sigm said:
A family member has their small business and personal info on a ME machine.
Recently they have been having various issues with it--screen going black,
hard drive error messages, hung bootups, keyboards failures, etc. Of
course,
they do not have backups of their data. I can get the machien to boot up
in
both safe and normal mode, but I do not have hardly any OS response at
all,
it just hangs. I thought that I would boot off my XP machine and then
hopefully backup the data from the slave drive. I can see the slave drive,
but it tells me the drive/data is corrupt. I do not know if this is an
NTFS
to FAT32 issue, or just simply a hard drive on its way out. Any
ideas/suggestions?
sigm:
I'm assuming the machine involved here is a desktop PC, right?
And I further assume that your primary, if not exclusive goal (and that of
your "family member") is to salvage the important data from that Me HDD,
right?
1. So assuming the data that you want to retrieve on the Me HDD is important
or crucial (and it would appear it is since you indicate the user's business
info is contained on that disk), the first thing you should do - the very
first thing - is to use a disk imaging program to clone the contents of that
drive to another drive and work only with the cloned HDD - not the original
disk. I assume you have a disk imaging program and know how to use it or you
can locate a source that will do this for you.
I'm sure I don't have to explain to you about the potential danger of
working with the one & only original HDD and further manipulating its
contents in one way or another. There's a real & present danger in
exacerbating the problem to the point where the data is unrecoverable and
the only remaining option is to employ a commercial recovery service - a
most expensive process and one without guarantees.
If you can't, or won't, create a clone of the problem drive, then proceed
with an understanding of the possible consequences.
2. Using the Win Me Startup (boot) disk, can you access the data on the Me
HDD and copy whatever files you need to another FAT32-formatted HDD
(possibly the clone you might have created) that you've (temporarily)
installed in the machine? Would that solve your immediate problem of
retrieving the files you & your family member wants?
3. Using the cloned HDD, if possible, do a reinstall of the Me OS, not a
"fresh" install. If you're lucky - very lucky - this will resolve whatever
problems are affecting the operating system and retain all the data on the
drive.
4. Is there any possibility of "upgrading" the system (the present Me OS) to
XP and at least retrieving the data that way - assuming the XP upgrade is
successful?
Anyway, the above are approaches for you to consider.
Anna
