XP asking to format prime disk

[Guest]

Hi all,
I wonder if someone here could give me a quick fix answer on this.
Apparently one of my users is having an issue with her primary disk - the
disk is inaccessible & now asking her to format the drive...she didnt know
(of course) on what she did that may have caused this problem...
It looks like the MFT got corrupted and couldnt fix it in XP repair tool and
chkdsk.

Could you let me know if there's anything else out there that I could try? I
looked into File Recovery Tools out there but still looking on a fast advice
to recover her PST files et al & reimage the disk from scratch...

Thanks!

 

[Malke]

Hi all,
I wonder if someone here could give me a quick fix answer on this.
Apparently one of my users is having an issue with her primary disk -
the disk is inaccessible & now asking her to format the drive...she
didnt know (of course) on what she did that may have caused this
problem... It looks like the MFT got corrupted and couldnt fix it in
XP repair tool and chkdsk.

Could you let me know if there's anything else out there that I could
try? I looked into File Recovery Tools out there but still looking on
a fast advice to recover her PST files et al & reimage the disk from
scratch...

Thanks!

If you have physical access to the machine, try booting with Knoppix or
a Bart's PE or ERD Commander (expensive) to get the data off. The
reason I mention you having physical access is that your end user isn't
going to be able to do this.

http://www.knoppix.net
http://tinyurl.com/coyca - Winternals emergency downloads
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ (Bart's PE)

Malke

 

[Guest]

Yes I heard about KNOPPIX, but will it let me retrieve data off of the
damaged disk eventho the disk is inaccessible? I tried one of these Data
Recovery tools but it's not letting me retrieve the files from the damaged
disk since it stating "disk inaccessible, format disk yes/no?"

I guess one way to find out, let me give it a shot....

Thanks.

 

[Malke]

Yes I heard about KNOPPIX, but will it let me retrieve data off of the
damaged disk eventho the disk is inaccessible? I tried one of these
Data Recovery tools but it's not letting me retrieve the files from
the damaged disk since it stating "disk inaccessible, format disk
yes/no?"

No, if the hard drive is physically damaged - and I would put it in
another machine to make sure it is the drive and not the motherboard
that has the problem - then the only way to get data off it is by
sending the drive to a professional data recovery firm. I like
DriveSavers (www.drivesavers.com) but there are others such as Ontrack
and Seagate Data Recovery. These firms' services are not inexpensive,
but only you can determine the value of the data. Since this is a
business, I would expect that you'd be backing up regularly so perhaps
you should test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from the drive
mftr. and if bad replace it and put your image on it, restore data from
backup.

Malke

 

[lurkswithin]

actually, what it sounds like is the harddrive failed and it is not
being read anymore. If this is the case...(this would be a perfect
example of why backing up files to disc or an external drive is
imperative) your drive is toast and short of tearing two drives
apart and swaping disks...it is history.
You will never be able to access the drive to retrieve the data that
is on that disc.

Now there are some exceptions. The disc may be repairable with a HDD
manufacturer's repair/diagnostic program that is downloadable to
either floppy or cd(bootable). I do not reccommend that any other
manufacturer's repair disc be used. Also this proceedure would be
better performed if the disc was left as master.

another option would be to boot into the bios and see if the disc is
actually being seen in the bios. If it is being seen then it could be
as simple as replacing the cable going to the harddrive as these do go
out from time to time.