3

So, horror story for everyone.

I bought two spanking new HDD's. MM!! Gbitage.

I removed all my old HDD's, physically labelled them, and was preparing to install all new HDD's (fresh sys install included!)

To make sure what HDD was what, I popped each OLD HDD (data filleD!) into a Thermaltake Blacx toaster.. surprisingly BOTH couldn't be read. I didn't have static on my hands! I'm certain of it. I touched metal, touched wood, before beginning this all.

Thinking that was strage, I hauled up the new sys, installed Win XP (of course!) on the new HDD, and now the two OLD HDD's (data filled!) that were entered into the toaster cannot be read. And they had tons of data on them.

I read about MBR's being nuked and it sounds like that is what it is. But I'm at a loss what to do. There are so many MBR recovery programs out there, I kind of feel overwhelmed. I don't want to lose my data by just pikcing one, yet it seems so close within reach, I'm not panicking anymore..

Anybody have a play by play that I could follow? I just don't want to spend $900 on data recovery centers if I can do this myself..

bobobobo
  • 5,460

2 Answers2

1

Well, you can just insert the XP cd, boot the machine, and start in recovery console mode. You can type help once there to see other available commands. To start the console:

  1. Insert the cd, and boot the machine.
  2. when asked, hit key to "boot from CD"
  3. choose recovery console in text menu by hitting R key.
  4. do the fixmbr thing. If I recall well, any command also there allow the fixmbr /? thing to see brief help about the command.

This used to make the trick for me, I hope it helps you. Other way I have used is using the great Rannish Partition Manager(allows to recover a standard dos MBR), which also allows to setup multiple OSes boot, but you need to be experienced in these matters, and have very safe backups before trying. I used it during years and never lost data, but with these things, all can happen.

From your explanation, am not 100% sure is the MBR thing lost... Sometimes disks come with some weird config in that area, but I hope your problem gets solved easily.

Good luck! I'll keep an eye around here in case I can help more.

S.gfx
  • 1,698
  • 11
  • 14
0

So for the other drive, it was somehow the boot record, and TestDisk fixed it for me!

Thanks TestDisk!

Gareth
  • 19,080
bobobobo
  • 5,460