I'm getting really rather frustrated at my hard disk, and since the net has until now been unable to solve my problem I am turning to you people with puppy dog eyes and hope that you can help me. I'm not exactly sure how the problem came about... I was going to upgrade my system, so I removed my 80GB Maxtor storage drive and put it in another system so as I could continue to use the files on it while I took my main rig apart. Well, for some damned reason the drive wasn't picked up in Windows (XP), but I decided I didn't care and that it would probably work again when I put my main rig back together. After a hefty wait for my mobo, I finally rebuilt my system and put the storage drive back where it belonged. Uhoh.. it still didn't work. And so it begins.. Disk management saw the 3 partitions (20, 20, 40) on the disk and had them all marked as "Healthy" but also as "Unknown". Most of my research pointed towards Windows thinking that the partitions used an alien file system... I know for a fact however that they are all NTFS partitions, formatted in XP in fact. I decided something was wrong with the partition table or the boot record (neither of which I knew anything whatsoever about). So I set upon finding a program to fix things for me. First up was "Boot / Partition Repair 2003" (BPR). I downloaded the demo and low and behold it found the 3 partitions and realised they were NTFS. It wouldn't let me at them though, for that it needed $200. So off to the net I went again, and found "Active@ Partition Recovery" (PR). Another demo download... this one even let me browse the files on the disk! Result, they are all there intact. Awesome. $30 you say? Bargain. Off went my dollars and back came my product download. Another few hours later and the program had once again rebuilt all my directories and files in front of my eyes. Filled with joy and sure that my problems were finally over I wrote the new partition information to the disk and rebooted. I had another look with PR and everything still looked peachy. So into Windows I went... the drives had appeared! YAY I thought... until I tried to access them and was told they weren't formatted... "Would I like to format?" Hmm, no thanks buddy. PR still lets me view my files, but not Windows. I tried, as suggested in the PR manual, "fdisk /mbr" to rebuild the boot record. To be honest, I had no idea what this did (and still don't know if it's actually doing the right drive) but it seems that it's a very risky procedure. Luckily no harm done, but no good either. I also tried "fixmbr", which allowed me to define the correct disk "\Device\HardDisk1" if I recall. Still no luck however. I need those files. Does anyone have any idea what I have to do to get them available in XP? It's all the more infuriating having PR show me them, although slightly reassuring that they are still there. Any help hugely appreciated. TIA, plow.
This sounds a bit of a tricky one. Does this application you have purchased allow copying of files from one drive to another because if so it sounds the likley answer. Other than that it sound like the partition table is irrepairable/messy to do so. Good luck and sorry I couldn't help more
Hi mrPlow, I just RMA'd a 80Gb DiamondMax Plus 9. It made the dredded click sound. Well I ordered a Seagate 7200.7 80Gb Hd from Komplett and copied the stuff over. Luckily I managed to retrieve 80% of the files. Partition Magic came up with error codes #727 and some others errors. PowerMax came up with a code, but I lost the paper I wrote it on and could not regenerate the code. It passed everytime after that ... weird tho since it's borked good and proper. Anyways it's RMA'd cos it wouldn't even let me create a single C: drive let alone make partitions. Although I have always stuck with Maxtor, I have a feeling that their drives are not up to standard anymore ... my advice ... don't go with 80Gb DiamondMax Plus 9's ... they seem to fall apart after 6months. Plus if you can get a PowerMax code. It's official ( I think ) diagnostic software for Maxtor only Hd's used for burn-in tests and gives you a error code which can be used for RMA's to help them diagnose etc. Moral ... switch to Seagate ... my first Seagate Hd ... heard nothing but good about them ... time to put it to the test :|
Do yo ahve a Linux/BSD box with NTFS support ? If so wack them into there, and see. Might work. Of course this would jsut be for backing up purposes, so you could format the drive and then copy data back over. I've found in the past that Windows couldn't read my CDs or when my one storage partition fell apart, Linux was able to read them and save my precious data. Another thign to try would be network access. Try to access teh drive viz a remote computer. Use the //%machine%/%drive letter%$ trick. ie, a machine named box1 and data drive being D:\, would look like: //box1/D$
I agree, I have linux as a third operating system for three reasons. one, i like it. two, I use lilo boot to access all my operating systems which were independantly installed, no more windows dual boot problems. three, linux can see all my file systems and is a lot more stable and durable than windows. although my current flavour can not read NTFS, there are versions that can. I would not have a home system without a linux OS there somewhere. You do not need a massive disk or partition to install it on, I use a maxtor 6.4 Gb. Nowadays it is easy to install and maintain and you do not need to be a guru to use it.
thx guys, looking like im gonna have to get another 80gigger and copy it all across.. annoying since I don't really have the funds, but I can't stand losing all that data. once again thx for the advice, plow (on bigz's pootah)
Ordered myself a new 80gigger to hopefully copy the stuff onto using PR. One thing I noticed is that it shows the file systems on my C and D partitions (working fine on my 40GB seagate) as "NTFS" whilst the file systems of the non-recognised-by-windows partitions on the 80GB maxtor are shown as "ntfs" (lower case). Does this mean anything?
Yes, it means it's been altered by a third party. Not you, (at least not directly) nor Windows. Windows has never been one to complain about upper and lower case letters, however for sake of standard and consistancy, Microsoft Usually do use tem repectively where they belong (in the newer versions of Windows anyways). But if you partition tables have been altered, they may have ben changed to something else, then changed back, and not named correctly. That's been my experience at least. Make sure you have a firewall and virus scanner that's up to date.
GetDataBack is able to retrieve all my files Unfortunately the replacement drive I got (seagate 7200.7 80GB) started the click of death within 3 hours of running so I need to RMA it Does no-one make decent hard disks anymore? All my old (must be getting on 10 years, maybe 7ish) hard drives still work flawlessly. Yet another example of making things crap to force replace purchases, nothing lasts these days (christ I sound like an old man).
Dude that sucks, 3 hours? Appauling. And for the record, all my 7+ year old 250mb -> 1gb drives also still work fine
Same here, standards haev SERIOUSLY dropped. I've got a Maxtor Diamond Max 9 ATM and i haven't had MANY problems with it. The old IBM that i dropped down a flight of stairs by accident still whoops its ass in the reliablity stakes though.
I had a Deathstar die in less than a month on me; RMA'd the fudger and now it seems to be ok /me prays it won't die I think they've turned ****e because the manufacturers are compressing more fragile and expensive technology into disks than they used to. Before there used to be 1 platter in a HD; now there could be anything up to 6 with a 250GB drive. RELIABILITY dammit we want a reliable drive, not something that makes Kansas look small in storage comparison.
I work for as small computer shop in london, in the past month we have had 9 DOA maxtor drives, i dont know if its just a bad batch, but ive heard from several other sources that they have had similar experiences with maxtor recently For the moment im sticking with seagate drives, never had a single problem with them, plus they are virtualy silent
I would have agreed with you until yesterday It seems I have had a bad one from every company now which is frankly rubbish. Here goes the RMA process... I did that this morning, came up "this drive has physical defects". Interestingly the maxtor that I'm trying to replace passed the generic tests but came up "ALERT" on the S.M.A.R.T. test. I guess I'll be RMAing that too :S AND I've got an old deathstar I need to return.
