# I have lost my headers.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-lost-my-headers/410941>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 8, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-lost-my-headers/410941 "2007-07-08T04:41:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2007, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-lost-my-headers/410941/1 "2007-07-08T04:41:34Z")

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I have two hard drives that I have lost the headers because of a partial delete. Is there software that will allow me to recover it? If so, what is it and how much does it cost?

Anyone?

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**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2007, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-lost-my-headers/410941/2 "2007-07-08T05:03:04Z")

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[QUOTE=GusNSpot]  
I have two hard drives that I have lost the headers because of a partial delete. Is there software that will allow me to recover it? If so, what is it and how much does it cost?

Anyone?  
[/QUOTE]

Are you talking the MFT in NTFS?

Active File Recovery 7.1 works wonders for me. Free to try as a personal use.

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**Author:** ![DevNull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c89c15/32.png) [@DevNull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevNull)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2007, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-lost-my-headers/410941/3 "2007-07-08T05:11:50Z")

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To expound a bit…

I live in an area where brownouts wreak havoc with drives on a bi-annual basis. It has been going on for years.

Spinrite can only do so much in certain cases, so short of sending the drive out to the wizards on the west coast (who probably only use Spinrite anyway), I have a SOP with my customers’ drives.

Spinrite first. Never hook a recovery patient drive up to a Windows system because the first thing Windows does is try to write to the drive.

If Spinrite takes over 24 hours to recover then pull the plug and salvage what you can with Active File Recovery.

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**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2007, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-lost-my-headers/410941/4 "2007-07-08T17:41:59Z")

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Thanks, looking in to those…