jimmy89 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 (edited) Hi,I was recently trying to resize my hard drive and now cannot boot the disk. I try to start the computer and get a error 'BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER' This volume contains files that i really need. My last backup was last week which is not recent enough for what I have (I did heaps of work the other day which hasn't been backed up).The hard drive that is damaged is in my main computer, and i have a spare drive (4gb) in the same computer! is there any way to copy the files from the 'damaged' volume over to the other disk, or too my external usb hard drive.Anything that could be helpful is greatly appreciated!-jimmyEDIT: Running the diskpart tool in the recovery console shows me that the drive is currently 'unpartitioned space' Will I still be able to recover data from there? Edited July 9, 2007 by Jimmy89 (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
faulty.lee 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 Do you have another working PC around? I guess so, since you can still post your problem here, right?There's 4 ways to do it.1.If it was due to missing or corrupted boot file, you can just run the recovery from Window's Installation disk. Btw, I'm assuming you're running at least Win2K or WinXP.2. Take that harddisk out and plug into another pc to read it. Make sure to make it a slave drive, so you can still boot into windows with the existing one. What to do next, i don't think i need to spell it out.3. If you have a recent copy of LiveCD linux, say Knoppix or Slax, you can boot from it and be access the hard disk from there. You need a recent one, how recent i'm not that sure. The one i downloaded last month already has NTFS support built in. 4. If your other smaller hard disk has some space left, around 2GB, and it has a primary partition, then you can temporarily disconnect the other hard disk, install a fresh copy of window, WITHOUT formatting. Then plug the other hard disk back, so you can access it.That's about it. Hopefully it was due to missing or corrupted boot file. If not, that hard disk will be as good as a junk. Btw, did you notice some knocking sound coming from that hard disk lately? That might indicate a start of failure. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jimmy89 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 I have tried using a linux live cd but it cannot read the drive (as in it is not in the explorer), i also tried installing xp on the other drive, same problem cant read the drive.I cannot simply plug the drive into another computer, firstly cause the computer im posting from is a laptop, and secondly the only other computer doesn't have SATA plug to hook up the drive! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
faulty.lee 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 I have tried using a linux live cd but it cannot read the drive (as in it is not in the explorer), i also tried installing xp on the other drive, same problem cant read the drive.I cannot simply plug the drive into another computer, firstly cause the computer im posting from is a laptop, and secondly the only other computer doesn't have SATA plug to hook up the drive! SATA drive will have more problem. If you don't see the drive from another windows, then can you check the hardware property if it's there. Or under Disk Management of Administrative Tools\Computer Management. Maybe the partition is corrupted, so no "drive" will appear under explorer. Also check if your bios did indeed detected the hard disk. If it's a corrupted partition, you'll need some recovery software to recover your file Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wutske 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 it looks to me like your partitiontable is damagegd. Look for some kind of partition recovery tool (there are a bunch of free tools, but I've never had such a problem so I don't know which one is best, but I'm sure other people around here can help you with that).Another possible solution is to repartition your drive like it was before, tough this probably won't work without formatting (something you realy don't want to do ) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hexwiz 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 Hi,I was recently trying to resize my hard drive and now cannot boot the disk. I try to start the computer and get a error 'BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER' This volume contains files that i really need. My last backup was last week which is not recent enough for what I have (I did heaps of work the other day which hasn't been backed up).The hard drive that is damaged is in my main computer, and i have a spare drive (4gb) in the same computer! is there any way to copy the files from the 'damaged' volume over to the other disk, or too my external usb hard drive.Anything that could be helpful is greatly appreciated!-jimmyEDIT: Running the diskpart tool in the recovery console shows me that the drive is currently 'unpartitioned space' Will I still be able to recover data from there? yo jimmy i dont think the disk is broke. looks like it's just a corrupted partition table. you could set the spare drive as primary and install a barebones windows os (preferably xp) and use a tool such as pc inspector file recovery (download from http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinspector.html) and run it and copy all your important files over to the spare drive. really cool tool i've used it on a winxp system to recover a whole FAT32 partition after installing winxp + pc inspector on a second partition which was not corrupted. i haven't really tried NTFS but the reviews say it does support and it should most probably work. there's lot more tools a quick googling would bring up. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
faulty.lee 0 Report post Posted July 9, 2007 OOps, I didn't notice the "resize" word you mentioned in your first post. So, hexwiz and wutske was right. You indeed have a corrupted partition. I've never tried pc inspector, but i've tried Ontrack Easy Recovery and GetDataBack. Ontrack seems to be better. If you know what file you want to recover, and don't care about the directory structure, raw recovery will do. Else, you'll have to partition the drive as it was before (the original state), then do a format recovery. But this is a bit too risky. Btw, the rules of thumb is avoid touching (edit/write) the content of the hard disk as much as possible, until you have no other choice. If pc inspector can't work out, PM me, i can send you a copy of Ontrack to try out. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jimmy89 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 (edited) Thank you once again for your help so far! I am currently downloading PC Inspector to attempt files as hexwiz said. I have tried GetDataBack, it seemed to be working, but the folder view was filled with folders with red crosses!Last Night, I also downloaded the iso image of ultimate boot cd. hopefully this will have some tools to help recover the corrupted partition! I haven't yet touched the damaged drive yet as there are some very important files on there and it would be great to get them back in one piece!Thanks-jimmyEDIT: The PC Inspector is only going to work for drives that windows can read, and because the partition is damaged (hopefully) windows is not showing the drive in explore!EDIT: Using Ultimate Boot CD, when i try t boot the second drive it says it cannot read the master boot record. Is this any indication of what can be done to get data back? Edited July 10, 2007 by Jimmy89 (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
faulty.lee 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 EDIT: Using Ultimate Boot CD, when i try t boot the second drive it says it cannot read the master boot record. Is this any indication of what can be done to get data back?Ultimate Boot CD can just boot off itselft right? Why need to boot the second drive along with it? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hexwiz 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 PC inspector WILL work. Let me try a step by step instruction for you though instructing is not something I do very well  1. Remove the faulty hard disk from your cabinet 2. Install the 4 gb drive as a primary an install windows on it (barebones XP preferably) 3. Install pc inspector file reovery on this 4gb drive 4. Install the corrupted drive as a slave/secondary 5. Fire up PC Inspector 6. Select Eglish in the language selection dialog 7. In the second window select the tab(button?) against Recover deleted files. It will scan the drives on your system and show the available drives - both logical and physical in the next window 7. Next youll see a Select drive window with tabs - Logical drives and Physical drives 8. Click on the Physical drive tab 9. In the list inthe next window, in the list of drives, select your bad drive (Should prolly show as fixed disk #2 if the 4GB drive is primary) 10. Click on Find logical drives on the right of the window. This could take hours depending on the size of your disk 11. In the Select sector range window set the Start sector slider to 0 and the End sector slider to the max and click on the ? tab(button?) to its left 12. Once the scanning is done it should automatically bring up the Logical drives tab 13. Select the drive in the list. It should be listed as something like C Drive on fixed disk #2 or something like that 14. Highlight it and click on the Check Mark at the bottom right hand corner 15. It should bring up a directory tree of all files and folders it could find under that Root 16. Click on the + sign next to Root and LO! Abracadabra  If you dont find you files under that branch go to the Object menu at the upper left hand corner of the main window, click on Drive and select a different item from the listing under Logical drives  You could of course boot with Ultimate Boot CD. But it proly won't run PC inspector. And I don't know if it'd have HDD recovery tools. I've never used it myself.  Good Luck! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
vidit 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 (edited) I had got the same type of problem a few weeks before, but it is due to some virus. And this is what i did.1. Downloaded UBCD4 windows iso .2. Booted from the UBCD4win cd. There are lot of options available in the boot menu of UBCD. Choose "Boot from CD" option.3. Now it will ask for choosing the shell that is to be used. Leave it to default.4. First of all i used the file management utility to check if the hard-disk is detected. It is not detected, then proceed to the next step.5. There are lot of disk tools like MBRFix, MBRmagic, Testdisk and many others available in the CD.6. I used Testdisk to Analyze the Hard-disk and it found the partitions. Even if it will not get detected in File-management Utilities, it will be detected in Disk-tools by its name.7. Then use "Write" option, it will write the partition info to the disk.8. Now reboot and remove the CD. You should now be able to boot from your hard-disk. Best of Luck Edited July 10, 2007 by vidit (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Chesso 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 If you have the option, connect it into another PC temporarily to see if you can't get the files off it through normal transfer means (meaning you boot from another drive/os installation and access your one as a secondary/non primary drive).I got to do the same thing (because of major hardware changes). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jimmy89 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 faulty - I boot the ubcd and it gives me the option to boot one of two drives, the first is the small 4gb drive i installed windows xp onto and the second is te damaged drive which gives me the MBR error.hexwiz - those steps are great, it got me all the way to the stage with the list of files under root, but all i can seem to get is random symbols and numbers/letters. It has no file structure and doesn't look like any files of mine are there.vidit - when i load the testdisk program of ubcd, i get errors that i have to press Ctrl + C to cancel out of! It wont seem to load that program properly!Chesso - I have a copy of win xp on another drive, but the damaged drive wont show up in my computer because the partition is damaged, it shows up in the disk management and device manger though.I am about to try the ontrack program, thanks to faulty, when its finished downloading!-jimmy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Markymark2 0 Report post Posted July 10, 2007 I think your trying to crack a wallnut with a sledgehammer here!Have you not tried using a windows bootdisk with Fdisk on it?Fdisk is here to sort MBR problems like this out.At the command prompt just type thisA:fdisk /mbr And it should rebuild the MBR for you.After a reboot it  should be fixed, if not then move on to another program to try to fix it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jimmy89 0 Report post Posted July 11, 2007 I think I may have solved the problems! Thanks to faulty and the program he lent me, it seems to be recovering the files! It found the NTFS partition on the damaged drive and has started to recover the files in the specified directory on the drive (it looks like is has found the entire disk structure). It found file names etc and seems to have recovered files without any corruption! I havent yet check all the files, but what ive got to so far has worked!Thanks heaps for all your help and suggestions. I just happy to have all my files back! Now to just wipe the drive and start from scratch again! -jimmy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
