How to recover files from corrupt drive

[DC]

Hi,

I am trying to save some data from a notebook with windows xp home.
The machine crashes while booting. To copy some essential data I
removed the hard-drive and placed it into an external USB box, but
when I connect this external drive to another xp machine, that machine
will crash also (with the same ntfs.sys error).

I put the drive back into the notebook and tried booting the ultimate
bood disk for windows. It also does not boot, something must have
seriously gone wrong with this drive. I then used the ultimate boot cd
(dos) and I can see the directory structure of the broken hdd there.
So now I need to copy the data out, but how?

I tried to access an external drive using the aspiusb driver, but all
it gives me is a drive letter that fails on the "dir" command, so my
drive seems to be incompatible with aspiusb. Other options to get the
data would be an sd card, burning a cd rom and maybe a usb memory
stick (which I would need to purchase first). But I don't know how to
address any of these targets with a boot cd.

By the way: I used the disk diagnostics from the ultimate boot cd for
windows on the drive - did not report any errors.

I am quiet clueless now... maybe get a more compatible boot disk with
usb hdd support?

TIA for any hint!

Regards
DC

 

[Andrew E.]

With alot of pcs,when you add another hd to the machine by default the new
hd gets placed as 1st boot device,readjust for this in the BIOS...Also,with a
corrupt hd,try booting to xp cd,recovery,select 1 for C: press enter for
password,
type:CHKDSK C: /R type:EXIT When thru,this lets xp try to repair bad
sectors
(usually the fault),& the OS files,once youre thru,let xp start normal,or
tap the F8
key on start-up or restart,enter xp in safe-mode,enter as
administrator,move data
to cd &/or run the file transfer wizard from xp cd,select data,move data to
cd.

 

[DC]

  With alot of pcs,when you add another hd to the machine by default thenew
 hd gets placed as 1st boot device,readjust for this in the BIOS...Also,with a
 corrupt hd,try booting to xp cd,recovery,select 1 for C: press enter for
password,
 type:CHKDSK C: /R  type:EXIT  When thru,this lets xp try to repair bad
sectors
 (usually the fault),& the OS files,once youre thru,let xp start normal,or
tap the F8
 key on start-up or restart,enter xp in safe-mode,enter as
administrator,move data
 to cd &/or run the file transfer wizard from xp cd,select data,move data to
cd.












- Zitierten Text anzeigen -

Thank you, Andrew. The problem is: when I try starting the recovery
console, the system crashes with the same ntfs.sys bluescreen after I
chose a keyboard layout. I was able to run chkdsk via the ntfs4dos
tools on the ultimate boot disk, but chkdsk did not report any errors.

I cannot install a secondary harddrive (other than a usb hdd) and even
if I could I suspect the system would crash as soon as I am trying to
access the corrupt ntfs partition.

Regards
DC

 

[DC]

Thank you, Andrew. The problem is: when I try starting the recovery
console, the system crashes with the same ntfs.sys bluescreen after I
chose a keyboard layout. I was able to run chkdsk via the ntfs4dos
tools on the ultimate boot disk, but chkdsk did not report any errors.

I cannot install a secondary harddrive (other than a usb hdd) and even
if I could I suspect the system would crash as soon as I am trying to
access the corrupt ntfs partition.

Regards
DC- Zitierten Text ausblenden -

- Zitierten Text anzeigen -

I managed to repair the drive... or rather ntfs4dos managed to repair
it for me. I had previously run the scan utility that comes with
ntfs4dos on the ultimate boot cd in read only mode and it did not
report any errors, so I did not bother. I now re-ran the tool in write
mode and it did find and correct a defect - voila, windows xp boots
again.

Regards
DC