moving boot drive to new HD & recovering data from corrupt HD

[Rob.T]

Hello all … I have a two part question, which requires a bit o
background. I am running XP Pro SP2 in with an AMD Anthlon 64 3000
processor (1800 GH) on a Gigabyte motherboard and 1 Gig of RAM. I hav
been running with two IDE drives (61 Gig & 82 Gig respectively) and a W
250 Gig SATA drive. The WD drive is divided into three partitions: th
C: (Operating System) partition; the D partition which contains othe
applications; and the E partition, which contains all of my media file
(music, movies, audiobooks, etc.) and is over 150 Gigs.

Recently I experienced a problem whereby my computer would shut dow
after a few hours, and on reboot I would get the message “NTLDR i
missing; press CTRL+ALT+DEL”. I finally realized it was a hea
problem, so yesterday I took my computer in to get the power supply
fans updated. They checked the WD hard drive and advised me that th
disk was corrupt, and needed to be replaced. It’s still unde
manufacturer’s warranty, so I bought a new, identical WD 250 Gig SAT
disk and decided to move everything from the old WD to the new WD
remove the old WD disk & send it to the manufacturer, and when I get i
back I’ll have an addition 250 Gig SATA hard drive.

After the new disk was installed, partitioned the new WD the same a
the old WD and ghosted the C: & D: partitions on the old WD wit
Acronis and copied the data onto the new WD. I then changed the driv
letter for the “other applications” partition to D on the new WD an
erased all the date that was on D from the old WD. So far it’s workin
fine, and the computer is reading all of my other applications from th
new WD.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for your patience!!! Now I come tw
the two questions / problems I have. They are:

1) How do I make the partition on the new WD containing the operatin
system files the boot directory? I know I have to change the driv
letter for the partition to “C” and make some changes in BIOS, but I a
not sure exactly what those steps, and their sequence, are. I’m sur
there are some very easy to use guides out there, but I’ve trie
googling, with no results.

2) When I try to access the partition on the old WD containing all o
my media files via My Computer, I get the message “E:\ is no
accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”. As
had mentioned, I have about 150 Gigs of data on this partition … i
there any way I can recover at least some of it?

Many, many thanks for your patience & support!

 

[GHalleck]

Rob.T wrote:

I think I've read your quite involved situation. Replied in-line.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for your patience!!! Now I come two
the two questions / problems I have. They are:

1) How do I make the partition on the new WD containing the operating
system files the boot directory? I know I have to change the drive
letter for the partition to “C” and make some changes in BIOS, but I am
not sure exactly what those steps, and their sequence, are. I’m sure
there are some very easy to use guides out there, but I’ve tried
googling, with no results.

Cannot be done so long as the original WD drive is still
connected to the computer. In fact, the cloning should have
been done without the original WD drive on the computer,
booting off the Acronis cdrom with the drive image or from
the Acronis boot disk(ette). This is the proper way to
maintain the drive order of C, D, etc. The boot partition
should revert to Drive C after removing the original WD
drive.

2) When I try to access the partition on the old WD containing all of
my media files via My Computer, I get the message “E:\ is not
accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”. As I
had mentioned, I have about 150 Gigs of data on this partition … is
there any way I can recover at least some of it?

Take "ownership" of the drive or partition. Visit Microsoft
and get the KB article on how to do it (do not have it handy).
Should not present any issues provided that the original Drive D
was erased and not deleted.

(BTW, the original WD SATA drive might be in good shape. Not
many shops have competent staff to test SATA drives.)

 

[Richard Urban]

You have been had!

A corrupt drive (unless you have the terminology incorrect) can always be
repaired. It doesn't have to be replaced. You "may" lose the information on
the drive during the repair - but the drive will be 100% usable when the
repairs (using chkdsk with the /r option on the drive, deleting the original
partitions, creating new partitions and formatting the new partitions) are
completed.

Also, the repair tech may not be up-to-date on all the idiosyncrasies that
beset new equipment. For instance, I have an Adaptec add-in ATA 133 control
card that will absolutely NOT allow any drive connected to it to run chkdsk.
A message comes up that the drive is corrupted. The drives operate just
fine. If I connect them to an IDE controller, chkdsk proves that they are,
in fact, just fine.


--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Rob.T]

Hi guys ... thanks for getting back to me so quickly on these problem.
You both reference the completence of the Tech/Sales Person ... if
there is one thing I have found in buying & upgrading my systems is
that there is a pretty significant amount of variance in the basic
knowledge of the people you are dealing with at different stores. I
started frequenting the shop I have been going to for the last few
years (a one-person branch of a small chain) because the Tech was
really excellent. For example, in the past I moved the operating
system from one disk to another with no problem, thanks to this guy.
He knew exactly what he was doing. Unfortunately, when I went to the
shop yesterday, there was a new guy there, and he didn't have a clue!!
Hence, my present dilema(s).

Ghallek, thanks for the info on changing the boot partition. Can you
refer me to someplace which will provide a little more detailed
explanation ... i.e. with a step by step "for dummies" approach. I
confess BIOS / Hardware issues are not my strong suit.

Richard, you may be right that I was had, although I am a firm believer
in the adage that you should never attribute to malevolence that which
could be more easily attributed to incompetence. As I explained, the
computer was shutting down & then when it tried to reboot it gave me a
“NTLDR is missing; press CTRL+ALT+DEL” error message. Pressing C/A/D
didn't work by the way ... I had to restart it. I ran some diagnostics
on it, and the problem was around "reallocated sector count". One of
the tools I used stated that becasue the disk had 764 reallocated
sectors, the hard disk needed to be replaced. Now, I don't have a clue
what that means and, unfortunately, neither did the Tech!

If the disk is salvagable, great! However, my big concern at this
point is rescuing some of the data from the old partition which is
giving me the “E:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is
corrupted and unreadable” message. After that, I will do a CHKDSK,
reformat .... whatever ... and determine if the disk is truly nackered.
I've been googling some more, and some software pops up ... "Ontrack
Easy Recovery Professional" (which I have heard of) and a program
called "GetDataBack" (which I have never heard of). Do you guys know
anything about these products?

Thanks again!!

 

[Richard Urban]

Replace the drive!

The last bit of information, excessive reallocated sectors, sheds a
different light on your problem. You don't have logical disk corruption. You
have physical disk problems, and these can not be corrected.

During manufacture of a hard drive, x amount of extra, unused sectors, are
kept in reserve on the drive. These are never written to. If the drive
suffers from physical problems, and sectors become bad, they are switched
out with the spares (logically, of course). When the store of spares has
been used up, the drive, for all practical purposes, should be disposed of.
Many do not wait for the problem to become this large and trash a drive when
the first few are detected. Where one lives, others are certain to populate.

Remember the difference between logical corruption and physical
corruption/damage. And be certain to explain, as best and completely as you
can exactly what error messages have been seen with regards to the problem.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Rob.T]

Replace the drive!

The last bit of information, excessive reallocated sectors, sheds a
different light on your problem. You don't have logical disk
corruption. You
have physical disk problems, and these can not be corrected.

During manufacture of a hard drive, x amount of extra, unused sectors,
are
kept in reserve on the drive. These are never written to. If the drive

suffers from physical problems, and sectors become bad, they are
switched
out with the spares (logically, of course). When the store of spares
has
been used up, the drive, for all practical purposes, should be disposed
of.
Many do not wait for the problem to become this large and trash a drive
when
the first few are detected. Where one lives, others are certain to
populate.

Remember the difference between logical corruption and physical
corruption/damage. And be certain to explain, as best and completely as
you
can exactly what error messages have been seen with regards to the
problem.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

Thanks for that Richard. So I know the drive is nackered, and I'll
send it in to WD for a replacement. Do you think any of the data on
the "E:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and
unreadable" partition is recoverable?? That's really the only error
message, other than "NTLDR is missing; press CTRL+ALT+DEL" when it
restarts.
Thanks!

 

[Richard Urban]

Google for file recovery programs. Some are free and work. Some you pay for
and they work a lot better.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Rob.T]

Google for file recovery programs. Some are free and work. Some you pa
for
and they work a lot better.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!



"Rob.T" (e-mail address removed) wrote in message

Replace the drive!

The last bit of information, excessive reallocated sectors, sheds a
different light on your problem. You don't have logical disk
corruption. You
have physical disk problems, and these can not be corrected.

During manufacture of a hard drive, x amount of extra, unuse
sectors,
are
kept in reserve on the drive. These are never written to. If th
drive

suffers from physical problems, and sectors become bad, they are
switched
out with the spares (logically, of course). When the store of spares
has
been used up, the drive, for all practical purposes, should b
disposed
of.
Many do not wait for the problem to become this large and trash
drive
when
the first few are detected. Where one lives, others are certain to
populate.

Remember the difference between logical corruption and physical
corruption/damage. And be certain to explain, as best and completel
as
you
can exactly what error messages have been seen with regards to the
problem.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

Thanks for that Richard. I did as you suggested, and I was able t
recover most of my data with Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional.
highly recommended program from one satisfied customer!!

Can you assist regarding where I can get some detailed directions as t
how no move my operating system from the old disk to the new one?

Thanks again!

 

[Richard Urban]

If the old disk is the one that is "physically" corrupted - I wouldn't even
try. You have no idea (neither do I) what you may end up with because of
lost system files.

BTW, EasyRecovery Professional is the program I have standardized on for
file recovery. You made a very wise, if expensive, choice!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

Google for file recovery programs. Some are free and work. Some you pay
for
and they work a lot better.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!



"Rob.T" (e-mail address removed) wrote in message

Replace the drive!

The last bit of information, excessive reallocated sectors, sheds a
different light on your problem. You don't have logical disk
corruption. You
have physical disk problems, and these can not be corrected.

During manufacture of a hard drive, x amount of extra, unused
sectors,
are
kept in reserve on the drive. These are never written to. If the
drive

suffers from physical problems, and sectors become bad, they are
switched
out with the spares (logically, of course). When the store of spares
has
been used up, the drive, for all practical purposes, should be
disposed
of.
Many do not wait for the problem to become this large and trash a
drive
when
the first few are detected. Where one lives, others are certain to
populate.

Remember the difference between logical corruption and physical
corruption/damage. And be certain to explain, as best and completely
as
you
can exactly what error messages have been seen with regards to the
problem.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

Thanks for that Richard. I did as you suggested, and I was able to
recover most of my data with Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional. A
highly recommended program from one satisfied customer!!

Can you assist regarding where I can get some detailed directions as to
how no move my operating system from the old disk to the new one?

Thanks again!!

 

[Rob.T]

If the old disk is the one that is "physically" corrupted - I wouldn'
even
try. You have no idea (neither do I) what you may end up with becaus
of
lost system files.

BTW, EasyRecovery Professional is the program I have standardized o
for
file recovery. You made a very wise, if expensive, choice!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

Oh well, I guess it's time to reinstall windows.
Thanks for all of your help, Richard & GHalleck.
Cheers!