Arrgh Harddisk Crash - Help!!

[Hypo]

I dont know what happened, but Norton Antivirus asked me if I wanted to innoculate the disk since it it had changed and i said yes. I have 2 40 GBs harddisk, partitioned into 2 each, so C D E F.

When I boot now, windows does not start and I cant read C drive, getting the message - "Invalid Media ype Reading Drive C"

The harddisk is physically alright since its new, and its other partition is reading alrigth. I have important information on this partition and need it. What might be the error?

I read about the fdisk /mbr command that will rewrite the master boot record? Can I use it without losing any data?

[Gary]

I'd love to help, but then i would be accused of just trying to increase my post count.

Sucks to be me.

[max40]

Originally posted by Hypo:
I dont know what happened, but Norton Antivirus asked me if I wanted to innoculate the disk since it it had changed and i said yes. I have 2 40 GBs harddisk, partitioned into 2 each, so C D E F.

When I boot now, windows does not start and I cant read C drive, getting the message - "Invalid Media ype Reading Drive C"

The harddisk is physically alright since its new, and its other partition is reading alrigth. I have important information on this partition and need it. What might be the error?

I read about the fdisk /mbr command that will rewrite the master boot record? Can I use it without losing any data?

I can try to help. What operating system do you use? Do you know what are 1) partition table; 2) boot record; 3) FATs; 4) root in case of Win9x or $MFT etc. in case of WinNT or Win2000? Anyway do you have a tool like Norton Disk Editor to save some physical sectors before trying fdisk? It is risky to write something to crashed disk if you are not sure what are you doing.

[Hypo]

I have 2 harddisk 40 GBs each, divided into 2 partitions 20 GB each. I think FAT32 all of them.

1st disk -
C: - win2000 (C:\winnt)
E: - win98 (E:\wind98)

2nd disk D and F are mostly data disks.

I dont have any Norton utilities except Norton Antivirus but i can download/purchase something from another computer if that will help. The problem arose when Norton Antivirus told me my boot sector had changed since last time and would I like to restore it or something and I clicked yes. And then I rebooted accidently immediately afterwards. After that C is unreadable, and I'm getting an NTLDR not found error. I cant read or write anything to C as it keeps giving me the Invalid Media error.

[Hypo]

I cant boot into E:\wind98 as it gives me a registry not found error.

[Amputate Your Head]

Hypo, why did you put that Norton junk in your computer??? Okay.... nevermind, what's done is done.

No, you cannot Fdisk away just like that... you will lose EVERYTHING. Same with rewriting the MBR. Yes, those things will fix your problem, but they will also fixany other problems as well... once you Fdisk or rewrite... it's all gone bud.

Try to remove that Norton piece of crap and see if that helps. The bad news here is if you are missing NTLDR... you're pretty much fucked. Start looking for your setup cd.

If removing Norton doesn't work, you're probably gonna have to Fdisk your drive, repartition, reformat, and start all over.

[FADE19]

hmmm, how does it boot? bootmanager???

this is what I would do just to be on the safe side....Change your E: drive to the primary disk and make C: your slave. boot up win 98 go in and take everything you want off the C: drive all important info...then format C: and then rebuild your win2000 OS.

[Amputate Your Head]

try booting up in safe mode to see if you can get in and try to fix things... if you can get in but can't fix anything, start manually backing up anything you need to save...

[Hypo]

I cant boot to anything but DOS, and that using a windows 98 startup disk. I dont have Norton at startup, only in Windows which is not booting anyway.

And I cant read/write anything on C, so I dont even know how I can start recovering stuff manually.

The main is one directory called music, which has all my songs, backed up till a month back. That includes my latest recording which is very irreplaceable. Plus my emails. The rest can go.

[max40]

Hypo do you have IM (preffered for me) of ICQ number? I think on-line assistance will be more effective. You can e-mail me to [email protected]; BTW where are you working now from? as I understand you cant work from crashed computer. So is it near you?

[Amputate Your Head]

Okay... got an extra drive? If you do, put it in your broken machine. Boot up off your floppy to DOS... try to switch to the C: drive and do a dir command to see if you can read anything at all... if you can get directories and files... start copying what you need to your other drive letter that you just put in. This is about the only thing I can think of that will allow you to save your stuff, because...

If all you have is a floppy to copy stuff over to, I doubt it will handle music files... too big. They're probably gone bro... same with your mail database. Your emails are not separate files, but rather stored in a big ass database which will likely not fit on a floppy either.

If you do not have an extra drive, try to borrow one temporarily or just go buy one.

Without one, you may be able to connect it to another system with a parallel cable and do a transfer, but since you can't install any transfer software on the broken drive, you will have to try and search for older software that will work in DOS. Better to just use another drive.

[Juge]

Originally posted by Gary:
I'd love to help, but then i would be accused of just trying to increase my post count.

Sucks to be me.

Give me a break.

[Amputate Your Head]

The Golden Rule: Backup, backup, backup!

[Gary]

Originally posted by Juge:
Give me a break.

Stop crying

[max40]

Hypo, you can download demo version of Search&Rescue from www.pcrepairman.com;
so you will see at least what is recoverable.
This proggie will show you most exact evaluation (better than EasyRecovery, FinalData etc.)
You need to boot from another HDD with good Windows, of course.
And don't try to change anything on crashed disks, don't remove Norton also. Your odds are the best if you don't write even a byte to crashed disk. Files/folders deletion is updating some sectors, so it is writing to the disk also. Don't do it!

[Hypo]

Isnt there anyting DOS based? I can't boot to windows right now unless I reinstall it.

[Gemini]

When you are booting up, you need to hit the F key to throw it to the command menu. I can't remember now which it is, 4,5,6,7,or 8. See if you can get to safe mode that way. If so you should be able to remove the innoculation protection. We had Norton do that once. He found out how to fix it on their site. So check things out there. They have a help section that you can dig up the answer pretty easily.

Norton *IS* the best btw. Just Windows will do some weirdo thing and it appears to the virus prog its an attack. NEVER innoculate from a popup. Run the virus scan and see if it finds a true virus and you won't have that problem.

[Hypo]

I'm unable to get to the F8 part. The comp stops before that.

[max40]

Originally posted by Hypo:
Isnt there anyting DOS based? I can't boot to windows right now unless I reinstall it.

There are some products under DOS. EasyRecovery (http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecovery/) has bootable diskette, but the DOS-version of their program is VERY slow and not very correct.
You can try to use MediaTools III
(http://www.atl-datarecovery.com)
- great product, but not for newbies.
But the best way is bring your HDD (maybe one by one) to Windows based machine. You will be able to use data recovery software and copy data to another HDD. In your case, I believe, it is possible to repair partition table on each HDD. But this requires experience. Try to find low-level guru near you. I could help, but I'll go sleep soon. It is about midnight here in Ukraine

[Juge]

Originally posted by Amputate Your Head:
The Golden Rule: Backup, backup, backup!

Here's a question:

How many people backup? And in what form? I have 2 HD, and I back up junk from one to the other. But this doesn't help me if my place burns down. How many of you guys back up your stuff to a place outside of your main 'office'?

[Gary]

I have 2 30 gig hard drives and i do a standard backup every night using floppy disks. 75,000 disks to be exact. Its a little time consuming, but i sleep easier at night knowing i got a backup.

[Amputate Your Head]

I email all my data in attachment form to myself every night.

[Hypo]

I usually backup data from one harddisk to the other, but once a month I burn important stuff to CD. So whenever there's a crash I lose only a month's work max.