can you suggest free programs i can try to check my slave hd for files i may have deleted or formatted over, should i download to my master or the slave drive which is the one i want to check for files, please don't suggest any shareware or anything you have not personally tried

Hi sweets1953,

I have usually got good results (in other words I found many more deleted files than I was looking for at the time) using PC Inspector File Recovery . It's completely free.

Download and install it to your main drive. The less you do with your slave drive the greater the chance of data recovery.

pc inspector is user unfriendly, maybe you can tell me how it works or send me a link to instructions cause i don't know what i'm doing or whats occurring,
also when i click properties on this 30 gb hd, 2.3 gb are used and since there's no files evident i'm guessing that's where the lost files are, do you agree, paul

forgot to say in last post i noticed some folders modified in 2003 with pc inspector but when i tried to open them they didn't make any sense, of course they coudld've been created in 2003 but not actually made until a few days ago which would not be of any use to me anyway

If you don't mind hard work, I would recommend Runtime software. I've used it to recover my work when I accidentally formatted without backing up.

Although the software says you can't recover stuffs without paying, you just have to work extra hard for it.

Each of the file has to be saved manually, one by one to your another hard disk (if no spare hard disk, another partition).

If you have a lot of files, you will spend days recovering it. I took about a month (tells how many files I have )

If you don't want to waste so much time, you can pay for it. I would say it's worth it. But to be sure, just run it and scan and see what it is capable of recovering.

Depending on the file system you are using, you choose either the NTFS version or FAT32 version.

http://www.runtime.org/

thanks,
can i try saving the files to a cd or disc or is it better to save them to my master hd,
also i think when i tried opening some files using pc inspector they didn't seem to amount to anything more than gibberish or it required using another file to open it

do you have any codes for the runtime products

which runtime product would you recommend if you accidentally reformatted? which if your hive file was corrupted or missing? which one if you don't know how you lost the files?
thanks paul

Hmm.
Try this:

Open the program and select English as the language.

In the next window click the top tab on the left - it has a green arrow pointing up. When it has scanned for installed drives on your system, click on the letter relating to your slave drive (it will probably be D: or E: ) and click the green tick.

(Those 2 steps are the same as above).

Now go to 'Object' in the menu at the top and select Find Files. Just type an asterisk (*) in the 'Name:' box and click the green tick.

That should show you a more meaningful list of retrievable files.

I suggest you try GetDataBack - you may find it easier to see what's recoverable and what's not.

Check the version you want for your drive - go to My Computer and right click your slave drive and select Properties. On the General tab it tell you the file system (either NTFS or FAT32). Download the appropriate version, install it and run it.

Click Next and allow the program to scan for drives. In the next window click on your slave drive (probably called '2nd Hard Drive') in the left hand pane and click Next.

When the scan has finished, click Next and you will see a list of deleted files generated. You can then right click an entry and use Open With to view the file. If it is OK then save it from the application you opened it with.

As dragon1988 said, you need to do this with each file while you use the demo version. If you find a lot of files that are retrievable then it would be worth paying for the full program.

I'm away for a couple of days but will check in when I get back.