Hard disc recovery

mike o'sullivan wrote:
> I had a recent disater when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
> boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
> HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I
> had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.

In my opinion, you should take the HD out of the current computer and
try recovery operations with it as a slave in a computer. The less you
do to the drive until you recover the files you want, the better.

Ken
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Installing the drive as a slave is often simpler and easier than doing a repair install for someone that's not sure about what they are doing.
Especially if there system has all the latest service packs and updates
installed and their installation disc is an early one
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

old jon wrote:

If it's only your boot sector that's corrupted, then just download a
knoppix linux cd image (google for it), burn it and boot into it. The
desktop will have an icon for your hard drive partitions. Click on it to
access the files and copy them somewhere else.


>
> "mike o'sullivan" <mike.TakeThisOut@nowhere.com> wrote in message
> news:3n6epcF3nv1U1@individual.net...
>>I had a recent disater when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
>>boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
>>HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I had
>>just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.
>>
> If you`ve got the original OS CD, there`s no reason you shouldn`t be able
> to do a repair install, without losing your stuff. Also, go have a read
> here: www.ptdd.com/fixboot.htm
> best wishes..OJ
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

I'm very grateful to everyone who replied. I'll investigate them all.

Mike

mike o'sullivan wrote:
> I had a recent disater when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
> boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format the
> HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the data? I
> had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

i'd recommend following the knoppix one first as that has the least
chance of damaging your drive
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

Ken wrote:
> mike o'sullivan wrote:
>
>> I had a recent disater when, possibly due to a faulty motherboard, the
>> boot sector became inaccessible. Before I admit defeat and re-format
>> the HD, is there any software which would enable me to recover the
>> data? I had just loaded my daughter's wedding pics so I'm desperate.
>
>
> In my opinion, you should take the HD out of the current computer
> and try recovery operations with it as a slave in a computer. The less
> you do to the drive until you recover the files you want, the better.
>
> Ken

Thanks, I've now done that, unfortunately the drive could not be recognised.
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

John McGaw wrote:
>
> I take it that you've done the obvious and executed "fixboot" and
> nothing happened? There are other ways to repair the boot sector if it
> is merely corrupted and that area of the disk is not physically damaged.
> You might try to google for "fix boot sector" (no quotes of course) to
> see if anything there looks likely to you. Otherwise the Knoppix method
> is good as long as your system will boot a Knoppix CD -- I have two
> machines that won't do so because of the odd hardware so that isn't the
> first thing that comes to my mind.

Sorry but you lost me, excuse my ignorance but what is "fixboot! ?
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

Stupid question..
Is the drive recognised by your computer when it's installed as the
single Master drive?
If so, exactly how did you configure it when you installed the drive as a
slave?
Is it possible that you simply have a system that required a different
configuration to recognise the slave drive?
When I think of it, you can simply use your XP installation disc to repair
the boot sector.. Or even Seagate's Seatools which is not too bad at all.
What boot disks have you tried?
bootdisk.com have all the bootdisks ready to download any man will need
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

John McGaw wrote:
>
> Making the wild assumption that you are running either W2K or XP:
(quoted from XP help)
> FixbootWrites a new partition boot sector to the system partition. The
> fixboot command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.
>
> fixboot [drive]
>
> Parameter
>
> drive
>
> The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This replaces the
> default drive, which is the system partition you are logged on to. An
> example of a drive is:
>
> D:
>
> Example
>
> The following example writes a new partition boot sector to the system
> partition in drive D:
>
> fixboot d:
>
> Note
>
> Using the fixboot command without any parameters will write a new
> partition boot sector to the system partition you are logged on to.
> Related Topics
> (endquote)

thanks for the reply. I am running Win 2000, but after saerching the
help files I still can't find any reference to this tool. Sorry for
this, but where do I find it? (be gentle with me, I'm a home user, not a
techie).
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

Mike , I see 3 ways to solve this.

1: Boot your computer from a floppy disc which has the files the machine needs to get into Windows ( Doing the "Boot Sectors" job)
There is a web site called bootdisc.com where you can download
the "quickboot" files and then create a floppy with them.
Of course you can try your Windows 2000 boot disk if you have one

2: Repair the Boot Sector itself?

3: Install the drive as a slave in a computer and transfer the data from one drive to the other ....This requires no boot sector because the drive is a slave and the computer is running from the Master drive.
The one thing with this I guess is don't be too quick and blame the damaged drive. Make sure the jumper settings are correct. If the two hard drives on the same IDE channel/cable is no good, then try them on different IDE channels etc just to make sure it's not the configuration thats the problem.
A classic example is a persons master drive is ATA 66 5400RPM and the slave drive is a Maxtor ATA133 and the person is putting them on the same cable..It may work with some systems but not the majority.

Whoops there is a fourth way....
Do a repair install of Windows . Have you done this before ?
Tell me what version of Windows 2000 you have?
Have you installed a lot of updates such as SP4 on the computer?

your turn
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Captin wrote:
>
>
Thanks for all the hints. I'm saving them to show my friend and computer
guru when he comes in a few days with my rebuilt pc. (I'm using a
borrowed computer at present).

I use Win 2000 Pro with SP4, but I'm shortly upgrading to XP. Is it more
likely that I might be able to save the data with XP?

We have tried running the drive as a slave, but the computer did not
recognise it.
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery 

Yep, if you do an upgrade install of XP it may be safer than playing with Windows 2000..(Let me explain why)

It is likely that you have downloaded and installed SP4 and other updates after Windows 2000 was installed from your installation disc?
Sometimes the system refuses to do the repair on the basis that it thinks you are using a copy of windows which is not current enough to suit the copy of Windows 2000 on your computer!

XP is the go anyway
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On 29 Aug 2005 16:39:21 -0400, Captin
<UseLinkToEmail RemoveThis @HardwareForumz.com> wrote:

> It is likely that you have downloaded and installed SP4 and other
>updates after Windows 2000 was installed from your installation disc?
> Sometimes the system refuses to do the repair on the basis that it
>thinks you are using a copy of windows which is not current enough to
>suit the copy of Windows 2000 on your computer!

I have done an IPU several times and never have I seen that.

> XP is the go anyway

Not mature enough. Over half of business installations are Win2K.
 >> Stay informed about: Hard disc recovery