A
anon
sorry for the long message - but you need to know all the details
i run winxp pro - two hard disks each partitioned.
i was fiddling around with creating an unnattended install disk,
intending it to re-install a fresh copy over my existing C: drive
however, without me catching it quick enough, for some reason, it
started installing it on my H: drive (first available partition on the
second hard drive) which contains very valuable data (and no... silly
me.. no backups)
i cancelled the install after about only 20 seconds, however, it has
&*%^&$ up the partition table & MBR (i think) as now the drive is
inaccessible. i tried command line chkdsk and all it says is that the
H: partition has free space marked as allocated, and tries to correct
it, but then gives error msg of insufficient disk space to fix it.
i have run partition magic pro to examine the partition - it is visible,
but inaccessible thru PM Pro - only option is to delete it entirely -
and it shows that the partition is full (as chkdsk also noted) however,
i know for a fact that it ISNT full - just been mis-allocated as full
in desperation i ran nortons windoctor - HOORAY - this managed to
somehow fix some of the file pointers, so i was then able to access the
drive as normal from within explorer. I tried to move all the files off
that partition to another one on the first physical hard disk, but a lot
of them give error msg of I/O device error - not accessible
GRRRR..... ive tried the recovery console - fixmbr and this said that
all partitions (3 of them) on the affected disk had been successfully
rewritten, however rebooting into explorer results in the entire disk
being inaccessible again..... back to norton windoctor to at least make
the files visible again
can somebody PLEASE help me reclaim these files. I am prepared to lose
a few files, but there are WAY too many of them affected here for me to
lose them all
im using NTFS... problem is not with windows itself. i am very happy using
windows - problem is my own stupidity trying to simplify myinstall process
by creating an unnattended install... when i had several partitions on the
physical drive i was using.
i had set "repartition" setting to NO, in the unnattended instruction file,
yet it did
not ask me which partition to set up on, (as the help file on creating
unattended installations said it would) and by the time i realised it was
installing on the wrong partition (not only the wrong partition, but the
wrong physical hard disk too) it was too late
my problem is the corrupted MFT / index structures, which are making some
important files inaccessible under windows. can anyone tell me how i can
manually (or otherwise) reset these details, so i can restore my files, move
them to new partition, and completely reformat the affected disk drive???
i run winxp pro - two hard disks each partitioned.
i was fiddling around with creating an unnattended install disk,
intending it to re-install a fresh copy over my existing C: drive
however, without me catching it quick enough, for some reason, it
started installing it on my H: drive (first available partition on the
second hard drive) which contains very valuable data (and no... silly
me.. no backups)
i cancelled the install after about only 20 seconds, however, it has
&*%^&$ up the partition table & MBR (i think) as now the drive is
inaccessible. i tried command line chkdsk and all it says is that the
H: partition has free space marked as allocated, and tries to correct
it, but then gives error msg of insufficient disk space to fix it.
i have run partition magic pro to examine the partition - it is visible,
but inaccessible thru PM Pro - only option is to delete it entirely -
and it shows that the partition is full (as chkdsk also noted) however,
i know for a fact that it ISNT full - just been mis-allocated as full
in desperation i ran nortons windoctor - HOORAY - this managed to
somehow fix some of the file pointers, so i was then able to access the
drive as normal from within explorer. I tried to move all the files off
that partition to another one on the first physical hard disk, but a lot
of them give error msg of I/O device error - not accessible
GRRRR..... ive tried the recovery console - fixmbr and this said that
all partitions (3 of them) on the affected disk had been successfully
rewritten, however rebooting into explorer results in the entire disk
being inaccessible again..... back to norton windoctor to at least make
the files visible again
can somebody PLEASE help me reclaim these files. I am prepared to lose
a few files, but there are WAY too many of them affected here for me to
lose them all
im using NTFS... problem is not with windows itself. i am very happy using
windows - problem is my own stupidity trying to simplify myinstall process
by creating an unnattended install... when i had several partitions on the
physical drive i was using.
i had set "repartition" setting to NO, in the unnattended instruction file,
yet it did
not ask me which partition to set up on, (as the help file on creating
unattended installations said it would) and by the time i realised it was
installing on the wrong partition (not only the wrong partition, but the
wrong physical hard disk too) it was too late
my problem is the corrupted MFT / index structures, which are making some
important files inaccessible under windows. can anyone tell me how i can
manually (or otherwise) reset these details, so i can restore my files, move
them to new partition, and completely reformat the affected disk drive???