Hopeless Data Recovery

I found that Seagate makes software for disks that contains Acronis True
Image. That software is highly praised and costs a fair amount, but if
the drive is a Seagate, or Maxtor (owned by Seagate), the software is
free.

I downloaded it, ran it, and could not use my computer for 23+ hours
while it ran. It made an image of the whole defective partition to
another parttition. When it was done, it said there were errors and they
were listed in a .log file. The list of errors was very large, but the
majority of them were on folders which I have backed up. Yet, there were
still at least 80 or 100 missing from the files I need to recover.
However I was still far ahead from trying to copy files manually.

I nearly thought I was succeeding, and was nearly ready to toss that bad
drive in the trash and just try to locate and re-download the files that
were not copied (saved as ZERO BYTES). Then I discovered that none of
the .PDF files that were recovered could be used. All of them are
defectiive (except the ones I also saved by direct manual copy).

Just for the heck of it, I chose one defective PDF, which was recovered
at 256kb. I searched for it online, and re-downloaded it. That file is
supposed to be 742kb.

So, I've come to the conclusion it's hopeless trying to recover from
this drive. However, I am going to still see if a professional data
recovery service can do it.

And just to satisfy those of you who think linux can do this better, I
could not locate ddrescue or gddrescue online, but I did download a ISO
called systemrescuecd. I used unetbootn to make a bootable flash drive,
and said a lot of filthy words after trying several flash drives, none
of which would boot. And yes, my bios is set to boot from a flash drive,
since my Puppy linux stick does boot. This came as no surprise to me.
Thats the same bad luck I have always had with any and all forms of
linux, and I guess I needed to waste a few more hours of my time to
confirm why I hate linux.