Hard Drive Failed

The hard drive on one of my computers (running XP Pro) appears to have failed. By way of background, we've just had an extensive power outage and I made use of a generator. The computer has an APC Back UPS ES 750 back up that should serve as a line conditioner for the dirty generator power output, but I figured out the battery was dead, and I don't know if that bypasses whatever power modification the back up provides.

We'd used the computer the night before to watch a little mindless entertainment, and the next morning it kept re-starting. At first it would get into windows with my wallpaper up and all, but after several tries it rebooted earlier and earlier, ultimately going to a BSOD. The cause was "unmountable boot volume". The machine has the recovery console installed, but it won't load, instead going to the same BSOD.

I removed the drive and put in into my office computer. This resulted in the office machine generating a BSOD as well. It loads just fine without the faulty drive attached, but when I plug it in (with Windows XP running), down it goes.

Still using the office computer, I booted up in safe mode and started the Recovery Console. The bad drive is now drive G, and chkdsk said "the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems" and using the /r option provides the same response. Running fixmbr G: also brings up the same message.

Of course, there is important data that I haven't backed up in quite awhile on that drive. Any suggestions for data recovery would be appreciated.

As an aside, I haven't done anything dodgy with that machine, so I don't really suspect a malware issue, at least as a first guess anyway.

Thanks for considering my problem

Off White
Tenino, WA

 

Hold on, looks like I wasn't using the correct drive letter in the Recovery Console. Using the map command didn't reveal the drive, so I rebooted into the RC with the bad drive attached and I've now found it using map and determined its drive D. chkdsk /p is running right now, and I may be able to self rescue.

 

Let chkdsk run.

Just posting to say careful with the Fixmbr command the syntax would be to specify the HD disk# rather than a drive letter http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true. So don't run fixmbr unless it becomes clear you need it.

 

It appears to be fixed, at least enough to be able to copy all that critical data to a different drive. Thanks for the tip on the fixmbr command, I actually changed to the relevant drive before I ran it, after which I could start Windows normally, see the drive, and copy stuff out of it. I still don't know if it will boot Windows on its own when reinstalled in the other machine, but the part that made me anxious is resolved.

Mods - feel free to delete this thread, unless you think it might have value for others, I seem to have gotten over my crisis...