Damaged partition Table and data Retrival

[paul.batch]

Hi,

I have a IBM deskstar drive which I have been using as a slave drive
with Windows XP Home for several months with no problems. However about
a month ago the computer took a long time to detect the drive and once
it eventually did it kept trying to read it but this no luck. Thus
completely slowed the boot up process of a minute to about 5 minutes. I
have tried to gain access to the drive via windows explorer but when I
click on the drive it just constantly tries to read the drive with no
luck (I can hear the drive working). I think when I tried booting up in
safe mode it came up with a comment like can't access or can't find the
partition table.

I have a couple of question which I hope someone out there may be able
to help me with:

1.Is there a way for me to repair this partition table?

2.If i can't repair how can i format the dive when windows will not let
me gain access to the drive.

I have tried the drive both as a master and slave but neither work

I would be gratful for any help.

Thanks

 

[GBH]

Hi,

I have a IBM deskstar drive which I have been using as a slave drive
with Windows XP Home for several months with no problems. However about
a month ago the computer took a long time to detect the drive and once
it eventually did it kept trying to read it but this no luck. Thus
completely slowed the boot up process of a minute to about 5 minutes. I
have tried to gain access to the drive via windows explorer but when I
click on the drive it just constantly tries to read the drive with no
luck (I can hear the drive working). I think when I tried booting up in
safe mode it came up with a comment like can't access or can't find the
partition table.

I have a couple of question which I hope someone out there may be able
to help me with:

1.Is there a way for me to repair this partition table?

2.If i can't repair how can i format the dive when windows will not let
me gain access to the drive.

I have tried the drive both as a master and slave but neither work

I would be gratful for any help.

Thanks

With it set as slave, try running CHKDSK /R

Geoff

 

[DaveW]

You will NOT be able to format the harddrive because it has failed. Time to
get a new harddrive, I'm afraid.

 

[Ian East]

You will NOT be able to format the harddrive because it has failed. Time to
get a new harddrive, I'm afraid.

Yep.. The IBM Deathstar hard disks were so unreliable they got hit
with a class action lawsuit and eventually sold off their disk
division to Hitachi. The Hitachi Deskstars seem ok so far though.