Re-writing MBR to a failed drive in another PC

[XP_er]

My XP machine failed due to a hardware problem but the main 80g "C" drive WAS OK.
I removed this (PATA) drive to another machine where it was able to be read by plugging it into a caddy which had USB out. However, this drive was very full & I thought that I would try to clone it to a separate, larger drive just in case. Unfortuneately, on removing the drive I forgot to "Safely Remove Hardware" and simply un-plugged the USB cable.
Next time I plugged in in, I got a message "do you wish to format this drive ?"


Shock horror, !! I went into properties and all it found was zero bytes & zero capacity. - I assume quite probably that the small Master Boot Record file has been corrupted and I'm hoping I can somehow re-write this from another machine so I can then clone this drive to a larger one.


Any help would be most appreciated.


Thanks.

 

[muckshifter]

If it were a USB stick, I'd say there is a strong possibility that pulling the drive out without letting Windows tell you to do so, can lead to data corruption ... on a hard drive, formatted to NTFS, which uses a Journaled file Systems, then I would say, IMHO, that was highly unlikely to cause any corruption.

There are, however, exceptions to every rule ... this is me covering my arse.

Me, and a few other older computer users here, would 'hang' the hard drive off the main drive ... here is an excellent video, which goes into exceptional details on how to install a second drive.

no need to actually screw in the "second drive" ... is why we call it 'hanging' the drive ... but by using this method you may be able to retrieve any data off the drive.


Now, that was how it should have been done, I have never trusted USB, how I suggest you 'fix' the MBR, if indeed that is the problem now, is to use Windows XP Recovery Console. Use the "donor" PC but remove its own HD from the equation by simply removing any cables ... be aware, your 'broken' hard drive is not going to like the new hardware.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

When you reach the command prompt (detailed in Step 6 in the link above), type the following and then press Enter.

fixmbr

or, you could use the UltimateBootDisk if you don't have the appropriate XP CD

http://www.ubcd4win.com/


Welcome to the forums
Good luck.