Hard Drive partition Inaccessible 1

[rexian]

Hello,

I have a Seagate 300GB IDE Hard drive with 2 partitions. Partition 1 (volume name D1) with 32GB and the rest 250GB in Partition 2 (volume name D2).

Yesterday suddenly Windows XP gave an error saying it can't access a directory in partition 2 and I need to run chkdsk. It happened after I connected an external firewire harddrive to the computer. I then removed the external drive, but the problem continued.

I restarted the computer and ran chkdsk when it asked, it deleted a few invalid entries and then finally said the MFT was corrupt.

After the computer booted, I can see partitions have been interchanged. Partition 1 has become partition 2 (with 32GB) and partition 2 has become partition 1 (with 250GB) but is also completely inaccessible, I can see the new partition 1, but it says it's not formatted. Has anyone experienced the interchange of partitions ? I can still access all the files in partition 2 (old partition 1) but nothing in partition 1.

Is there a way I can just modify the MFT of partition 1 and see the content without formatting the hard drive ? I don't want to lose the data by formatting.

Thanks in advance.

 

[wahnula]

Have you tried System Restore? Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore

I assume that Windows is on the working partition, no?

Sounds like Windows swapped the working partition and the non-working one, nothing of concern here.

There are many file recovery apps that do not require a MFT to work, check out Zero Assumption Recovery:

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm

There are others if that does not work. Good luck.

 

[rexian]

Thanks wahnula. I haven't tried System restore but I probably have it turned off. And also, when I ran chkdsk, it found a lot of invalid entries and deleted them, so I wonder if that would have worked anyway.

I'll try this software. My only worry is, since chkdsk deleted lot of files, the software may show the files but may not finally restore as some parts may be gone. But there is only 1 way to find out I am currently using runtime's GetDataBack, if it doesn't help next I'll try ZAR.

I should also mention that the motherboard I am using is about 3 years old and already IDE2 port doesn't work. IDE1 is connected to 2 drives. One is still fine running the OS. The other one is this drive whose one partition is still working. So, it could be because of the motherboard itself.

 

[kjv1611]

Another idea. Since it happened after the Firewire Hard Drive, then I would look at these options:

1.) is the folder located actually on the firewire hard drive?
2.) Maybe the driver for the firewire harddrive was bad, and needs to be removed/updated.
3.) Have you tried plugging back up the firewire hard drive, and just disabling it, and see if that makes any difference?

 

[rexian]

Well, the firewire drive was a different one. The defective partition is on a hard drive which is connected to the system as a slave drive through IDE1 channel.

Windows gave an error in Explorer when I tried to access the defective partition. Then I disconnected the firewire drive, but this didn't help. It could be that the firewire driver caused this but the firewire drive has been in use for quite sometime.

 

[rexian]

By the way, using the Get Data Back software, I am able to view the files. Now just need another drive to copy the data

Hopefully this drive will start working again ...