Very short background. I have a lot of data in the program The Master Genealogist, which has been discontinued. I currently don’t have a valid installation, and I believe the license key is stored somewhere on a computer that refuses to boot.
Now of course the answer I’m expecting is “use this software” or “if that fails contact a data recovery firm”. The latter I probably won’t do, as it’s just not worth it. The first I’m having problems with because the disk seems to have a flaw these programs aren’t used to. Instead of telling me “Can’t do this” or “This is broken” they take hours to access the drive and eventually freeze up or crash without warning.
For some more details, keep reading. When trying to access it from a different computer after sticking it in a USB-SATA-box, there are no error messages of any kind. It just takes forever to open anything on it. For one partition that isn’t literally true, but it took 15 minutes before 20 files showed up in windows explorer. For the others, it is literally true. Windows explorer will just work, and work, for hours.
The disk repair/recovery programs I’ve tried so far do something of the same. I’m trying MiniTools Partition Wizard and MiniTools Data Recovery, and it takes half an hour for them to show the partition information, and then attempting to do anything has so far led to either a swift crash of that software, or another hour or so of scanning, followed by another hour in a failed attempt to recover files.
I also tried TestDisk, which showed “please wait” for two hours before I gave up.
Now if I had a clue whether this rescue is genuinely impossible, and what fix I should actually try, this wouldn’t be so bad, but currently I’m trapped in a cycle of really frustrating attempts that take an hour and a half each. Hence this Hail Mary.
Sounds like a hardware failure of the drive, generating tons of read errors.
I don’t know what the correct tool is for Windows, but what I do in OS X is use a tool called “Copy Cat X,” which will clone the failing drive (as best as it can) to a new drive. From there I will run standard repair utilities on the clone
Hook it as a slave drive to another PC via the SATA cables not through the USB box and see what you can get. It sounds like you have serious media errors so your recovery is going to be questionable at best.
This link indicates you can DL the last version of the program and buy a key or get a replacement key of you have lost it. It may be a better solution overall if the program is what you need vs the data.
I unfortunately don’t have another computer handy, having switched to laptops, but thanks for the tip, I might try that approach eventually.
I already sent an email to attempt to buy a key, but we’re talking about some guy in Belgium who a year ago had an unknown number of keys as a third-party vendor of the software, the only vendor known to have any-keys left. So I’m not getting my hopes up.
MiniTool Data Recovery has currently run for 10 minutes trying to copy the file in question off the drive, and doesn’t seem to have much success. But I did manage before that to get it opened in preview and scrolled through it (it’s my important mail file in Thunderbird) and copied down the registration information by hand.
Nothing like having someone look over your shoulder for a computer problem to suddenly vanish.
“Hey could you help me with this?”
“With what?”
“When I press this button, nothing happ… Well nothing happened that previous ten times I pressed it!”
Congratulations. From the OP, I was thinking that the geneological data was what was missing, not the software key. If you have your data, there are probably import filters in other geneology programs. (But it looks like the converters aren’t perfect.)
As for possible replacements for the discontinued program (if you want one) I’d suggest Family Tree Maker.