HD gone?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Thomas Wendell
  • Start date Start date
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Thomas Wendell

A friend of mine (a dentist, with all records on the computer) has a
"little" problem:
Today the HD gave up the ghost (?), ie. lost its MBR.
At least the computer won't boot from the HD, when booting from a floppy I
am able to see the contents of C: only, not D: ,
fdisk/mbr results in "boot sector not written", fdisk asks "Enable large
disk support", whirrs a while and replies "Error reading disk"
SeaTools says about the same, as its error report is "Failed to read MBR"
and that is all.


Is there any way to get the MBR back, as all his client records are on that
disk?

I've built a simple backup routine for him, in that it should every day
after hours copy the whole work directory to a CD-RW (circulating them
daily), but today when checking, last entry is May 2nd.... :-(

TIA

(He's bringing that disk to me tomorrow, and see if I can read it on my
machine, but from above errors, I don't nurture much hope.....
And we have only the rest of this week to get it working)

When/if I get the data from that disk, we're going to buy two new HDs, the
second one external, and do the data copying to that,
with CD-RW as weekly routine..


--
Tumppi
Reply to group
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Most learned on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
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(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
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Thomas Wendell said:
A friend of mine (a dentist, with all records on the computer) has a
"little" problem:
Today the HD gave up the ghost (?), ie. lost its MBR.
At least the computer won't boot from the HD, when booting from a floppy I
am able to see the contents of C: only, not D: ,
fdisk/mbr results in "boot sector not written", fdisk asks "Enable large
disk support", whirrs a while and replies "Error reading disk"
SeaTools says about the same, as its error report is "Failed to read MBR"
and that is all.


Is there any way to get the MBR back, as all his client records are on that
disk?

I've built a simple backup routine for him, in that it should every day
after hours copy the whole work directory to a CD-RW (circulating them
daily), but today when checking, last entry is May 2nd.... :-(

TIA

(He's bringing that disk to me tomorrow, and see if I can read it on my
machine, but from above errors, I don't nurture much hope.....
And we have only the rest of this week to get it working)

When/if I get the data from that disk, we're going to buy two new HDs, the
second one external, and do the data copying to that,
with CD-RW as weekly routine..


--
Tumppi
Reply to group
=================================================
Most learned on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
Helsinki, Finland (remove _NOSPAM)
(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
=================================================
Click to expand...

Download and run the diagnostic program that the
manufacturer of his hard disk makes available on
his home site.

Automatic processes have a tendency to fail, for
all sorts of reasons. It is essential to have a human
"back-stop" in place, to limit the damage in case
something goes wrong. In the case of data backup
this means showing the client a summary of the
backup log once every week, e.g. during the
logon process every Monday morning. This is
even more important than buying a portable
hard disk.

If you do buy a portable hard disk then might
as well take advantage of the large capacity,
and create a backup for every day of the month,
numbered Backup01 . . Backup 31.
 
I did, as stated. SeaTools should be the one, as the disk is a Seagate
ST380020AAnd, no, I haven't run "Advanced Diagnostics" on it yet....



--
Tumppi
Reply to group
=================================================
Most learned on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
Helsinki, Finland (remove _NOSPAM)
(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
=================================================
 
Try these two things. First, in SeaTools, there should be an option to
restore the MBR if my memory serves me correctly. I'm not sure if that
would work (it may even require that you have backed it up previously).

This is what I would do. Boot off your Windows XP CD, press R to go to
Recovery Console, now type FIXMBR and FIXBOOT (latter may not be
necessary). This is similar to fdisk /mbr only it supports NTFS and
48bit LBA.
 
Thomas said:
A friend of mine (a dentist, with all records on the computer) has a
"little" problem:
Today the HD gave up the ghost (?), ie. lost its MBR.
At least the computer won't boot from the HD, when booting from a floppy I
am able to see the contents of C: only, not D: ,
fdisk/mbr results in "boot sector not written", fdisk asks "Enable large
disk support", whirrs a while and replies "Error reading disk"
SeaTools says about the same, as its error report is "Failed to read MBR"
and that is all.


Is there any way to get the MBR back, as all his client records are on that
disk?

I've built a simple backup routine for him, in that it should every day
after hours copy the whole work directory to a CD-RW (circulating them
daily), but today when checking, last entry is May 2nd.... :-(

TIA

(He's bringing that disk to me tomorrow, and see if I can read it on my
machine, but from above errors, I don't nurture much hope.....
And we have only the rest of this week to get it working)

When/if I get the data from that disk, we're going to buy two new HDs, the
second one external, and do the data copying to that,
with CD-RW as weekly routine..
Click to expand...

This seems like a fine opportunity to teach the dentist about the
value of backing up his data.
 
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