HD continues to defy repair

[LadyGoddess]

Hello, I wrote a couple months back about my HD suddenly failing with a NTLDR is
Missing message (see:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1141878705).

I am
finally done with school and able to slave the broken Maxtor drive to the newer Western
Digital HD.

Upon restarting the computer after slaving the Maxtor, I went into My Computer and
found the HD drive showing up as drive E. However, it is being listed as a 10 meg
HD instead of 200 gig HD that it is. When I click on the drive, I see:

ntdect.com
ntldr

All the help from the earlier post was of no help in the end. I was told that I should
have been able to slave the old HD to the new one, start the computer and wa~lah,
find the old HD waiting for me to open it and drag and copy my files out of it. What
is going on? I'm feeling very anxious now.

The bad drive in question is a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 ATA133 200 GIG HD 7200 RPM

Thank you.

 

[wolluf]

What's showing in disk management for the problem drive? Presumably there's at least a 10MB (is that correct - 10MB) partition. If the rest is showing as unpartitioned or unformatted, you may need a data recovery app to retrieve data (eg, getdataback). I've not read the whole of your annoyances.org thread (its a bit long!), so not sure exactly what you've done. Eg, have you run Maxtor's diagnostic utility, powermax (as well as reporting on drive status, it can repair some problems too). When you ran chkdsk from recovery console, did you run chkdsk /p or chkdsk /r? (because if not, it would have been just a check, not a repair). And if there was more than one partition, did you run it on each?

 

[LadyGoddess]

Actually, I just realized that the new HD is using NTFS compression while the broken slave is using FAT. Is this the problem? I'm unsure how they ended up using different compressions when I used the exact same copy of Windows XP SP2 disc to format both intially.

What I'm suspecting is that I'll need to reformat the new drive into FAT and then see if that'll allow me to tap into the broken FAT slave drive. Does this sound like a viable option?

Thank you for your response.

 

[wolluf]

It doesn't matter what filestore type is used on the new drive - XP can access ntfs & fat. so don't waste your time reformatting new drive.

Have you looked in disk management? (run diskmgmt.msc) to see the status of the problem drive (in terms of partitions present, and whether they are formatted or not).

And the Maxtor utility (you can download it from their site), will tell you status of whole drive (and if its damaged, may offer some repair).

 

[LadyGoddess]

Alright, I ran diskmgmt.msc and got this from it:

189.92 GB FAT
Online
Healthy (Active)
Partition style: Master Boot Records (MBR)

However, at the top part of the box, it lists its capcity as still being only 10 MB.

 

[LadyGoddess]

Alright, I ran the PowerMax diagnostic test from Maxtor. The results came back as the device has failed. The good news is that Maxtor is replacing the hard drive since its still under warrenty. The bad news is that I still cannot get the data off. The estimates I'm getting is well over $400 to recover this data. I do not think its worth that, but I feel physically ill thinking about the stuff that will be lost (I had gone to my grandparents shortly before the crash and my photos were on the HD for example). I'm dling and trying every data recovery program I can. Any other suggestions at this point?

 

[wolluf]

Do you mean data recovery apps are finding nothing?

Is disk management showing a 10MB partition, and the rest of the drive unformatted? The fact it can see it as 189.92GB shows some life there - but I'm confused as to where its saying 10MB

 

[LadyGoddess]

When you go into My Computer it shows drive E, which is the bad drive. By hovering the mouse on top of it, it says its only 10MB. However, using diskmgmt.msc, it does list 189GB.

The diskmgmt.msc program is split into a top and bottom half. The top half is white while the bottom is gray. Button-like is the bottom where it lists the 189GB. The top part, white, shows it as 10MB.

 

[directlyconnected]

Hey---first off, when you originally had the NTLDR file disappear or go corrupt, did you by chance have a trojan or some other virus? Also, while the drive is slaved, right click on the bad drive, select properties, then tools, and check now (error-checking). It should say that it needs certain Windows files to do this, but they are currently being used. Do you want the error checking to happen upon restarting Windows? Click "yup", or "sure", or "you damn skippy", or "yes"---whatever it says (can't remember). Then restart Windows. If this does not work, then go to My Computer, click tools at the top, then folder options, then view, and for Hidden Files and Folders, select "Show Hidden Files and Folders". It will ask you if you're sure---click "what the hell do you think?", or "yes"---can't remember what it says. then close it all out, and go to My Computer, and select your good drive (double click). You should see a file called "ntldr". Right click on this, select copy, close out the good drive, open your bad drive, and replace the existing ntldr file with the good one. Reboot, and press F2, or whatever key takes you to your bios setup (could be F1, F2 or delete---keep pressing these rapidly as soon as your computer turns back on). Select it to boot from the slave drive, and see what happens. If you need a file recovery program, Google Limewire, and select the link for Download.com. Download Limewire, and search for "file recovery". Good luck. Later. Oh---while you are on Limewire, get yourself a copy of Norton Ghost and use it!

Tim

 

[LadyGoddess]

Thank you very much for your advice. I will do that shortly. In regards to the virus question, when the computer crashed, I could not get anywhere with it. It just kept repeating, "NTLDR is Missing" and then no amount of recovery from the XP disc would fix it.

 

[LadyGoddess]

Alright, apparently its only checking the 10MB that the bad drive is claiming to have under "My Computer." It just checks it and then says its completed the check.

 

[Freestone]

Please clarify Disk Management again. First, while in Disk Management, under the View Menu, ensure Bottom is set for Graphical View. Then at the bottom on the very left, which ever drive contains your E: partition (probably Disk 1), it says something like Disk 1 Basic nnnGB Online... how many gigabytes (GB)? Bottom right side shows E: nn.nn GB, FAT32 or NTFS, Healthy... again how many GB?

 

[LadyGoddess]

Also, there is no NTLDR file showing up in my C (good) drive. I have all hidden files shown and am not able to find it using XP's search options. Apparently it is there though for the computer to be up and running while using the good HD.

 

[LadyGoddess]

Freestone:

It reads,

Disk 1 Basic 189.92 GB Online
then to the right, E: 189.92 GB FAT Healthy (Active)


Then I just discovered something. XP is installed on my good C drive. I reformated C earlier when I cloned E to it and then I could not access C. Currently C has a fresh copy of XP installed on it. However, C's recycling bin has files on it that I deleted *before* I cloned and reformatted it.

Upon some further inspectition, I found out that tool clean up for E shows that it has around 200kb in *its* recyling bin ready to be deleted. This is the exact same size as the stuff I deleted earlier off E and was trashed in C's recycling bin.

From what I can tell, E's recyling bin is overriding C's which seems like it should be impossible. If the files I deleted off E were in C's recycling bin, they would have been erased when I reformated.

Now I'm getting creepy "ghost in the machine" vibes.

 

[Freestone]

...there is no NTLDR file showing up in my C (good) drive. I have all hidden files shown and am not able to find it using XP's search options.

Make sure Folder view option "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" is not checked.

As far as the Recycle Bin, your new install of XP is simply picking up the remnants of the Recycle bin that still exists somewhere on the E: drive.

So you are saying in Disk Management, the top pane, under the Capacity column, it is reporting E: drive as 10GB?

 

[LadyGoddess]

What I'm seeing:

http://bulldog.unca.edu/~algoodma/UNTITLED.GIF

 

[wolluf]

Well, there's obviously a problem there - the filestore type is FAT, max partition size 2GB, but in the bottom pane its showing as 189GB partition! Presumably a manifestation of the fact the drive has failed (suspect the partition table has become corrupted). You'll not properly access data on the drive by 'normal' means - and possibly not at all. A data recovery app (eg, getdataback) would be best bet (other than the expensive recovery options you've looked at). If you're going to try, do it sooner rather than later, and until you're ready to try, don't use the drive.

 

[LadyGoddess]

Wolluf,

None of the recovery programs are working for me. They cannot get past the 10MB that it shows in My Computer.

 

[edfair]

I probably would have had the machine far enough apart during this exercise to have the bad drive on the secondary IDE as master rather than slaved on the primary channel.
I don't remember the earlier thread but did you run any diagnostics at the time, and if so, what were the results?
I would suspect that the FAT got munged, not the partition table, since the FAT gets rewritten regularly.
In times like this an old norton utilities for DOS with a sector editor would let you look at the FAT. Haven't had to do one for a long time but still have it available.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[LadyGoddess]

Not at the time, I did not run a diagnostic test at the time besides completing failing to get into the system. If I recall correctly, after three days or so of fighting to get back in, I eventually caved and bought a new HD and put the inaccesible one aside to come back to later. I was hoping for a solution to be found in the future to salvage it.

Are you suggesting that finding the Norton sector editor would be the way to try next?