the middle of several client's jobs and need it back asap.

Thanks!

[Alexey V. Gubin]

I do not think you can solve it quickly, if ever, with software.
Looks like the best course of action is

Try to attach the drive to the different machine to see if maybe this resolves the problem (with different cables/controller/PSU).
Send the drive to the lab for recovery (maybe choose the lab considering their estimated turnaround time).

[Ryoken]

Yeah, it's toast... I swear some computer god has it out for me. I lose a HDD once every 6 months!

On the upside, thank you for a very clever program! Even though the image froze at 38%, there was still an image file created for up until that point. I was able to use it, and it had the vast majority of the info I needed!

[Ryoken]

I may have spoken too soon. While it appears all of the files were recovered, the more I try to open a bunch of them, the more I realize didn't make it. Many PDF's that preview correctly error out when opened, many illustrator files are corrupt or cause crashes, etc.

Would you know by any chance if these little problems can be fixed, or is it just the nature of the beast?

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Same as usual, not much I can tell without a log.

Get a log file, C:\Program Files\ZAR\logfile.txt, ZIP it and email to me at development@z-a-recovery.com, so I can take a look.

This contains detailed report of the situation ZAR encountered and what it did. Without this, I cannot see where exactly it did err, or what the magnitude of the problem is.