I need to reset the media descriptor byte.

[Usalabs1]

I have a second hard drive, but windows or dos, says 'Invalid media reading drive D' I used Nortons disk editor to find the media descriptor byte, but I can't find it anywhere (maybe I don't know what to look for), I have tried swapping out the primary C drive with the other drive, booting from a floppy disk, then using 'FDISK /MBR' but that only fixes the master boot record, not the media descriptor byte, there is some data that I want to recover on that hard drive.

I tried changing the system description to 'DOS-16, BGDOS, DOSX, and FAT32', with FAT32 I got some sort of directory listing, but it's scrambled.

Does anyone know how I can change the media descriptor byte? So that I can at least get access to the files, and copy them across to the primary drive.

I believe that at sometime, bootmagic was installed in that drive, because whan I reboot the computer the boot up screen shows that 'Bootmagic can not find files, and will boot from the primary partition.......Press any key to continue', I think that bootmagic has somehow, changed some bytes on the hard drive, which ones?, I haven't a clue.

 

[edfair]

Sounds like time for file recovery software rather than jiggling how the OS deals with media.

Might I suggest a visit to the data recovery forum if you haven't already been there.

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

 

[satrow]

Bootmagic has a tendecy to hide drives, try starting it and unhiding it?

Andy.

 

[Usalabs1]

There might be a remainder of bootmagic left behind. When I swap drives, it still says 'Invalid Media Reading Drive C.' It seems that the only way I can get the OS to read the drive is to change the descriptor byte manually.

 

[edfair]

There is some recovery software available. Some free, some pricy. Getdataback comes to mind. You might try a google search for "data recovery" with some success.

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

 

[satrow]

You could try to reinstall Bootmagic then changing the default 'hide' settings.

Andy.