Drive can't be read, files there

While posting away to "DVD-R install location" and setting up drives on PCI IDE controller card, this machine really crashed. I'm not sure what happened, but I suspect conflict with "System Works" and "Go Back" I was just trying to clean and lean machine before installing new drive.

When trying to boot, machine would display XP splash screen for about 15 seconds, then reboot, endless cycle.

After a lot of futile efforts to get XP to repair or reinstall, (along with 4 different MS Techs) on the "C" drive, without reformat, formatted what was my "F" drive and have XP up and running on that drive. I was hoping that new install of XP could recover files from non bootable drive.

Booting from CD, using the XP repair console on old "C ", dir on the drive lists all the files. When trying to repair, sees the old XP installation up until the time when you select to do the repair when it calls for the drive to be formatted. It asks if you want to reinstall to installation it found (1.C) but when you say ok, it says it's not there. When trying to install on drive as clean, it cannot find prior install.

Well, after install on new "C ", XP's computer management can see the old "C" and "D" as healthy and active drives and reports the free space correctly. But the drives do not have drive letters. They do not show up under "My Computer "


So, I have my "C ", "D" and partition "E" drives, still in their original state, unreadable. Anybody know how to access these files??

MS suggests a data recovery service. Somebody please tell me it ain't so.

 

Are they NTFS or FAT32?
If they're FAT32, then you could slave that drive into another working computer (or boot with a diskette) and probably retrieve something, via DOS.
If they're NTFS, then it's going to be way more work, and may not work at all.

 

Hi Reboot: well, all files are NTFS:

A development since last post:
On re-install of Go Back, it said it couldn't write bin to drive 2 (I'm not sure what drive 2 is/was), it re-booted machine and then CHKDSK ran and did some repairs.

Well, low and behold, drive D and it's partition E (relettered F) reappeard. This drive is a slave to new C on channel 1. All files are now accessable. Glory be!!

Well, after that happened, I figured I'd run CHKDSK on the old C drive, but I can't figure out how to do it. Here are my thoughts:

Old C drive is still jumpered as a master and set up as master on channel 2.

Re jumper to a slave drive and slave it to new C. (remove D drive) Then run CHCKDSK /r and see what happens.

What do you think?? I sure would like to get at those files on the old C drive!!!

I don't want to create another crash or lose D again.

 

You should be able to run chkdsk on it.
Open Explorer, right click on the drive, and select Propertes, Tools tab. In the "Error checking ", click on Check Now.
It may need a restart, but it will (should) run chkdsk on the drive.
Alternatively, if you know it's current drive letter, open a DOS box, and type: chkdsk X: /f with X being the drive letter.
None of this should compromise anything on the other drives.

 

Drive not there in Windows Explorer, nor My Computer. It has no drive letter.

Good try though, thanks.

 

First, is it found in Admin tools, computer management, disk management?
Can you do anything with it there (other than format)?
How about pulling all other drives, mount it as primary master and run the XP CD. Select Repair using the console, and at the prompt, type: fixmbr and fixboot
Remount the other drives, and it should be assigned a drive letter.

 

Drive appears in Disk Management, without drive letter, only option allowed is Format.

with drive mounted as C, Windows repair from CD boot will run fixmbr and fixboot, but when you try to do repair, prior XP installation still not detected. I have not tried as C alone on machine as master. Worth a try??

Interesting side note: When current C has slave D, machine will boot. When Current C has old C as slave, machine will not boot.

 

Something amiss with jumpers or BIOS detection if it won't work on the same channel as another drive.
Why not try it solo, and see what happens?

 

Reboot: you were right, something was amiss with jumper settings, both were set as masters. Unfortunately, after fixing jumpers, now boots from new C, old C still no drive letter, appears in computer management, reports healty, active, MBR, but not in my computer. Without drive letter, I cannot figure out how to run specific chkdsk.

As stand alone, boot from XP cd, XP refuses to install without format.

I'm out of options??

If no other alternatives, I'll take it to shop tomorrow and see what they say.

Thanks again for all your help.

 

If things were FAT32 it would be easy. Because they're NTFS, something is corrupted, and the disk won't be readable until the filesystem is repaired. I doubt that it's recoverable.
You might get a DOS NTFS reader at http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm
It's free.
See if you can recover something by using that.

 

Thanks Reboot. I followed that link, placed an order, after clicking "place order" got "page cannot be displayed" Their server must be down. I'll try again later, but if the software lives up to their claims, should do the trick!!!

Placed order as free trial version has file size limitation. If it works, for $29.95 it is a bargain!

I'll post back results.

 

Try these free ones first.
1.) http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm
2.) Active@NTFS reader for DOS
3.) http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10126096.html?tag=lst-0-1

 

Hi Reboot, thanks for the links. What I don't understand, after looking at those links, is how do you recover the files. Near as I can tell, the programs read the files but will only write to FAT32. My drives are all (3) NTFS. I guess I could reformat one of them, but I'd have to do a lot of copying to get a disk I could format to FAT32 without losing more Data.

Any chance of a step by step to recover NTFS files using one of these floppy programs??

 

The easiest way is to have a FAT32 hard drive (or partition) hanging around. Just use copy, xcopy or xxcopy(if you have it) to move stuff.
You can move whole directories with one command thus:
xcopy c:\windows d:\ /y /s
That will copy the entire windows folder to D, including any empty and subfolders. There's enough commands in xcopy to do just about anything.
You can use the copy command to move files.
You can use the move command to do the same thing, without leaving the original in place.

The whole idea here is to simply move stuff to a drive you can read, and then format the old drive. I doubt if you're going to get a working version of anything on it until it's been fdisked and formatted, which is why I suggested these tools.
Other than that, you're left with an expensive alternative.

I have one last suggestion (not sure if you've tried it yet or not),
Mount the drive as a single, nothing else.
Boot to the CD, and at the prompt, go into the repair console.
At the prompt, type: fixboot and fixmbr
It may be just enough to get it bootable.

 

Hey Reboot: thanks for the info.

FIXBOOT & FIXMBR both no go.

This is definately Murphy's Law at work.

I figured I'd empty the first partition of Drive D, 20Gigs of 40 partitioned to D & E, then reformat D toFAT32. Boy, I just wasn't paying attention to my thinking that I could have a drive with Fat 32 on half and NTFS on the other half. I'm sitting here laughing at myself.

So, in Disk Management, all I can do is delete the partitions?? I can copy the 2nd partion on D back to C & just delete all, you think I can then format D to FAT32? A while ago, I had dual boot with 98SE and had FAT32 there and NTFS on XP. With only XP running, One disk NTFS and another FAT32??

Even though D is blank, no files, Disk Management shows over 4 gigs used. Just chalk that up to "things I'll never understand" Woops, scratch that, Uh-O, I'll bet they are Go Back files!! Still, I would think I could see them. (show hidden files enabled, hide system files disabled.) but I cant!

Got to be Go-Back at work. So, If I delete partition and reformat, there go my backups. It never stops?

If I did'nt have pix & video of the kids on that old C drive, I'd just toss it out the window.

Is xxcopy a program or command? I don't have enough knowhow to do the "xcopy c:\windows d:\ /y /s" are you saying copy the old C? I got things so muddled I REALLY don't know what I'm doing. Anyhow, thanks again for your input

 

There should be no problem formatting a partition to FAT32.

xxcopy is a program. It allows FAT32 copying (or cloning if you wish) and retains the long path and filenames. xcopy will not.
In conjunction with one of the DOS NTFS readers, you should be able to clone or at least copy the important stuff, from one partition (not working properly) to another (that's working), and save the data at least. Then you can use disk management to recover the unworking partition.
Basically, I'm trying to get your data saved somehow. What you do with the partitions after that is up to you.
If you had/have a goback recovery diskette, it would really help, but not being able to load windows (and thus goback) it's pretty useless to have goback, especially on an XP system. Too many conflicts with system restore.
The files are there, but because the FAT table is corrupt, they can't be read. Until the FAT is fixed, that drive is useless.
Accessing an NTFS partition in DOS is difficult enough. Getting the data off the drive in the process may prove impossible.
Even if you do recover the data you want, the partition is still going to be useless, and you're going to lose your backups anyhow.
Maybe next time you'll save the backups/important stuff on a FAT32 drive?

 

Hey Reboot: Good News, I've finally made some progress recovering files, thanks to your good advice.

I went to the links you provided, and this one:

http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm

Led me to: "Active@Undelete" software on the recovery tools page of the website.

I did pay the $29.00 as the free tool which is available is limited in the file size it will recover.

Active Undelete software enabled me to read the crashed disk!

I am able to recover files and folders to an active drive on this machine. It is a tedious process, and sometimes I have doubts on what to restore. But I have my document files back and am slowly and surely recovering my jpg files.

Some folders it will restore along with all contained files, but some folders I have to open and copy one file at a time. I have no idea what makes the difference.

As I have litteraly hundreds of jpg files on the crashed drive, it is slow going. Considering I had about written these files off, I'm happy!

I tried the DOS boot diskette, but it was too confusing, I'm just not up on DOS and couldn't understand how to use it.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a happy ending.

Just a note, Nero tech support could not find my order of Nero Burning Rom, I was able to recover the serial number from the crashed drive! They said they had no record!!

Many Many thanks for your help.

 

Well, it's good to hear you're getting everything back, it's too bad it's a $29 lesson learned the hard way.
Next time, don't be in such a hurry to jump on NTFS.
There's still a LOT to be said for FAT32, and this is a prime example.
BillyBob has another prime example in his XP installation/trial woes thread.

 

Reboot: Thanks, but all drives on this machine are still NTFS. I was afraid to reformat to fat32 in partition 1 of drive 2, as it had the GoBack .bin files I'd be afraid to loose. Is there a way to format these drives to FAT32 without loosing data??

 

Nope.
I'd forget about the goback files, and make it FAT32 anyhow, then start over with goback (if you really must, although it seems redundant).
There are much easier ways to recover/repair XP than trying to get goback to run nicely on XP with system restore.
Even with goback, you only really need the latest .bin, not all of them.