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Be sure to checkout “Tips & Tricks” Dear Guest Visitor → Once you register and log-in please checkout the “Tips & Tricks” page for some very handy tips!
/Steve. -
BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.
The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.
You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.
(You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)
On the other hand, if the reason why your directory is not accessible to your is because the structure of the DISK is not accessible to you, then MAYBE SpinRite is the tool for you. What SpinRite might cause to happen is it will work your disk "to the bone" to try and get IT to do the work to cough up your data and then rewrite it so that it's restored. At a minimum, if your disk can withstand all the work SpinRite would put it through, in the end the data may be recovered or more likely will not be, but what remains will be accessible to you to make a backup.
That probably doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, and that's true, because it's not. What it is though, is truth... and another hard truth you face is your wish you had a backup, and you presumably do not, so now you're left with hope... and SpinRite is the tool for those who need some hope in the face of a disk that the OS has given up all hope on.
On the other hand, if you want to try yourself at no cost, I have had good results from Testdisk.
TestDisk Download
Okay, 24 hours later I am re-reading this in a different light. The first reading I thought the fact the drive was formatted was just extra info. Now I am re-reading it as "the drive was [accidentally] formatted" meaning the contents were potentially "erased". SpinRite definitely won't help in this situation because that is just a logical operation and there would be nothing physically under-performing with the drive for SpinRite to recover. As @AlanD suggested, you need a filesystem recovery tool.
