Disk inaccessible

  • Thread starter Thread starter BrianF
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BrianF

I reported here recently that my daughter's PC had developed a "system file
missing or corrupt" error and would not boot. To provide her with a
temporary operating environment, I installed WinXP Pro on a separate 15GB
master drive with the 160GB defective system as a slave drive. The slave
drive hierarchy was fully visible in Windows Explorer and I was planning to
attempt a restore operation when time allowed. However, that drive has now
mysteriously become inaccessible. In Disk Management, it appears to have
three partitions, two of which are 8GB each but they do not have drive
letters. I presume those partitions are just for drive tables. However, the
main partition of 144GB says that it is fully available although, in
Properties, it is totally blue suggesting that it is full. I'm confused.
From my point of view, there are only two explanations for this. The first
is that there is a young man in the house who likes to think he knows about
computers but swears he has not touched this one. The second is virus
activity.
This is a Maxtor drive and it still tests OK with the PowerMax utility.
My feeling is that there is little hope of recovering the data off that
drive but that it may be worth a low level format and a new Windows
installation (original was Win Home OEM). This is not a popular idea in the
family.
What would you do?

brianf
 
BrianF said:
I reported here recently that my daughter's PC had developed a "system file missing
or corrupt" error and would not boot. To provide her with a temporary operating
environment, I installed WinXP Pro on a separate 15GB master drive with the 160GB
defective system as a slave drive. The slave drive hierarchy was fully visible in
Windows Explorer and I was planning to attempt a restore operation when time
allowed. However, that drive has now mysteriously become inaccessible. In Disk
Management, it appears to have three partitions, two of which are 8GB each but they
do not have drive letters. I presume those partitions are just for drive tables.
However, the main partition of 144GB says that it is fully available although, in
Properties, it is totally blue suggesting that it is full. I'm confused.
From my point of view, there are only two explanations for this. The first is that
there is a young man in the house who likes to think he knows about computers but
swears he has not touched this one. The second is virus activity.
This is a Maxtor drive and it still tests OK with the PowerMax utility.
My feeling is that there is little hope of recovering the data off that drive but
that it may be worth a low level format and a new Windows installation (original
was Win Home OEM). This is not a popular idea in the family.
What would you do?

brianf
Click to expand...

Boot to the Recovery Console and run the "dir" command on the drive to see if the
data is there. If it is you may want to copy off anything important before you can't
get at it. You may want to create and use a BartPE disk to access the drive and pull
any data:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Another way to look at the drive if it's ntfs is to use either NTFS Reader or
NTFSDOS:
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm -- NTFS Reader

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsDos.html --NTFSDOS

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
 
Brian A. said:
news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...
Boot to the Recovery Console and run the "dir" command on the drive to
see if the data is there. If it is you may want to copy off anything
important before you can't get at it. You may want to create and use a
BartPE disk to access the drive and pull any data:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Another way to look at the drive if it's ntfs is to use either NTFS
Reader or NTFSDOS:
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm -- NTFS Reader

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsDos.html --NTFSDOS
Click to expand...
Recovery Console only shows it as C:\ and the dir command returns something
like "directory missing or corrupt".
It was originally a FAT32 drive with WindowsXP Home (OEM Family Edition in
French).
I think you need the original CD to build a BartPE disk and we do not have
that.

brianf
 
BrianF said:
Recovery Console only shows it as C:\ and the dir command returns something like
"directory missing or corrupt".
Click to expand...

If it's installed as a slave drive it won't be C:. You'll need to type the drive
letter at the prompt and press Enter or use the cd command. To get help on any
command, type the command at the prompt followed by a space and then type /?.
It was originally a FAT32 drive with WindowsXP Home (OEM Family Edition in French).
Click to expand...

If it's still FAT32 you could use a 98 boot disk to check its contents in DOS. The
French part I can't help with.
I think you need the original CD to build a BartPE disk and we do not have that.
Click to expand...

Yes the installation files are needed and would be in the i386 folder. During the
creation of a BartPE CD it will search your HD's for the installation files and if
more than one location is found you will get a list to select from. If it doesn't
find them then yes, you need the original installation disk.


--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
 
Brian A. said:
If it's installed as a slave drive it won't be C:. You'll need to type
the drive letter at the prompt and press Enter or use the cd command. To
get help on any command, type the command at the prompt followed by a
space and then type /?.
Click to expand...

I should have made it clear that I returned it to the original single drive
status to run Recovery Console.
If it's still FAT32 you could use a 98 boot disk to check its contents in
DOS. The French part I can't help with.
Click to expand...

Tried that but it would not recognise the drive.
Yes the installation files are needed and would be in the i386 folder.
During the creation of a BartPE CD it will search your HD's for the
installation files and if more than one location is found you will get a
list to select from. If it doesn't find them then yes, you need the
original installation disk.
Click to expand...
I have rather formed the impression that the drive is either partly
formatted or corrupted in a big way but whether this is through manual
interference or viral attack I don't know.

brianf
 
BrianF said:
I should have made it clear that I returned it to the original single drive
status to run Recovery Console.

Tried that but it would not recognise the drive.
I have rather formed the impression that the drive is either partly
formatted or corrupted in a big way but whether this is through manual
interference or viral attack I don't know.

brianf
Click to expand...

Hello,
This site may be of some use:
http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/#ntfs

You can download a Knoppix boot disk, use the first link on the right
side of the page.
Read the information at the Shock Family Site.
If you cannot download then you can order, they charge a small fee ($7.00 to
$10.00 U.S.) for the order.
take care.
beamish.
 
Thanks very much. That sounds really great. I will see what I can do with it
and report back, probaly next week.

brianf
 
beamish said:
Hello,
This site may be of some use:
http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/#ntfs

You can download a Knoppix boot disk, use the first link on the right
side of the page.
Read the information at the Shock Family Site.
Click to expand...

Well it sounds great in principle but ... these university geeks really do
live in a world of their own. You think you're going to be presented with
one file to download but no; you get a great hierarchy of bewildering file
names and no explanation of just how to go about it in simple language.

What help files there are are wiritten in a superior tone that more or less
says, "If you don't know how to do it, you shouldn't be here."

I concluded that I needed to download one of the 'big' files and burn it to
CD. First problem was I only had 650MB CD-Rs and this file is 696MB so I had
to go out to buy some high capacity CD-Rs (no CD-RWs available).

Second problem, I burned the ISO file to CD but it didn't boot. So I went to
the Knoppix FAQ where it tells me Windows doesn't burn in the right format
for ISO image files. (Why didn't it say that earlier?) It says you should
see the file hierarchy on the disk rather than just a copy of the downloaded
file.

Third problem, I used Deep Burner which does have the 'Burn ISO image'
option. The resultant second coaster does not boot either and windows says
it cannot identify any files on this CD.

I am taking a rest at this point.

brianf
 
BrianF said:
Well it sounds great in principle but ... these university geeks really do
live in a world of their own. You think you're going to be presented with
one file to download but no; you get a great hierarchy of bewildering file
names and no explanation of just how to go about it in simple language.

What help files there are are wiritten in a superior tone that more or
less says, "If you don't know how to do it, you shouldn't be here."

I concluded that I needed to download one of the 'big' files and burn it
to CD. First problem was I only had 650MB CD-Rs and this file is 696MB so
I had to go out to buy some high capacity CD-Rs (no CD-RWs available).

Second problem, I burned the ISO file to CD but it didn't boot. So I went
to the Knoppix FAQ where it tells me Windows doesn't burn in the right
format for ISO image files. (Why didn't it say that earlier?) It says you
should see the file hierarchy on the disk rather than just a copy of the
downloaded file.

Third problem, I used Deep Burner which does have the 'Burn ISO image'
option. The resultant second coaster does not boot either and windows says
it cannot identify any files on this CD.

I am taking a rest at this point.
Click to expand...
To continue the saga - I decided to download an alternative burner called
Active ISO. This again looked promising because it has a selection of burn
speeds and the Knoppix FAQ says to burn at the lowest possible speed. All
seemed to be going well at 1x until around 50% of the burn had completed,
when suddenly an error menu popped up saying that the operation could not be
completed. I checked what was on the disk using Windows Explorer and a
number of folders and files were there. So, I tried rebooting with it. That
worked - whoopie! - and displayed a lot of coloured text on a black
backgound introducing and explaining the Knoppix program. It listed my
hardware and stated that it could not find the Knoppix CD. Hardly surprising
as only 50% had been downloaded. So, despite the progress, I had yet another
coaster.
I decided that perhaps this failure was just a one-off and that I would have
another try. This time, the burn went through to completion. However, it
produced yet another unreadable CD.

Meanwhile, I had run the MD5 checksum verifyer on the downloaded file and it
seemed 100% OK.

What on earth could be wrong?

brianf
 
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