| Author | Message | ||
     Peter G (Petergr) |
I am looking at a disk that has become inaccessible in Windows. It is the boot drive for an XP pro PC. Running chkdsk gives "unrecoverable disk error". I have tried a few data recovery programs (Ontrack and File Scavenger) which are successfully able to see the folder structure and files, however they are not able to complete and appear to hang - presumably because of some corruption somewhere. I have now successfully used Winhex and recovered by file type a large number of files which was good news (after two days trying to do it with the other programs. What I would like to know is how I can view the $MFT and mirror, and how I can swap the mirror into the place of the original. I have tried to click on "access" "MFT Tables" but the list is empty. At one point I was able to see a listing of these but I can no longer see how to do it. I am presuming that if I can do this I may be able to restore the directory structure into its original format or at least some of it!! (Currently I have one large folder with 9000 files in it. Thanks for your help. Peter | ||
| Terry Greenwood (Greenwood) |
Depending on what the actual error is, you may be lucky if you connect the faulty drive to a system running XP. On booting, the 'good' system will check the file system of attached drives and might fix your problem. Having said that , I have seen this repair function completely screw a disk up so make sure that you have imaged the drive first ! | ||
| Peter G (Petergr) |
The drive currently is connected to a PC running XP and is not visble, and could not be repaired with chkdsk or disk management console. I can extract specific files using winhex, but I was hoping to restore the drive with directory structure. Peter | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann (Admin) |
> What I would like to know is how I can view the $MFT and > mirror, and how I can swap the mirror into the place of > the original. The boot sector might still point to the clusters where $MFT and $MFTMirr start (use the template to interpret the boot sector). If so, you know which clusters to copy over which other clusters (copy & paste). Otherwise you have to manually locate both system files manually first. | ||
| Peter G (Petergr) |
Thanks Stephan, I will have another attempt. This is a good learning process  Peter |