Partition seems to have failed

uZi · 21 Aug 2006 at 19:52

PC has been running fine.. had a couple of crashes, but as far as i remember it was only while playing trackmania. Then today it crashed, gave quite a nasty noise thru the speakers then froze.. hit the reset button as usual. But this time booting only got as far as "Error Loading Operating System".

I've now put the drive (its a WD Cavier SE 120gb, partitioned into 40gig for windows and 80 for storage) into my old pc, and i can see both drives in windows, however the windows partition is unreadable - it first gave me an error saying something along the lines of "parameter missing" or "not applicable" not exactly sure... and now it just tells me the drive is not formatted, and would i like to format. The storage one is fine (at least for now).

Anyone know of a way to get at the files on the dead partition.. also how come the storage partition is still in tact? :S not that im complaining.. my mp3s are on it

cheers

SiriusB · 21 Aug 2006 at 20:03

Sounds like something has happened to the file system on the OS partition. This could either be software corruption - ie Windows didn't write some information to the HDD properly or it could be hardware - several sectors on the HDD itself may be damaged and any data they contained are lost in magnetic oblivion.

You could try using something like Partition Table Doctor or similar to see if you can rebuild your partition tables and boot sector to see if that helps. However unless you have anything important on your OS partition it might just be easier to format it. If there are any damaged sectors they *should* get remapped to ones that work. [HDDs have an area on the disk with spare sectors in the event some are damaged.]

SiriusB

uZi · 21 Aug 2006 at 20:07

Well there was quite a lot of stuff that was in my to-burn list.. entire bob dylan catalogue, bob marley.. etc - things i hadnt moved over to other drives or burnt to dvd

I'll have a go with that tool.. there any other decent programs that might help?

uZi · 22 Aug 2006 at 14:03

Just thought i'd say thanks for the help.. although i didn't use partition table doctor.. didnt wanna pay $39 or whatever it costs for it.

I did find this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk - I rebuilt the Boot sector, and now all is well again.

I've ordered a new seagate .10 though, just cos i dont wanna trust this disk with all my mp3s etc

anyway cheers for the help Sirius

michael baxter · 22 Aug 2006 at 14:42

Boot from the Windows XP installation CD, and select the 'repair' windows option. You should get a text console, and three useful commands are available:

1. fixmbr - to fix the master boot record
2. fixboot - to fix the partition boot sector
3. chkdsk - to scan a partition for problems

Be wary, all of these have the potential of making things worse.........

Michael

michael baxter · 22 Aug 2006 at 14:45

Oops, didn't read your last message properly!

SiriusB · 22 Aug 2006 at 15:30

uZi said:
Just thought i'd say thanks for the help.. although i didn't use partition table doctor.. didnt wanna pay $39 or whatever it costs for it.

I did find this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk - I rebuilt the Boot sector, and now all is well again.

I've ordered a new seagate .10 though, just cos i dont wanna trust this disk with all my mp3s etc

anyway cheers for the help Sirius

Glad to see it worked. I only mentioned PTDr because it was the first one that came to my mind. Completely forgot it costs money

SiriusB