Need suggestions on recovering data

[Rawt]

Ladies and gents, i'm looking for any neat tips or tricks (or possible methods i haven't tried) to restore data off of a failing HD.

It's a Seagate momentus 7200.4 laptop HD, out of a custom made Dell laptop about 3-4 years old. Here's the story.

The drive beeps and clicks (i know, i know), however there's some really important data that i need to get off there. Also, it's important to note this is for a family member (i know the importance of backups!).

I originally tried just plugging the drive directly into one of my towers as a secondary drive, but to no avail. after an extended boot time, windows said it couldn't recognize the file structure, and thus never loaded it in the OS.

I then booted into Ubuntu, and it recognized the drive, the partitions on it, the model number, etc. However Ubuntu could not mount the partition with the files i needed, and instead told me to run chkdsk /f in Windows to fix it. It could however mount the recovery partition on the drive, and allowed me to browse those files.

I also bought GetDataBack NTFS, but obviously am not able to use it outside the Windows shell.

I'm thinking my only available option is an external usb cage for the drive, but i'm not positive how viable that will be.

Any of you fellow geeks have any tips, tricks, or solutions? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

[OhpUldum]

Here is something for you to look into. Data recovery using Ubuntu live cd.

[Rawt]

Ah crap. I totally forgot about the SP manager. Thanks culadin, i'll give this a shot tonight and report back.

[Deleted]

I stand by spinwrite, and we've used it to fix all sorts of issues at work over the years

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

I trust steve gibson to the end of the earth for security and data recovery!

[Rawt]

I stand by spinwrite, and we've used it to fix all sorts of issues at work over the years

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

I trust steve gibson to the end of the earth for security and data recovery!

Spin Rite is great, but useless for physically failing/failed drives. Gave it a shot all the same, to no avail.

Here is something for you to look into. Data recovery using Ubuntu live cd.

Scalpel and foremost didnt even recognize the drive. testdrive saw it, but then it disappeared off the drive list a few menu items later. im guessing the pcb board is bad as well.

looks like only recourse is a iso clean room service.

[JameshKoler]

Data corruption is definitely a menace but the real challenge is to find a good recovery tool. Choose Kernel for Windows Disk Recovery for premium support and optimum results. It has best in class features to retrieve any damaged data.