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One partition of my HDD has become unreadable, and I'm being told my file system is RAW. The partition contains valuable data. How can I get it working again, so I can get at the data safely?

The HDD has two other partitions, which are working fine, and is using NTFS. The OS is Windows XP 32-bit.

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First i'd try to restore the 'lost' partition (e.g. with EASEUS Partition Table Doctor or TestDisk). If that fails, i'd run WinHex (or Davory) to recover the data.

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@Jitendra vyas - TestDisk is free and open source software, as for data recovery, there is nothing better than WinHex, but if you're looking for free, with TestDisk comes a program called PhotoRec, that may help, or try Recuva: piriform.com/recuva – Molly7244 Feb 20 '10 at 13:44
should i run any of mentioned tool from Safe mode only? – metal gear solid Feb 20 '10 at 13:45
testdisk can and should be run from a livecd IMO. testdisk can be run from a normal bootup. – Journeyman Geek Feb 20 '10 at 13:52
@Jitendra vyas - As The Journeyman geek said, run testdisk from the Live CD, PTD should be run from BartPE Live CD (but can be used within Windows). – Molly7244 Feb 20 '10 at 20:51
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I've used a program that can backup or clone disks by sector, which means it can copy data directly from the hard disk without using the file system. It's freeware, and you can try it here.

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