Recovering a Disk Drive

[praveen1]

I realize this is a more complicated problem, but I thought I'd give it a shot.
I am trying to recover a hard drive. So I downloaded several free recovery programs and managed to make this file called "drive E.img" I can't figure out what to do with this file. Drive E had mostly images on it, and this is what I want to recover. I want to open this file and get my images. How can I do that?
I have "majicIso" and "majicDisk". Neither one of them is majical!!

Also to give you a better picture

Pandora ( a recovery program) says my drive
 "is not ready"

In Disk managment:

Layout: Partition
Type: Basic
File System: Blank
Status: Healthy(active)

In explorer if I try to open the drive it says

"The disk is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"

In Properties-for drive D

Type: Local Disk
File System; RAW

Used space: 0 bytes
Free space: 0 bytes

Capacity shows the whole drive as used-(the picture)

Unfortuneately My Som and I both had cats for 20-23 years and they both passed away withing a month. I have pictures of both of them on that drive!!
Thanks for any help

[FluX]

With regard to damaged hard drives, I'm not going to go into the usual reply you get from most people... "You would never had this problem if you backed up your info that was so important" because its happened to me before and a few people I know.
I used 'On-track Easy-Recovery', if your drive isn't totally dead, it works a treat. It determines the filesystem format, where the files are, what state they are in, and the % chance of recovery of them.
As for your drive e.img, I believe Norton Ghost 2003 produces files of .img so you may be able to burn the image to a new hdd with Ghost
Also Imgburn (free) uses filetypes of .img, but it uses them to burn to CD / DVD

Don't know if this helps but might point you in right direction

[Pottypete]

Just used, http://www.recuva.com/download
Picked up all my pictures from an old hard drive that had become corrupt, don't ask
Now I have Acronis true image software
Everything backed up to DVD and an external Hdd
You pays your money and takes a chance

[Elemental_Dragon]

What exactly happend to the drive? Is it dead, passworded or just not been used for a while in another PC?

The error you give there suggests the drive is blank or not initiated. Running all those other programs might not have been a good idea.

For a passworded drive, use FileACL.exe : simply put in the Documents location, rund CMD and type command to unlock password protection (I can post the exact command to run later)

For a non initiated drive, use Disk Manager : Right hand click on "my computer" and select Manage". Then click on "Disk Manager" and it will show you a list of drives connected to the PC. Find your drive with the photos and right hand click and select "Initiate".

But.... if after the drive is initiated, you may hit 3 scenarios....
1. The drive gives full access to original files - great, go nab your pictures from C:\Documents & Settings\User folder (XP) or C:\Users\user folder (vista)
2. The drive shows but is limited access - that's ok, go get FileACL.exe and run it and that'll unlock the folders etc.
3. The drive shows no active partitions - bad, the HDD has been wiped and will need a partition recovery (different from file recover). The chances of you getting things back isn't great, but it's possible. I'll need to speak to my mate who does file recovery for a living as to what he'd recommend after that, but I know I've done it a few times without having to send the drive away to a specialist so keep your chin up!

I can't help any further without more information sadly.

~Bex