fix unbootable drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jonno
  • Start date Start date
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Jonno

I am trying to fix an image of an XP pro SP3 drive which has been damaged by
overfilling. It is a 20GB image now residing on a 250GB drive. I have used
Win7 to check the contents of the drive, run chkdsk and defrag, but when I
put the drive into the original computer I get "error loading operating
system".

I'd like to run fixboot from the recovery console, but when I boot to an XP
setup CD it says Drive C is unformatted, damaged bla bla bla.

I've mentioned that the drive was readable as a slave on a Win7 box, so why
can't the XP setup system read it?

Does anyone have any ideas on how to make the drive bootable, without doing
a clean install?
 
Jonno said:
I am trying to fix an image of an XP pro SP3 drive which has been
damaged by overfilling. It is a 20GB image now residing on a 250GB
drive. I have used Win7 to check the contents of the drive, run
chkdsk and defrag, but when I put the drive into the original
computer I get "error loading operating system".

I'd like to run fixboot from the recovery console, but when I boot
to an XP setup CD it says Drive C is unformatted, damaged bla bla
bla.

I've mentioned that the drive was readable as a slave on a Win7
box, so why can't the XP setup system read it?

Does anyone have any ideas on how to make the drive bootable,
without doing a clean install?
Click to expand...

Just because the hardware passes a CHKDSK doesn't mean (1) it's good and (2)
all the files on it are original/not corrupted.

You may need to perform a repair installation (in-place upgrade) in order to
replace any corrupt files. in-place upgrades should not affect the data -
although backups are *always* a wise idea.

BTW - AFAIK - there is no such thing as 'damage by overfilling' - since you
cannot 'overfill' a hard drive. You can use every bit of space available -
it may slow your system (as it could affect the page file, etc) - but it is
*not* going to physically damage the hard drive.
 
I'd love to run a repaor installation, but as I mentioned in my original post
the setup utility reports the drive as unreadable and offers only the
reformat and clean install option.
 
Here's what happened. A 20GB drive was showing as having 600MB free, so I
decided to install a light facility to clone it to a larger drive. I
installed Norton Ghost 2003 and scheduled it to clone to a 250GB slave drive
on restart.

When I rebooted I got the message "missing operating system".

So I booted to the Norton CD and cloned to the larger drive, so that I could
fiddle around trying to repair the OS while avoiding doing ant further damage
to the original drive.

Neither original nor clone will boot, and XP setup refuses the repair option.
 
Here's what happened.  A 20GB drive was showing as having 600MB free, so I
decided to install a light facility to clone it to a larger drive.  I
installed Norton Ghost 2003 and scheduled it to clone to a 250GB slave drive
on restart.

When I rebooted I got the message "missing operating system".

So I booted to the Norton CD and cloned to the larger drive, so that I could
fiddle around trying to repair the OS while avoiding doing ant further damage
to the original drive.

Neither original nor clone will boot, and XP setup refuses the repair option.
Click to expand...

Look for TestDisk
 
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