Wow, bad English too like mine. ;)

Thanks GAOTD and Enplase Research for this fine release

Hard to say what you have or don’t — depends on what happened with partitioning & with the crash. I’d suggest creating a disk image of the entire drive, restoring that to another drive/partition, & then playing with that — you can always restore the image again to start from scratch that way.

Personally I’d start with checking out the partitions to see what’s there, what can be repaired or maybe rebuilt, what can be restored or un-deleted. You could try Partition Mgr software, or like Partition Table Doc, there are apps just to try and repair/recover/rebuild the partition data. You may get the FAT32 partition back just the way it was, which would be great. If not, you can try however many un-delete apps (like Multistage Recovery) you want or have the patience for. If it has to re-assemble files from clusters, un-delete software may need you to rename every recovered file, &/or recovery may be partial — i.e. with a Word doc you may get the contents but lose all formatting. If the drive’s that old, you may also need to pick up an IDE to SATA adapter — I think Geeks & Meritline have them, & know DealExtreme offers several for less than $10.

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#26: “I would download and try this if I knew it would recover files off an external hard drive.The hard drive just clicks.Ive tried other recovery programs to no avail…”

If you can’t read off the drive, nothing will help short of having recovery specialists take apart the drive & maybe scan the platters out of the drive, repair the drive leaving the platters intact etc. That said, there is a [likely *Very Slight*] chance that the drive itself might be repairable through a firmware update *IF* the problem’s a manufacturer defect they’ve created a fix for. Being an external drive, I imagine there’s also a chance the problem’s with the electronics for the case. IF the drive’s under warranty, do check out the fine print — external drive warranties can be pretty screwy IMHO.

If you do manage to get something to read from the drive, quickly create an image backup — you can work from that image [restored to another drive/partition] to try & access/recover any files.

Second point: You have to install this program in one day. Usually you need to have the install files handy when you have problems. Not just this one day.

Next point: It’s not that anyone is flaming a free product. It’s that we’re being honest. If it’s trash we say so. If it’s wonderful…we say so…no need to “overvalue” software…especially recovery software. There is a reason this software is here free for a day. They probably can’t sell it as well as most or it doesn’t meet a certain standard. The authors should be smart and read the comments and make it better instead of being defensive. Also, to all those others who post here…”chill”…take everything here with a grain of salt….all the criticism here was probably made…in a day.

Other points: “The Wrapper”: What does everyone think of it? Do you think it’s good? I like this site and I like to try software but being forced into this thing where I must do this:

(a) Download it on the same day
(b) Install it on the same day
(c) Hope I never need to reinstall it because the software has a wrapper that will prevent this is kinda dumb. (not crazy dumb) but annoying dumb.

GIVE ME the software for free WITH the install files to keep in a backup drive so I can reinstall it later. Forcing me to install something such as a recovery program for a rainy day is a mute point. If your program was any good, we’d opt in without the wrapper. The fact that you need to “wrap” it proves your insecurity or your hope that we will install it by accident. It’s crap I tell ya…crap….be confident in your software and let us opt in and I for one would certainly be more interested in any of your software if it weren’t “wrapped” around other software like some sort of Netscape product. I feel it devalues the product even if it makes you more money in the first term.