windows xp - How to recover data from a hard drive crash?

Last night my 500 GB Seagate hard drive was fine but this morning it suddenly started crashing, somehow I made it work after a chkdsk but 2 partitions show space is full now but it wasn't when the drive was fine. The 3rd partition one is also acting weird.

Whenever I try to open any drive, Windows asks to format it. My drive is still under warranty but I don't want to lose any data. How can I recover data from this crashed/crashing hard drive?

• my OS is: windows xp sp3


• Processor: Inter Pentium 4 3.0 GHz


• 1 GB RAM


• Already have 2 other hard drives


• 1 - 320 GB - OS drive - seagate


• 2 - 1 TB - western digital

UPDATE 1: when using Test Disk: it's showing some read errors

UPDATE 2: Now all the partitions are not showing up in my computer, but can see the hard drive in hardware manager, now what to do ?

Here are some screenshots:

Answer

I'm not personally familiar with free or open source data recovery products.

GetDataBack is pretty easy to use and relatively cheap, as far as I know. It's been my go-to tool for about 8 years now in cases of data loss. It's relatively fast too.

Just run it against your drive and I'd imaging that as long as the drive motor isn't failing or the platters aren't physically damaged, you're likely to be able to recover most of your data without issue.

Important: Do not format or begin writing new files to the drive. Any changes to the drive you make prior to running a recovery have a great chance of overwriting previous data on the drive and lowering your chances of a complete and successful recovery.

UPDATE response to comment:
It appears as though your drive is undergoing progressive drive failure. This is serious. If you do not run a recovery procedure on your drive now, your chances of data recovery will continue to diminish.

In order to maximize your chances of successful data recovery, you should place your drive inside two or three new and clean ziplock bags and place it in the freezer for an hour or two. This will cool the drive down and minimize the chances of further damage.

While the drive is cooling, assemble whichever tools you choose to use for the data recovery on your computer.

Remove the drive from the freezer and connect to the computer and run the recovery steps as quickly and efficiently as possible. It is critical that you keep the drive as cool as possible during this process. Leave the computer open and point a fan into the system. Do not place the drive into a drive tray as this minimizes the airflow around it and allows for quicker heating of the drive.

All these processes are to maximize the time you'll have to run the necessary recovery tools and thus maximize your chances of successful recovery.