Hard drive failure
I have a "Maxtor 40GB" in which I installed Windows 2000 on its first partition (I split it into 4 partitions and formatted all of them using FAT32), now I can't access its primary partition but when I connect the drive as a slave I can see all the partition, I can save files to the other three partitions, but the primary partition appears full, with drive size specified as 0 bytes rather than its 10GB true capacity.
Please someone help me out! What can I do to recover that partition?
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
December 18, 2005 10:35 PM
UPDATED:
January 27, 2012 9:37 PM
Answer Wiki:
while the controller is still working you can take the drive to a data recovery specialist who will take the platters out and read them and burn the information to a dvd or cd for you for about 150.00 per gig or you can try to use recover 4 all from the internet to see if it can read any of the data from the drive but recover all the data from the other partitiions before the drive dies and then make a ghost image to another drive so you can maybe have a backup. it sounds like youmay have just lost the main partition sector and can type fdisk/mbr and restore it .... if another computer can't read the drive at all to run the program recover4all the take it to the data recovery place in your area.
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Perhaps there might be a problem with the primary partition of your hard disk drive. This could happen during the process of partitioning, it is best to create another partitions with your hard disk and make sure this time to partition it carefully.
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Hi,
Sounds like your priomary partition has some corruption.
Get the Maxtor utilities from the their website.
If the parttion is appearing as full, yet the size is 0 MB, there might be a problem with how you created the partition.
Did the drive stop working after partitioning and installation? Or it worked for sometime then stopped working. If it appears full can you read or see any files there. ( some viruses can fill-up you hard drive within a matter of 2 minutes accross the internet).
Firstly you will need to perform some kind of backup as mentioned above. Then work on the drive.
Did you get any messages or other funny things happen when parttioning the drive?
Keep us informed.
Regards
Newton
PS: Sometimes the shifting of NTFS and FAT32 for w2k installations messes up the partitions.
This is a tool that I use, it is in no way a promotion of the company that produces it, nor am I in any way affiliated with same, I just find it handy:
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
I would advise in future to run Windows 2000 only on an NTFS partition. While it is capable of running on FAT32, it was not designed to.
If this is not the only operating system you will be using on this computer, do not install it on the first partition if you want to be able to boot to a FAT32-based operating system such as Windows 9x.
If you will be using Linux, make sure it is the last operating system you install, so for example you could install Win98SE on Par1(FAT32), Win2K on Par2(NTFS), make Par3 a shared data drive (FAT32) and put Linux on Par4.
Gotta love those Maxtor drives…
I use the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4WIN); a BartPE based WinXP CD-ROM based boot disk. I have encountered this same issue on Maxtor drives and have been able to successfully recover data from the failed drive using included utilities (including transferring data and/or drive images to a network location). DO NOT attempt to access the failed/failing drive more than a few times, as the drive is indeed in the process of failing, and the more attempts you make, the smaller the likelyhood that you’ll get any usefull data from the drive…
The tool requires a bit of tweaking to build, but all in all is well worth the time…
Icare DATA Recovery. Cheap and reliable. Recover DATA from a lost/deleted or corrupt partition or HDD. Saves you a lot than taking it to a recovery services.
The HDD might be still O.K. However, Once converted a drive or partition to NTFS loaded with O.S, you cannot simply convert it back to FAT or FAT32. You will need to reformat the drive or partition which will erase all data including programs and personal files on the partition.