Resolved FIXMBR has caused major data loss

A friend got the 'NTLDR is missing....' message on his 3-yearold XPPSP3 tower and employed an IT guy to fix it.

The tech apparently ran FIXMBR via the Recovery Console and now the entire drive (except for a 10MB partition) has disappeared.

This wouldn't be a big deal, but the friend has 1000's of images that he wants to rescue.

I've been asked to fix it, but I'm not sure where to start. Anyone got a clue on this?

To expand on my problem description, the troubled XPSP3 computer boots up and shows 'NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart'.

I removed the 3-year old, 500GB SATA HDD and slaved it into my W7 machine. The BIOS shows the 500GB drive. But after booting, the only part of the slaved drive that shows in the host machine is a 10MB partition (which the tech apparently created), containing NTDETECT.COM. Its entry in my 'Computer' window says:
"Local disk (F 10MB free of 10.1MB "

However, if I go into W7's Computer\Disk Management, as well as the host C:\ drive, I can see two other entries. At the top it says:

F: Simple Basic FAT Healthy (Primary Partition) Capacity-10MB

At the bottom of the screen it shows:

(F 465.76GB FAT Healthy (Primary Partition)

I don't understand what's happened, or how the drive has become FAT. Prior to the crash, the XPSP3 drive was formatted NTFS.

Advice will be appreciated.

 

Hi masonite, This article in Tom's hardware explains your problem: FIXMBR > Do I or Dont' I?

The Techo was not the guy to handle this apparently. Neil.

P.S. I don't know whether the Recuva software would help in this instance.

 

Every thing may be lost. Looks like the drive is now File Allocation Table(FAT) Healthy(Primary Partition). There may not be a way to recover what was on the NTFS Partition. Who manufactured the HDD and what model is it (for example WDC5000BEKT Caviar Black) It looks like the tech reformatted the drive to FAT.

 

Hi guys. Thanks for your input.

It doesn't seem like there's much chance of recovering my friend's data. Like, if Windows doesn't see the drive, I doubt that Windows-based recovery software will see it either.

I thought someone might suggest a Linux program. Not that I know anything about Linux, but it seems that it can sometimes access data that's invisible to Windows.

 

We're all Windows #i fans here and although some dabble in Linux via Android Smartphones we can't profess to have specialists that I know of.
Someone may be able to help but I have heard of Linux recovery being used when Googling. Neil.

 

You could try this, it may or may not work but its worth a try. Click on this link . http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15761/recover-data-like-a-forensics-expert-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

 

Thanks Neil.

lj50, I think your link might just yield the info I'm looking for. It's a complex fix, but it seems to have the potential to cure my mate's data loss problem.

Cheers

 

Good Luck! Post back and let us know if it did or did not resolve the problem.

 

Thanks Arie, but my guy isn't prepared to spend that much for the recovery.

Regarding the link that lj50 provided, I ended up going down the Ubuntu track, but that's proved to be a fruitless exercise. So it looks like the photos are lost.

Cheers.

 

If it's important to you, back it up. Good software to do so is free: EaseUS Todo Backup Free