Re: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-04-01 Thread Scott Glasgow
The command to rewrite the master boot record w/o altering the partition 
table is FDISK /MBR. (The MBR is not normally written by FDISK unless no MBR 
exists at the time of partitioning; i.e., it's the first time a drive is 
being partitioned.) However, AFAIK, this is a DOS-only command, and if the 
drive has already been converted to NTFS (which does not use a 
DOS/Windows-style allocation table), all you may accomplish is to exacerbate 
a bad situation.

If you have another system which groks NTFS (NT, 2000, XP), change the 
master/slave jumper on the trouble drive and install it as a slave in the 
working system to see if it can read the drive at all. If not, you are 
definitely going to need some third-party software to try to access it. If 
the only available testbed system is Win98/ME, go to Sysinternals at 
http://www.sysinternals.com/win9x/98utilities.shtml and download either 
NTFSDOS or NTFS for Windows 98 to perform the test. They're both free, at 
least the read-only versions are. That's all you really need in this case, 
so that'll be fine.

WRT partition management tools, there are several major options available. 
Partition Magic, Partition Commander, Acronis Partition Expert, etc. None 
are free, and may not be a good choice for attempting to recover data, as 
their focus is on partition management: sizing, resizing, etc. There are 
high-powered administrator-level packages that claim to be able to recover 
files from dead volumes, etc., but they also come with a high-powered ticket 
price. Just how valuable/irreplaceable is this data, anyway?

With USB external drives running less than a buck per gig nowadays, it only 
makes sense to back up all your essential data to an external drive before 
beginning a major, and potentially calamitous, OS change. And for future 
reference, if you find yourself doing this again with a drive containing an 
existing OS, I recommend first doing the upgrade, THEN converting the drive 
to NTFS. Any OS which supports it has the capability to do the conversion 
after installation, and that way if you run into difficulty with the install 
you know (a) that it did not have anything to do with the drive format 
conversion, and (b) that you can still access the drive using the tools you 
had available previously. The fewer the number of elements in a process, the 
easier it is to troubleshoot problems with that process if they arise.

Cheers,
Scott
- Original Message - 
From: "Cheryl D Wise" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 6:10 PM
Subject: RE: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem


I've used that to recover some critical data before. It was a major pain 
but
it did get the file I needed. I don't know how well it would work for
recovering an entire drive.

I have seen utilities that would repair a master boot record without 
killing
the disk but I haven't need one in so long that I haven't a clue what the
one I used in the Windows 98 days was called.

There used to be a program called "partition magic" that would let you
resize a partition without damaging the data then format and install the 
OS
just on part of the drive.

I wonder if Paragon's hard disk manager would do any good since you can 
boot
off of a cd with it then work on the disk separately
http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/f_fm.htm


Cheryl D. Wise
Certified Professional Web Developer
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://wiserways.com
Office: 713-353-0139
-Original Messa
Thank you!  I woulds love to try that utility.  It makes sense that it has 
a
chance of working!

Diane
Ross Clutterbuck wrote:
Diane:
Sounds like the File Allocation Table might have gone the way of the
Dodo but for the life of me I can't remember if it's possible to
rebuild a FAT without killing the data.
One thing I would suggest is try booting into pure DOS and see if you
can read off the disk. I have a utility here called NTFSDOS which
allows the reading of NTFS drives within DOS. I can e-mail it to you
off list if you wish and see if you have any joy accessing the drive.
I'll have a looksie around and let you know if I can think of anything.

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RE: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-04-01 Thread Linden, Todd
Ooooh, h, I know!!  We recently started exploring BartPE that you
have to kind of assemble yourself but is really a version of Windows XP
that allows you to view the hard drive. It isn't horribly difficult but
you *NEED* a version of Windows XP to build the disk. It's not horribly
difficult, just follow the instructions from the web site.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ (The URL looks odd but it is legitimate)

BartPE will then allow you to use USB devices to back up files as long
as there is not significant hardware failure but then you probably
wouldn't get a "BSOD" if it didn't see the drive.

If that won't work for you, try Knoppix Linux. You can download the
"ISO" image, extract it to a CDROM and boot from that. Knoppix will read
an NTFS drive and has some USB abilities.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Hope this helps.

 - Todd



-Original Message-
From: Diane Schips [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 4:02 PM
To: wdvltalk@lists.wdvl.com
Subject: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

I'm trying to help my parents with their computer.  It keeps freezing.  
They were running Windows 98se, so I sought to upgrade them to Windows
200 prof.  At the point where the OS starts looking for installed
components, it freezes.  Rebooting doesn't help, it just keeps freezing.

I tried putting the hard drive in another computer.  I get past the
notification that it has been upgraded to NTFS, then I get the blue
screen of death.  If I try to use it as a slave, I get a message that it
is unformatted.

Nothing was backed up of course.

Is there anything I can do to save the data?

Diane

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Re:[wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-04-01 Thread Andrew Lau
Diane, 

boot the harddrive from another computer as a slave and try PC File 
Inspector (downlaod from the download.com) you should be able to get some 
data back (i am sure that you will lose some). it works for me last time. 

regards,
Andrew 





Diane Schips writes: 

I'm trying to help my parents with their computer.  It keeps freezing.  
They were running Windows 98se, so I sought to upgrade them to Windows 200 
prof.  At the point where the OS starts looking for installed components, 
it freezes.  Rebooting doesn't help, it just keeps freezing. 

I tried putting the hard drive in another computer.  I get past the 
notification that it has been upgraded to NTFS, then I get the blue screen 
of death.  If I try to use it as a slave, I get a message that it is 
unformatted. 

Nothing was backed up of course. 

Is there anything I can do to save the data? 

Diane 

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Re: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-03-31 Thread Ross Clutterbuck
Diane & Cheryl
This doesn't sound to me like a Master Boot Record failure as the drive 
cannot be read when slaved under a different OS. But Diane if you want to 
try it, from a pure DOS command line try fdisk /mbr on the drive in question 
to rebuild the Master Boot Record without damaging the rest of the drive. 
Whether this works for NTFS I can't say sorry :(

Or maybe try the administration tools under NT4/2000/XP and see if they 
help.

MOU 



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RE: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-03-31 Thread Cheryl D Wise
I've used that to recover some critical data before. It was a major pain but
it did get the file I needed. I don't know how well it would work for
recovering an entire drive.

I have seen utilities that would repair a master boot record without killing
the disk but I haven't need one in so long that I haven't a clue what the
one I used in the Windows 98 days was called.

There used to be a program called "partition magic" that would let you
resize a partition without damaging the data then format and install the OS
just on part of the drive.

I wonder if Paragon's hard disk manager would do any good since you can boot
off of a cd with it then work on the disk separately
http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/f_fm.htm 



Cheryl D. Wise
Certified Professional Web Developer
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://wiserways.com 
Office: 713-353-0139 

-Original Messa

Thank you!  I woulds love to try that utility.  It makes sense that it has a
chance of working!

Diane

Ross Clutterbuck wrote:

> Diane:
>
> Sounds like the File Allocation Table might have gone the way of the 
> Dodo but for the life of me I can't remember if it's possible to 
> rebuild a FAT without killing the data.
>
> One thing I would suggest is try booting into pure DOS and see if you 
> can read off the disk. I have a utility here called NTFSDOS which 
> allows the reading of NTFS drives within DOS. I can e-mail it to you 
> off list if you wish and see if you have any joy accessing the drive.
>
> I'll have a looksie around and let you know if I can think of anything.


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Re: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-03-31 Thread Marty Landman
At 05:01 PM 3/31/2005, Diane Schips wrote:
I'm trying to help my parents with their computer.  It keeps freezing.
Can you override the windows boot (F8) and get a full file directory at the 
dos prompt? I believe there is also a way to run scandisk from dos, though 
haven't done this myself. If you can get to the dos prompt, even using a 
windows startup disk, maybe you can make backups on floppy of the important 
files, or write to a cd.

I tried putting the hard drive in another computer.  I get past the 
notification that it has been upgraded to NTFS, then I get the blue screen 
of death.  If I try to use it as a slave, I get a message that it is 
unformatted.
To see if the drive is usable at all I think you have to reformat; and 
first repartition. So trying to back up before this is a good thought.

Nothing was backed up of course.
With all due respect Diane how much data is on there that they can't live 
w/o?
Is there anything I can do to save the data?
You can try PC File Inspector - 
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm. I used this once 
myself and it did a good job under the circumstances. Your situation sounds 
different, I think you're going to have to first install it as a 
non-bootable ide on a working system, then install this app on that system 
and see if it can find any data for you on there.

The problem may become that it finds tons and tons of data. You need 
somewhere to put it, and if for example the file system's been trashed you 
may have to scan through lots of stuff to find e.g. a one page letter they 
wrote and want to keep. You may also be able to make an image copy of the 
disk - I'd think this would be possible although I'm not experienced with 
that either. I don't know much, do I? :)

There are also co's that specialize in this kind of thing. The program I 
used was free, these companies afaik are expensive so it depends on the how 
important the data is.

hth,
Marty
Marty Landman, Face 2 Interface Inc. 845-679-9387
Search & Sort Easily: http://face2interface.com/Products/FormATable.shtml
Web Installed Formmail: http://face2interface.com/formINSTal
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Re: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-03-31 Thread Diane Schips
Thank you!  I woulds love to try that utility.  It makes sense that it 
has a chance of working!

Diane
Ross Clutterbuck wrote:
Diane:
Sounds like the File Allocation Table might have gone the way of the 
Dodo but for the life of me I can't remember if it's possible to 
rebuild a FAT without killing the data.

One thing I would suggest is try booting into pure DOS and see if you 
can read off the disk. I have a utility here called NTFSDOS which 
allows the reading of NTFS drives within DOS. I can e-mail it to you 
off list if you wish and see if you have any joy accessing the drive.

I'll have a looksie around and let you know if I can think of anything.
MOU

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Re: [wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-03-31 Thread Ross Clutterbuck
Diane:
Sounds like the File Allocation Table might have gone the way of the Dodo 
but for the life of me I can't remember if it's possible to rebuild a FAT 
without killing the data.

One thing I would suggest is try booting into pure DOS and see if you can 
read off the disk. I have a utility here called NTFSDOS which allows the 
reading of NTFS drives within DOS. I can e-mail it to you off list if you 
wish and see if you have any joy accessing the drive.

I'll have a looksie around and let you know if I can think of anything.
MOU


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[wdvltalk] Serious hard drive problem

2005-03-31 Thread Diane Schips
I'm trying to help my parents with their computer.  It keeps freezing.  
They were running Windows 98se, so I sought to upgrade them to Windows 
200 prof.  At the point where the OS starts looking for installed 
components, it freezes.  Rebooting doesn't help, it just keeps freezing.

I tried putting the hard drive in another computer.  I get past the 
notification that it has been upgraded to NTFS, then I get the blue 
screen of death.  If I try to use it as a slave, I get a message that it 
is unformatted.

Nothing was backed up of course.
Is there anything I can do to save the data?
Diane
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